This world is absurd...

Many of you may know by now, or you may not. The explosion in Nashville, TN this morning. The chain of events is very odd, IMO, with the eerie audible warning and countdown and all. The fact that the warning was given, the fact that the pandemic and Christmas combined means little to no people will be present - even in downtown Nashville. It occurred outside of an AT&T building, which houses many of their services such as wireless, home internet and TV. The explosion was supposedly felt up to 40 miles away.

I live rather close, about 20 miles, from where the explosion occurred. We were up with the kiddos at 5:15 this morning, and we were opening gifts at the time the explosion occurred (6-something this morning). I don't recall hearing or feeling anything here at home, though I may have simply been enjoying Christmas too much to notice.

Unfortunately, we use AT&T for our cell phone service, home internet and TV - so they're all down at the moment. That Nashville facility wasn't destroyed, but the damage caused by the blast means no power, thus AT&T is scrambling to restore services as soon as possible. I'm not upset at all with them, I can only imagine the level of hell they're currently traversing in order to restore service.

The worst part, however, is that 9-1-1 emergency service phone lines are down all over the place (they use AT&T). That's very scary, because medical emergencies are sure to arise somewhere in the affected areas. There are lists of local emergency numbers to call, but that's not usually something we have saved, nor is it quite as efficient as dialing "911".

The world can be quite sad at times. I won't let myself get down about it, but it's still disgusting to think that people do these things. I pass no judgement, because I have no idea what's going on in their lives. I don't even want to know. I just wish the world were a bit less chaotic at times, primarily because my children have to witness these things. But hey, that's just a fact of life, huh?

What a day! That part is disheartening, but the flip side is that we had a wonderful Christmas. The kids are very happy; spoiled, even. We absolutely enjoyed the time together today. The lady and I are both off work for the rest of the year, returning one day the week after the new year begins.

Hope you all are doing well. Are you also affected by the AT&T outage? Fiancee's mum gave us a backup phone with her plan (different provider). I'm currently using it as a wifi hotspot from my own phone so I can keep up with the latest news.

Cuchculan said:

Only heard about it on the news late last night. ( Irish time ) Warnings can be given out by bombers to make sure there is nobody hurt. Which means they are not trying to kill people. More want to hit a certain structure. could be they had some bad dealings with this AT&T crowd. Shall we call them a bit mentally unbalanced. But they also want the publicity. You can tell me more. But from what I heard it was a van? Person in the van given regular warnings that there was a bomb in the van. Thus not wanting to hurt anybody. More wanting to cause damage to the AT&T building. Crazy world indeed. I do think they got the police to the scene with reports of gunshots been heard. Thus have the police show up and stop people moving around. More looking for a shooter. But then they heard the message about the bomb too. Whacky.

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Yes, the whole thing is whacky. Haha. It was an RV (motorhome) that exploded. Extremely odd, as it is, for an RV to be parked at the location it was in.

Aries said:

Sounds like a guy wanted to kill himself in a spectacular way and take out an AT&T. I wonder if he's one of the people who worry about 5G. I wonder where he got the explosives. They supposedly made it harder to get large amounts of Ammonium nitrate.

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Lots of developments since Christmas day. They confirmed, via DNA, that the human remains found at the scene did indeed belong to the "person of interest". No motive is known for certain, and I suspect it may never be known. But yes, according to some who knew him, there are signs that he was "paranoid about 5G spying on American citizens."

He registered an alarms and electronics company in the early nineties ('93-'98), building security systems. He was also an "IT guy". He apparently had an explosives permit in the nineties as well. So it sounds like he had plenty of know-how for building the explosives ultimately used in Friday's explosion.

Cuchculan said:

Speaking of 5G. When this pandemic began some people in the UK blamed the virus on 5G and burned down phone masts. For a long time they had been hearing that 5G would make a lot of people sick. Normally conspiracy stuff. 5G was rolled out in the UK and as it happens people began to get sick. That was the virus though. But the timing was perfect. Ignoring talk of a pandemic, they began blaming everything on 5G. Had police protecting phone masts. First week there was two burned down. Fecken idiots.

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Wow, that's ridiculous! I hadn't heard about the phone masts being destroyed, but I've been aware of the 5G paranoia and conspiracy theories since they started circulating. Bunch of garbage, as usual.

Cuchculan said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-52164358

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That's crazy! Surprised I hadn't heard of that already, because I've read a lot of stories about people reacting ridiculous because of 5G. Haha.

The Worried Well said:

Thank goodness law enforcement was able to warn so many people and avoid much more injury. Crazy world indeed. It's sad that a 1960's favorite of mine (Petula Clark) was brought back to the public eye due to the assailant playing "Downtown" mixed into the warning voice.

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I wasn't familiar with the song until an article mentioned it had been played through the PA system. When I listened to the song, it gave me chills thinking about that playing in the same way the warning did (which I saw the video of).