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In the 1980s I worked for New England Telephone. A group of us visited a nearby underground switching center for AT&T's Long Lines -- the backbone that carried interstate calls into, out of, and through the northeast. The center was deep underground, intended to survive a nuclear war.
The person on duty had also been on duty 20 years earlier. Back then the switching systems were electro-mechanical, and the relays clicked as they counted off and snapped into place. As he told it, he was sitting at his desk doing routine work while there was a steady, but quiet, background of calls going through.
Suddenly, the call volume grew and the relays went faster and faster, louder and louder. The first bank went to capacity and transferred to the second bank, then the third ... The relays got louder and louder, marching from bank to bank ... Then, the system busied out and went down. It was silent. He assumed it was war. It was the assassination.
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