Editorials

An update on the bombing / being in Nashville

Bombing suspect was evidently a suicide bomber, but took nobody else directly with him. How many people were injured or killed due to 911 services being down from Georgia to Kentucky, nobody knows at the moment.

TL;DR – blog by a native Nashville native born 3.5 miles from the bomb site.

The bomber planned for quite a while to do this, you don’t get that much explosive materials without being on the radar without a long long plan. Packed it in an RV, got a loudspeaker, drove to the AT&T central hub – not to be confused with the AT&T building, not to be confused with the industrial district, not to be confused with being away from tourist area – this was downtown Nashville, 800 feet off of Broadway, a little more food and a little less bar but still tourist area.

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A network map and that AT&T sign pretty much screw all the “nobody should know what that place is” narrative that keeps going around. I knew, anyone who worked at an ISP knew, anyone who worked phones knew, anyone who… nevermind.

At 1:30am CST or so he got the RV parked, and then in the morning gunshots either rang out or played on the RV’s speaker waking people up (across the street has some apartments above historic buildings,) at 5:30am the RV began announcing that it had a bomb and gave people and police enough time to evacuate.

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This was not bombed, the building with the hub is 500 feet away, or down a block, over a block.

The thing evidently played the song Downtown a few times, and then a minute or two after countdown ended it exploded. Three were injured, only one seems kind of serious (hearing loss,) a building across the street lost the entire front of it, glass blew out , national reporting crews came in and set up shop across the river saying the damage didn’t look so bad (they were looking at first ave.)

Internet and phones continued to work until about 11am. From what I’ve read in outage reporting gas to the generators got cut, battery backups drained, water pipes were broken, multiple fires, 3 feet of water in the basement, electric service lines physically missing, and it chugged on. Until fuel ran out or they shut it down because of the fires/water. That part I don’t know.

And then 911 services, phones, cell went down. AT&T’s backup location did not kick on. It never kicked on as far as I know, which leads one to wonder if there actually is a functioning plan in place for Y’all Qaida attacks in the future.


Nashville got hit by a Tornado 5-8 blocks north of here March 3, the pandemic shutdowns followed (while TN is the laughing stock of the world for Covid infections, Nashville fared pretty well until TN became #1 and it overwhelmed local abilities to stop it since people just went 4 miles south to get it,) in early May there were 70+mph winds knocking out more power than the tornado did, later in May the George Floyd demonstrations turned into arson and looting caused primarily by some white guys.

Schools opened for a bit after being virtual for a few months. They closed again for the last 3-5 weeks. They’re not opening in January with Covid numbers like they are. They supposedly have documented in-school transmission, and when Nashville went from 202 cases to 1000+ in a matter of a couple of weeks that shut that down.

Truancy is at epic levels due to many parents being unable to not work. There’s so many bugs with the setup and processes, connection issues, and wrangling required that it is not possible for many parents unless they’re there playing tech support (me and Kim usually deal with 2-3 things a kid cannot troubleshoot a day during their classes.)


Almost all local Facebook groups have been overrun with people posting that it was a missile based on a screenshot of a phone recording video of a security system. One of the ones I monitor has deleted more “Dominion machine storage” and cut and paste “this is where the election is being stolen” posts than all moderation for the year. The sheer number of new fake accounts attempting to join another group I admin is absurd. Letting them join and turning on post approval leads to about a 5 hour wait and then a post about how the election equipment is in the central hub of AT&T in Nashville for some reason.

Not sure if these are bots at this point or just oddly predictable conspiracy pushers.

Combine with the near daily postings of people hearing it from a friend who heard it from a friend that this vaccine or that one killed people and essentially it’s a nonstop directed wave of self destruction… well, self if these people are actually from here. Who knows? Facebook gives you very very few tools to determine whether or not someone’s where they claim they are.


Yesterday the copycats started. A man in a white box truck blaring warnings to evacuate dropped by a church, then a market, before finally being pulled over in Lebanon, TN and arrested. Story is incomplete except that the driver was booked, has a 500K bond, and there was no bomb.

We’re going to close out 2020 and advance into 2020b on Friday. Covid wave 4 will probably start showing its face in the US on the second or third of 2020b, and the hospitals will continue to fill up until they can fill no more. TN has 436 ventilators in use at the moment, 3060 people in the hospital, 767 ICU beds taken up. Plenty more space left but staff is at extremes.

Nashville had a plan for Covid, it was working, then the state fell. The governor refused to issue mask mandates and is running the party lines. The mayor of Nashville pretty much parked the city in Phase 3 and realized that grabbing a bigger bucket was not going to help the viral Tsunami was was incoming as we’re next to multiple counties that do not have mandates. It was either shut it all down or move ahead and try to manage.


It’s interesting. 2020 has made me realize there’s a lot more planning that needs to happen. So that’s my plan for 2020b, see if I can’t plan for some of the absurdity better than I planned for this.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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