Russia Escalates Infrastructure War Against Ukraine: In a systematic campaign, massive nationwide missile strikes destroyed Ukraine's energy infrastructure, leaving most of the country without electricity and causing "critical" damage to power facilities.
Polish Missile Explosion Creates NATO Crisis: A missile explosion in a Polish village killed two people, creating a potential NATO Article 5 crisis. The missile was later identified as Ukrainian, fired in defense against a Russian barrage, highlighting the risk of spillover.
Iranian Protests Continue Amid Brutal Crackdown: The nationwide protests entered their second month, with the government cracking down on dissent and imposing new restrictions on women's freedoms.
UK Supreme Court Denies Scottish Independence Referendum: The court unanimously denied Scotland's right to hold a new independence referendum without UK government approval, a major blow to the Scottish independence movement.
G20 Summit Proceeds Without Putin: The European Parliament designated Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism as world leaders met in Bali, with Putin notably absent.
November 2022 was the month the war in Ukraine mutated from a war on territory to a war on systems. The signal was one of deliberate, systemic degradation—a targeted campaign to short-circuit the networks that sustain modern life. The widespread blackouts were not collateral damage; they were the primary objective.
The glitch for this era is this "Failing Grid." It is the experience of watching a stable, interconnected network being attacked until its nodes flicker and die, plunging the system into a cascading failure.
This artifact simulates that energy grid under attack. The network of nodes represents a national power system. Periodically, a wave of missile strikes—the ghost in this machine—assaults the grid, knocking nodes offline. Your cursor is a point of instability. As you move it over the fragile connections, you cause them to spark and short-circuit, revealing the inherent vulnerability of the system. It is a reflection of a moment when the lights began to go out, one by one.