Yikes: Colonial Pipeline Hack Literally Under Our Feet (Updated With Very 1970s Rationing Vibes)

You know how the Colonial Pipeline was hacked with ransomware demands, leading the pipeline to shut down and spike gas prices across the East Coast? Yeah, that was awesome, except for the “spike gas prices” part, and maybe for the part where the tubes (not the Internet tubes that lawmakers like to talk about, but the literal ones that carry noxious chemicals underground) literally run through our plastic fantastic planned community.

Here’s the latest from our favorite correspondent, the Peasant From Less Sought After South Reston:

Very, very exciting news on the gas front (and we don’t mean from having overindulged ourselves on Bush’s Baked Beans!).  As I’m sure you’ve seen, our governor has now declared a gen-u-ine EMERGENCY because of the looming gas shortages that bring back to the OK Baby Boomer generation such as yours truly fond memories of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises that put our Plymouth Satellites and Ford Galaxies in mortal danger.

Second, we are shocked – shocked – to sadly report that price gouging is already going on here in our mini-utopia.  The Peasant, being a crafty salt of the earth bumpkin and having once lived in an AOC-style socialist paradise where one bought things on the spot because they would be gone 30 minutes later, filled up his oxcart Saturday evening at the South Lakes Sunoco at $2.99 a gallon. Mrs. Peasant filled up her turbo-charged oxcart on Sunday at the same price.  Sadly, we regret to inform you that today the price has miraculously risen by 30 cents/10 percent to $3.29 a gallon.

This fancy "web site" also shows prices rising around the region, and we've heard that many area gas stations have intermittently run out of gas over the last day or so.

Let's just hope that people here are being smarter than folks in (checks notes but doesn't need to) Florida, as shown in this cellular telephone photo making the rounds:

More from the Peasant:

We are left to wonder if some AP Chemistry students at South Lakes can, a la the Manhattan Project or Operation Warp Speed, construct a revolutionary bio-digester that turns Carl Sagan-esque billions and billions of cicadas into pure bio fuel, with the added benefit of Elon Musk now being free to concentrate on playing a real life Matt Damon and living on Mars.

No truth to the rumor that the ransomware was delivered to the pipeline servers by a random technician clicking on one of the “Who’s Your Baby’s Daddy” ads on this filthy “web log.” In conclusion, maybe don’t click on anything that might turn some switches controlling the tubes under our communal gardening plots and whatnot and turn Reston into a leaking miasma of earth-toned smoke, atmospherically speaking, the end.

Update: The Peasant sent us some exciting digital telephone photos of long lines for gas this afternoon at South Lakes Village Center, where gas is now an affordable $3.29 per gallon:

Long gas lines, rising prices, and some strange flu? It's not just the sunken living rooms that are making it feel like the 70s all over again, the end.