AT&T apparently had a massive cell system failure today.

AT&T’s network suffered widespread outages across the country Thursday morning with cellular service and internet down, according to the tracking site Downdetector….

AT&T reported service had been restored to all customers affected by the outage by late Thursday afternoon. It’s remains unclear what triggered the service disruption.

It wasn’t just AT&T:

Although Verizon and T-Mobile customers reported some network outages, too, they appeared far less widespread.

T-Mobile and Verizon said their networks were unaffected by AT&T’s service outage and customers reporting outages may have been unable to reach customers who use AT&T.

I didn’t know anything about the outages until I saw this tweet from Marco Rubio:

I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage

But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion

And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank

I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage

But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion

And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 22, 2024

I was triggered by the tweet. It brought back flashes of what drove me to prepping – societal collapse, particularly of our most vulnerable energy grids:

Prepping for the Worst (August 2021)

I don’t mean to alarm anyone, and I’m not panicked. I’m just concerned, and thinking the unthinkable….

So all in all, I no longer view “preppers” as crazy. Maybe they were right, just early. Better early than late.

I don’t plan to be late….

I have so little faith in the people running this country at various levels that stocking up on long shelf-life food and other prepper-lite protections seems to me, for the first time in my adult life, to be one of the least crazy ideas.

Prepping for the Worst 2.0 (August 2023)

It’s that time of year. Summer. When I have too much time on my hands and my mind wanders to thinking about what could go wrong. I am, by nature, a ‘worst case scenario’ person, so time to think is not a good thing….

My prepping really hasn’t been for the “worst case scenario” – it’s been for the most likely bad scenario, mostly focused on energy grids on which we depend, and food. (I know, readers always tell me to focus on home defense, but that’s not something we talk about.)

…. it’s obvious that if we ever get in a hot cyber war with China they are taking down our electric grid as the first shot, and that will start everything spiraling downward. Of course our civilian infrastruture will be a prime target, and if this administration is too stupid to see that, we are in worse shape than I thought.

So all day I’ve been focused on this. Did a food check…. I’m good on other food, but that damn water is still a problem because I’m such a procrastinator.

We have a shallow well on the property… , and a major goal this year was to test it and to see if, with proper filtering, it could be a usable bad-case-scenario water source. I haven’t done that yet, but by the fall I will. I promise.

Last fall came and went without testing the shallow well. I am not worthy. This spring, I promise, and this time I really mean it.

I never really focused before on how to communicate with family when it all goes down. I did a little looking, but not much progress. How do you communicate with someone hundreds of miles away when there is no internet or cell service, and no one has landlines anymore? Looking for suggestions.

I know someone near NYC who has a designated meeting place, because there will be no way to communicate. That sounds reasonable, even for just a regional blackout that may have nothing to do with a cyber attack. But it depends on having a vehicle that runs on gasoline, and a supply of at least a tank of gas since the gas stations will be down. That’s doable. It also depends on the police keeping the roads clear, that’s less viable even when there is no grid failure, just look at all the Hamas-loving lunatics blocking roads. When seconds count, ….

The bill will come due. We are moving in blue states to near total dependence on the electric grid for everything. The independence that comes from fossil fuels is being crushed.

So yeah, I’m back in that mood. It’s going down when we least expect it.

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