Throughout the USA this morning, there are widespread cellular service outages. Many people have no phone communication, including no phone and text communication. Many people’s phones are displaying that they are in SOS mode, which means only 911 calls can go out.
The media are talking about it; here’s an article in the Daily Mail UK. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13112901/amp/Cell-networks-nationwide-Verizon-Mobile-att-down.html
Phone calls go straight to voicemail, and texts, as far as I can tell appear to get sent out but are not received by the recipient.
However, cellular data (which I use for my internet access) seems to be working; I have been posting to my blog, commenting on Facebook posts, sending messages via Facebook Messenger etc. without a problem.
(For now, anyway …)
And: If we choose, we can each use this as an opportunity to test our communications arrangements, and add-in redundancy where needed. Postal mail; walking next door or down the block; quantum entanglement; smoke signals; and just plain abiding with the vacuum.
And reminding ourselves not to take for granted the availability of realtime voice telecommunication.
I for one have been very bad about being selfish with my time, not being willing to spend my precious evening book-reading time calling old friends.
And shy to call some family members, because I know how busy they are.
But, the availability of realtime voice communication is so very precious, and one of my first regrets if it went away would be that I didn’t use it more!
BTW realtime communication by text is very precious too. I have often found it an easy way to communicate with loved ones who I felt too shy to call. and being able to text photos, it’s a way to instantly convey a snapshot of one’s life.
(If one is either too time-stingy to phone a person who would be glad to hear from one; or if one is too shy to call somebody who one isn’t sure would be willing to hear from one. I am perversely using “one” repeatedly on purpose just to be a goofball. For best effect, read this to yourself out loud in your best rendition of a stuffy WASP, Thurston Howell -type voice.)
Realtime communication by text existed in the olden days too of course. At least if you were a member of the nobility or aristocracy. Like in Anna Karenina and various British royal potboiler romance novels and suchlike, where the lady would send a footman or coachman out with a note to her secret lover blah blah blah.
And speaking of walking next-door or down the block as a means of communication … Walking, being able to get around on foot (also being able to push a wheelchair to help others), is a cornerstone of household and community preparedness. I think I recall reading one time that back in the Kennedy administration, President Kennedy was trying to encourage civilians to be able to walk 50 miles a day, as part of civil defense. I’m not even sure I could walk that far. Could surely still do 20 still, even with this middle-age 40 pounds on me, but at this point would probably have to ramp up to it, and would need better shoes — or very very tough feet tougher than they are now. The most I’ve been able to walk barefoot has been about four or 5 miles.
PS. The title of this post was cribbed from the title of a rockin’ Led Zeppelin song, one of my favorites by one of my alltime favorite bands. It’s one of the tracks on their self-titled debut album from 1969. (Thank you Wikipedia.) A very fine vintage year for music, indeed!
But wait, there’s more — A friend who has something called a “civilian flight tracker” app, picked up a couple of military aircraft on there this morning. At first we thought it might be left over from the flying exhibition associated with the Daytona speedway races, But now we think not. It seems to be lingering, and it seems to be off to the southeast.
When something weird like this happens at the same time that something weird like a phone outage is happening, there is a temptation to connect to. Especially if you’re like me and have sort of an intense imagination. But even in cases like this, where it turns out they’re not connected, it’s an opportunity to think about our preparedness planning.
Speaking of which — on February 7 there was a rare earthquake here in Florida, off Cape Canaveral. And the last time such an “earthquake” was noted, in 2021, was during the military testing of a naval ship. (This is something I heard from a very well-informed friend who is very active in the community as an information channel.)
Again, when weirdness happens, there is a temptation to link things and think that some thing bigger is going on. At least some of us have a little bit of that tendency. And so we kind of have to correct for that, or accommodate for that, or whatever you call it. We can have these weird suspicions, and try to use them as opportunities to look at the design of our various systems for daily living. And we can try to plan to build more resiliency into our neighborhood and communities, so that regardless of what happens with communication, we will have a channel. As always, we have our assignment, which is to connect and share and help each other; share resources, including both information and physical resources.
Update the next day: By the way, it turned out that only about 70,000 cell phone customers were affected, And according to company sources no malicious activity is suspected. At the time it was happening, it felt like millions and millions of us. Also, it was really feeling to me like all of that other stuff was connected. Again with the active, sometimes overactive imagination. It doesn’t necessarily hurt to have an overactive imagination, as long as you are aware you have it. I use mine as sort of a tool for thought experiments that are useful in extreme contingency planning.