Waltzing with the Apocalypse

Due apologies for the uncharacteristically unabstract subject. Spending a day in the dark has a way to ground you.

Lisbon, 28 April 2025, 12PM.

I was meant to have lunch with a friend at 12:30, local time. He called me at 12:00. Reception was terrible. Finally I could hear him: “Cyberattack… Electricity down… Generators… 4 hours… No water”.

I took my gf by the hand and rushed to the car. I explained what was happening.

At this point I should tell you gf is from the Baltic states. Baltic states share a border with Russia. They live in constant fear of Russia. The USSR is, of course, “old history” and therefore “not real”. But it is very real to them. Displacements of Russian population throughout former URSS satellite states means that to this day they all have, effectively, “Russia parties”, voted for by the ethnic Russians living in these states.

When Russia invaded Ukraine… This is a joke to us. Physical distance, like temporal distance, has a way to make things “not real”. The only thing the Ukraine war changed in Portugal is that we started to see top-end cars with Ukrainian license plates—those that were wealthy and well-connected enough to leave started driving the opposite direction from Russia until they found the sea and couldn’t drive anymore, settling in Portugal. The only other thing that changed is variations of how things are “bombing” like in Ukraine. (In Portuguese to bomb [“bombar”] can be used to mean being very successful, like something going viral is “a bombar”)

This to say: it’s not real to us. But it’s real to them. Gf has frequently had nightmares about the war, everyone in Baltic states lives in terror of being the next ones invaded.

With this background I took what my friend said very seriously. I remember all too well being online in early January 2020 when things seemed very bad, deterministically so, while people irl around me repeated “it’s just a flu” like an incantation. Look, I get the logic. It was happening in China. China = Far = Not real. But I spent 3 years locked inside the house.

And so, to get back, I took gf by the hand and rushed to the car. I called my best friend and I was telling him what was happening as communication dropped.

I drove to my parents as that was the natural Schelling point, and we didn’t have communications.

As soon as I got there I debriefed with my mom. Like in early Covid, she didn’t know whether to take it seriously—I need to remind you we knew nothing at this point in time. We just didn’t have electricity or network signal. Immediately I realised banking systems would have to be down too and cash was king. Very quickly priorities shifted: water, non-perishable food, toilet paper. My mom helped: candles, battery-powered radios(!), matches.

Gf and I walked to the local grocery store—I really didn’t want to spend the three-quarters fuel left in the car, not knowing if or when I might need it.

The area where my parents live is filled with embassies. Portugal is having a big problem right now where lots of people are making money legalising people that really shouldn’t be legalised. Formerly it was a great neighbourhood. As I walked to the grocery store I saw 4 fighting-age men of unknown but certainly non-Portuguese descent playing loud music and smoking weed in the park where I used to play with my grandparents as a child. Might I remind you it was midday.

Now, my racism usually caps out at a normal level. I understand that cooperation really matters, that it is easier to cooperate with agents you can model, that the more similar to you an agent is the easier it is to model them.

At this moment I became a hyper-racist. I was doing math in my head: these houses are all populated by wealthy old people. They can’t physically defend themselves. They’re all ground-level too, and gun-ownership is forbidden. There’s no way to communicate with the police or emergency services. I’m certainly not the first one to realise this.

I had seen how fast social order started to break down in COVID, and I had seen a bunch of movies implying the same thing about a situation without water/comms/food/electricity too.

(You might think I’m falling victim to the “Disney Bias” I often decry whereas people parse reality through fiction but remember that, to a first approximation, the only reason the UK managed to secure sufficient vaccine doses during Covid is because their Health Minister happened to have watch the film Contagion. Fiction is a fine prior if you can update quickly.)

My friend had said the water supply would stop in 4 hours. Maybe people can hold out for one day. Maybe two. But three? Even if the probability of something popping off was low the down-side risk was big enough for my mind to be playing through all scenarios. So, yea, I temporarily (?) became hyper-racist.

I blasted past them and made my way to the grocery store. There was already a huge line. And I thought we were early. People were not allowed to enter until the people inside had left. Everything took ages because the cashier had to go see the price of each item individually, using their phone’s flashlight. Needed to write down the prices in a piece of paper and then use the cellphone’s calculator to add them up.

A few people quit: either because they didn’t have cash on them or because they didn’t want to wait. Everyone new joining the queue expressed bemused exasperation. Some people took too much: one person taking six 6 liters bottles of water.

Now, I can’t really blame them. It’s a defect-defect equilibrium. Again, we had no idea what was going on. There were no comms. Cyber-attack was a live option. You don’t want to be the asshole that takes water away from others, but do you wanna be the asshole that didn’t bring enough water for your family?

As I said, social order breaks quickly. An example: there were one or two women with babies in line. I think legally, never mind socially or morally, you have to give them priority. Old people and disabled people too. No one did.

We got what we could: some water, toilet paper, some cans of tuna, a lighter. Couldn’t get coal or candles: the lady in front of me took the last pack, 100 or so candles. Very kindly she offered me one. I am now her champion.

And I mean that: if I ever see that lady, in any situation, and she needs help, I’ll be there for her. Things shift really quickly: we had no light, no electricity, no internet, no communications. The amount of money you had in the bank immediately meant nothing: all that mattered was how much cash you had in your pocket and what physical goods you had. The grocery store across the street—all other stores and restaurants were closed down. Money meant nothing, physical goods meant everything. At that moment, gifting candles was like gifting gold.

So, thank you, lady. If you ever need me.

We took the water, toilet paper, tuna, lighter, and candles back to my parents. In my mind I was calculating: how many are we with my siblings, how many days should we ration food and water for, we need to eat what’s in the fridge and perishable first and then go through the freezer and—we opened the door and my brother and my father were sipping whisky by the porch.

“Então, já estão a açambarcar?”, my brother quipped, laughing. Basically chiding us for hoarding.

Now, you must know something about me. The word “açambarcar” is a very triggering word for me. I have an ear for language that few people share. I can tell someone was hanging out with a new person—or even talking to an AI—by hearing them say a word I haven’t heard them say before. I can’t tell all the words they’ve used with me before, of course. But if they use a new word, I will know.

And so when, during Covid, I started seeing everyone saying “açambarcar”, usually with a negative connotation, my radar triggered.

Lo and behold:

Google Trends - Portugal - 2004-Present - “açambarcar”

That insane spike from 0 to 100 is March 2020.

Contrast that with (apologies):

Google Trends - Worldwide - 2004-Present - “gooning”

The former (“açambarcar”) is what the engineered spread of a word looks like. The latter is what natural adoption of a new coinage looks like. Both of these look different from reappropriation of a common word.

Google Trends - US - 2004-Present - “brat”

Where you see a big spike that then goes away, the same way you saw with “açambarcar”.

Anyways—apologies. I fell into my old habits of abstraction and analysis. It happens when I’m triggered.

And triggered I was for while I love the intent of the engineering behind the word, while I empathize with the need to socially shame people who are hoarding because it doesn’t scale, while I love the philosophical-linguistic engineering genius of shifting the negative connotation inside a word so its value claim is implicit and not something explicit that can be argued—wait. I’m in analysis mode again, am I not? Well, suffice to say: I was pissed.

Maybe it was a partial flashback to COVID. COVID was painful. I know it was for everyone, in a kaleidoscopal manner. The shape of my pain was the pain of being early, being gaslit, spending 3 years inside the house, and there being no reckoning. No understanding, no change.

Now if I called something “just a flu” and then I was 3 years locked at home I would go through a transvaluation of all values that would make Nietzsche blush. But people aren’t like me. They’ll ambiently gaslight you—not with ill-intent, just because they need to keep their own reality stable—be terribly wrong, and then go back to business as usual.

Sorry again, trying to get my bearings, too long. Anyways, I was pissed, I shouted a bit at my brother saying this was COVID all over again and, thankfully, he “got it”. He “turned on”, “locked in”, whatever you wanna call it. He left my parents and went to knock at a friend's house to coordinate live, the only way we now could.

I was hungry but incredibly “locked-in” too. I think I excel in adversarial sensemaking. My mother reminded me the car has a radio so I went there to try to get news. Not much was happening. Something about the airport. The PM gave an address saying whatever happened started with Spain. That he couldn’t say whether or not it was a cyberattack.

Gf was understandably nervous. But I reasoned: I’d never do an attack against a NATO country that wasn’t an all out attack. It was not 3PM or so and so people were having time to get groceries, to adapt, to orient. If I were attacking a NATO country I’d do everything at once: comms, networks, kinetic, everything. I told her so. We’re still alive, so it wasn’t an attack. Was I really reasoning or trying to keep her (us) calm? Hard to say.

He had cold leftovers for lunch. Couldn’t really warm them up. Apparently people had been filling bathtubs with water. Sounds smart if supply was gonna be cut.

It was incredibly hot and so we couldn’t really be outside. We went to take a nap, to try to rest, to have more energy to think and adapt later.

Of course it didn’t work. Neither of us fell asleep. My mind was still producing—as it usually does at rest, tweets. I wrote them down on a paper sheet to keep the pica fed.

Notebook - Lisbon - 2025 - pica

We went back to my parents to meet my father and walk the dogs. Gf was not wearing shoes because she’s a hippy and it “helped her ground”. I begged her to wear shoes outside the house. I shared a quote I love about how people are resilient but societies are fragile and a model where social rules all live in a continuum: when things break down they break down fast and non-linearly: it starts with not wearing shoes and it ends with casual murder. I know it seems like “an exaggeration” but I really, really don’t think I’m wrong.

Speaking of, I forgot to say: when we were leaving the grocery store a fight was starting. Again, this is a nice neighborhood, filled with embassies. But some lady thought another lady was trying to violate the queue and you could feel everyone get tense. We got out as it was happening but I can extrapolate a trendline.

Anyways, father, dogs. We took the dogs for a walk. They needed it. (We needed it?) I wanted to keep appearances, to keep “normalcy” as much as possible. Deliberately performed normalcy. Everyone is looking sideways to sync their behavior to everyone else. “Should I panic? Should I be calm?” Everyone becomes terribly suspicious and any difference is hyper-magnified: not looking the same, not speaking the same language, not following the same social customs.

I remember what I had heard on the radio: the airport closed and they threw people out into the sun. They couldn’t get out of there because they couldn’t call Ubers. Airport workers came out to offer waters to children and elderly people and fights broke down because non-children non-elderly people wanted water too. As predicted.

Anyways, we walked and walked and nearly everything was closed. All big stores were. There was a tiny corner café that was open. People outside were drinking copious amounts of beer. Inside it was incredibly hot, the shelfs half empty, the pastries warm. 100% full-on Cuba vibes. (I know, I’ve been.)

We kept walking and found a cultural center where some shops were closed, but with lights on. Apparently they had a generator. The Wi-Fi network wasn’t working.

We walked and walked until we finally turned back. I think it actually wasn’t more than 2 kilometers but with the scorching heat and knowing your two feet are all you have suddenly everything becomes hyper-local.

We went back and I got to the car once more. I was obsessed with the radio. Now there were estimates that power might be back within the next 6 hours. It was explained that the network had to turn off to avoid cascading failures and had to be turned on piece-meal and slowwwwwly. No indications as to why it had happened yet, but these seemed like really good news.

We went back to my parents and prepared dinner by candlelight. It was really dark outside. A kind of darkness I’ve never seen in the city. Everything changes in the dark.

“Only children are afraid of the dark”. And yet everyone BOLTS to the switch as soon as the power goes out. Once I was on a cave tour and the tour guide got us all to turn our headlights off. I kid you not: after one second of being enveloped by the terribly thick darkness a full-grown woman started screeching, panting.

Darkness is strange and makes everything it touches strange too.

We ate some burgers and potatoes we did on the grill with the coal and matches we had. It was a great meal actually, lol, and I was getting super sleepy. We heard some synchronized cries of joy. I took my phone out: network was back. I could talk to my siblings: they were all okay.

Gf had wanted to go for a night drive before. I thought it was insanely dangerous: we can’t see further than our headlights and literally all stop lights are off. But now that it seemed like light was coming back we went for a night walk to see if we could still enjoy the darkness. It felt good when you know it’ll soon be over. Even started to miss it.

We strolled. A restaurant TV was playing a soccer game—maybe a repetition? People gathered around the electric light: “It’s so good to see TV again”.

We got back home and went to bed with a mix of relief and grief. Gf—remember she’s a hippy—wanted to test whether we’d sleep better with all the networks turned off. I just knew the next day would be, and had to be “business as usual”. But, as with COVID, nothing about what happened was usual.