Backhoe tales, part 37:
There is an armor clad (Cold War era) underground AT&T trans continental telephone cable that traverses the land our house is built on. It is reported to be now abandoned, as I'm told most of those signals are now on the satellites. When we dug our sewer and water lines, we wanted to avoid this cable, but couldn't get the Call Before You Dig folks to show any interest. I finally called up and said in jest: "There's a funny looking 10" armor clad cable wrapped around my backhoe bucket, what should I do now?" That got a stir out of 'em, and an old timer called me a few minutes later. We talked it over, and he did confirm the old rumors we locals had heard that the Department of Defense was one of the primary subscribers to that AT&T bundle of cable. To extrapolate that a bit, these cables that are marked with the 4 or 5 foot tall posts with the orange signs on top are very likely part of the original Department of Defense 'internet," that linked various physicists and DOD folk together if "The Big Ones" ever got dropped on us, so as to maintain communications after the blast's RF flash wiped out all the above ground electronic devices.
For you whippersnappers out there - here in the US, we used to have nuclear bomb response drills in grade school. They told us to get under the desks when the bombs started falling.
(Yeah - that would do a lot of good considering I live in the state that's home to Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, Sikorsky Helicopter, Electric Boatyard, and a US Navy Doomsday Nuclear Sub base and active nuclear power plant.
We just might be on the nuke target list. When they dug us out a thousand years later, they would believe the youngins were kept in little wooden pens. )
