...of denial of service

Sunday, 2100. It's happened. The return of Verbivore, and with a vengeance. At 1500 hours yesterday. Exactly three weeks after Zab's contact, if that means anything. However, it's not just breaks now but total silence, on every type of frequency, on every type of material. I had exactly the same reactions as the first time, I assumed that my radio was phut. I tried the TV and assumed the same. But then I quickconnected - if that's the right word for such a slow reaction. Tried to ring Tim but the phone was dead too. I still half-assumed it was only me. Funny that, apparently everyone else reacted in much the same way, according to the Sundays, who've had a field-day. Still cautious though, the new shut-down was only a few hours old when they went to press. But they all report total blackout since three Saturday. They can't contact their correspondents anywhere so they're assuming it's worldwide. The airport journalists had to rush in by taxi (subway halted because no kind of intercom), to say that all planes are grounded and none were landing, and all those landing at the time of the cut-off had a dangerous time of it, one crashed, no survivors. No intercomputer links working.
They make it all sound very dramatic indeed. No one had imagined quite that during the time Verbivore was only partial and intermittent, though various scare-scenarios were written up. You'd have thought they would have organised contingency plans, but no, everyone made do with occasional cuts. Most of the pages in the Sundays are prepared well in advance, so they're still fat, but they had to redo the main news pages and some have brought out these scare-scenarios. I suppose we'll get nothing but those now, since they're bereft of news, so they'll fill their space with speculations, with verbal reports from local journalists who've managed to reach their offices as well as members of the public who'll be hammering to be allowed in and tell their tale or get explanations and reassurances.
It's amazing that the papers could be distributed at all. By van here in London, yes, but are the intercity and suburban trains working? I assume trains need intercom just like the subway. There's going to be a rush on buses and cars and petrol and a total clogging of the road network. And paralysis of every activity that depends on radio-communication, on the telephone and on computer-networks. All activities need constant information, in other words travel, trade, medicine, education, sport, games, politics, research, wars, defence watchfulness, diplomacy, the lot: war and peace.
We'll have to depend on personal contact. And on our imaginations.

[Verbivore, Brooke-Rose, C.]