Blackout
Sarna News
Known alternately as Gray Monday, the Blackout saw unknown perpetrators disable 75-80 percent of the Hyperpulse Generator network in simultaneous attacks and acts of sabotage, effectively crippling interstellar communications.
Contents
Overview
On Sunday, 7 August 3132 many HPG stations in both the Inner Sphere and Clan Occupation Zones were taken down by what appeared to be some sort of system-virus which caused the HPG core to overload and burn itself out with little collateral damage. But despite the considerable differences between Clan and ComStar HPG protocols and years spent by ComStar's programmers trawling through centuries of kludged-together code updates and patches found nothing, and even newly manufactured cores showed the exact same symptoms before burning out themselves. A few HPG stations didn't burn out but suffered different and sometimes bizarre failures which also discount a virus being the cause, stations that could transmit but not receive and others stuck in hyperspatial loops of transmitting messages only to receive them right back.[1]
A number of stations appeared to be immune to whatever effected the rest, but whoever triggered the Blackout accounted for these too by launching a combination of internal attacks of sabotage and swift and efficient military strikes to knock them out. With the saboteurs either escaping or dying before interrogation, and the surprise of the military assaults, nobody was able to prevent the attacks or learn who was behind the Blackout. The sole piece of identifying information was a strange insignia worn by some of the attackers; a snake coiled around a sword and set against a blood-red disk.[1]
As a result, interstellar communications by and large collapsed, and was reduced to relaying messages via JumpShip in "pony express"-style. The communications blackout had widespread and far reaching ramifications, plunging the Inner Sphere into chaos. Civil unrest grew when it became apparent that the Blackout would not be quick or easy to fix. ComStar, whose primary reason for existence was the operation and maintenance of the HPG network threw everything and everything at the problem, but save for briefly restoring the HPG on Wyatt in 3135, nothing has worked with the organisation growing ever closer to irrelevancy, bankruptcy and total collapse.
It has been speculated that the appellation "Gray Monday" for a date that is actually a Sunday comes from the fact that the full impact of the event was not felt until the following day (Monday, 8 August 3132).
Notes
- In the BattleCorps PDF edition of the novel A Bonfire of Worlds, the date of Gray Monday is given as 1 August (instead of 7 August) which, being a Monday, may originally have been the correct date. However, according to the Line Developer, the date is corrected to 7 August in a proof of the novel which is in line with virtually all Dark Age era publications (save one novel by Blaine Pardoe)and a story published in BattleTech: 25 Years of Art & Fiction.
References
- Official Line Developer ruling on the correct date, including explanation on why a Sunday would be called "Gray Monday".