September 22, 2025 • 18 mins
A dodgy firewall upgrade is reportedly behind an Optus outage that led to their customers across four states last week being unable to access the national emergency service triple-zero line.
It's a story we're hearing more often - that an upgrade has taken out a major Telco or web service, leaving us stranded. But can you actually proof yourself in 2025?
Plus find out why some think the world will end today as end-times event The Rapture is set to hit on 23rd September 2025.
And in headlines today, Officials from the ABC in the US say they have reinstated Jimmy Kimmel and his late night show: the federal government has been accused of "failing Australians" by not implementing a Triple 0 custodian before the recent Optus outage; Investigators locked in a four-week manhunt for alleged police killer Dezi Freeman could soon face the prospect of having to "draw a line in the sand" as resource restraints and costs pile up; Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has been dumped as patron from several children’s charities over an email she sent to Jeffrey Epstein
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CREDITS
Hosts: Claire Murphy
Guest Host: Ilaria Brophy
Guest: Trevor Long & Dr Anna Halafoff
Audio Producer: Lu Hill
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma
MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie. A dodgy firewall
upgrade is reportedly behind an Opt to S outage that
led to their customers across four states last week being
(00:33):
unable to access emergency services on Triple O. It's a
story we're hearing more often that an upgrade has taken
out a major telco or web service, leaving a strandd
But can you actually outage proof yourself in twenty twenty five,
That's the question we're asking today and later. Americans think
that the rapture is coming. Alaria Brophy finds out what's
(00:53):
led to the end of days again. But before we
get into that, here's the latest from the Quickie newsroom. Tuesday,
September twenty three, officials from ABC in the US say
they have now reinstated Jimmy Kimmel and his late night show.
In a statement, the network wrote, We've spent the last
day's having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations,
we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.
(01:16):
They had suspended him indefinitely after Kimmel made comments about
the assassination of right wing activist Charlie Kirk, saying the
magagang was desperately trying to characterize the kid who allegedly
murdered Kirk as anything other than one of their own.
The suspension comes after the Trump administration has followed through
on threats to hold media companies accountable for commentary against
the President. Trump himself settling court cases against both the
(01:39):
ABC and CBS over their coverage. He's also filed lawsuits
against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times
while Congress stripped funding from networks PBS and NPR. The
federal government has been accused of failing Australians by not
implementing a triple O custodian before the recent OPTAs outage.
Thursday's service interruption was the second time in two years
(02:01):
that an optust network issue meant Australians couldn't access the
emergency line. After the twenty twenty three outage, a review
recommended the government implement to triple zero custodian with oversight
and responsibility for the emergency network, including monitoring its end
to end performance. Communications Minister Annaka Wells considered that while
the role has been established, it was not yet fully implemented,
(02:24):
explaining that giving the custodian power requires a legal change
which the government has not yet legislated. Opposition Communication spokesperson
Melissa Macintosh noted the government had more than eighteen months
to implement the recommendations, saying it's beyond frustrating that it's
taken another triple zero network outage to find out those
urgent recommendations have not been implemented in full. Investigators locked
(02:47):
in a four week manhunt for alleged police killer Desi
Freeman could soon face the prospect of having to draw
a line in the sand as resource restraints and costs
pile up. Freeman allegedly fatally shot Neil Thompson and Vadim
de vaud Hottat at Poorpunker on August twenty six. The
fifty six year old has been on the run ever since,
fleeing into dense bushland. About four hundred and fifty per
(03:09):
police personnel have been scouring harsh and challenging bushland caves,
mine shafts, huts and properties by air and land in
the hope of finding the alleged culprit. But as the
manhunt continues with yet no confirmed sightings of the trained
bush survivalist, police must balance the search with budgetary constraints.
Police resourcing for travel, accommodation and meals for officers redirected
(03:30):
from other teams to Poorpunker, and the cost of operating
equipment has put a huge dent in the force's bottom line.
Retired Victorian Police detective Senior Sergeant Charlie Bazina told AAP
that costs are well within the hundreds of thousands of dollars,
if not by the time this is completed into the millions.
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has been dumped as
(03:51):
patron from several children's charities over an email she's sent
to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. In the correspondence, the Duchess
was explaining to Epstein that she'd been forced to give
an interview being critical of him. In order to protect
her career as a children's book author and philanthropist, she'd
promise never to have anything to do with Epstein. Ever
again calling alone she'd taken from him a gigantic error
(04:13):
of judgment. However, in the email, she said that she
considered Epstein a steadfast, generous and supreme friend. Epstein had
long been linked to Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson's ex husband,
who she still lives with in a home on the
royal estate. Andrew settled a civil lawsuit against one of
Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giffrey, and was stood down from royal duties.
(04:34):
That's what's happening in the world today.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Next.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Optus failures have put ossies at risk, But is there
anything we can do to avoid being at the mercy
of our tech? On Thursday, the grandmother of an eight
week old baby boy called Tripolo when she found him
not breathing. The call failed, so she tried again. When
(04:58):
it still didn't go through, she grabbed another phone in
the house that wasn't on the same network as hers,
and finally she connected. While it's since been decided that
the passing of that little boy was not a direct
result of that call not connecting, there were four other
people whose lives ended that day where an Optus outage
was literally the difference between life and death. OPTA CEO
(05:20):
Stephen Rule said the outage was caused by established processes
not being followed, that they were speaking to the individuals involved,
that the full technical details of the network failures were
still being investigated. He said in the short term, Optus
would be halting any further changes to the network system
until they have a better understanding of what happened. But
of course this isn't the first outage to have a
(05:41):
major impact on Australians. It's not even Optuses first. Back
in twenty twenty three, all of their Internet, mobile and
fixed services went down directly affecting more than ten million
people and four hundred thousand businesses. The crowd strike outage
in July twenty twenty four caused Windows systems to crash,
affecting banks, airlines, government services, supermarkets, the postal service and
(06:04):
many others. In that instance, we saw people abandoning their
shopping trolleys of the checkout as the greens blanked out
with an error message. So is there anything we can
do to try and ensure we're covered when something like
this happens. Do we just go back to having a
landline always keeping cash on hand? Technology journalist and host
of the Two Guys Talking Tech podcast, Trevor Loong has
(06:25):
some tips for that. So Trevor, first up, I think
I would like to address why these outages happen. We
seem to be told every time that it's due to
an upgrade that's gone wrong. Why is that?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Because things go wrong? I mean it's technology. Unfortunately, things
go wrong. The bizarre thing for Optice is their major
network outage in twenty twenty three was essentially very similar.
Was a upgrade to some hardware. In that case, it
was routers, which are things that connect all the Internet together.
In this case it was what they call a firewall,
which is a thing that kind of protects different parts
(06:57):
of the network, but they're essentially the same. They did
an update and it caused this issue. Now, an update
might be because they've got a new piece of equipment
equipment pages and you need to put new ones in.
It might be because they did a software update on it,
just like we all do software updates on our phones
and computers. The issue is that when they did the update,
they did some tests. It all looked okay, but they
(07:18):
didn't check triple zero and as the CEO confirmed on
the weekend. The issue was caused by normal processes not
being followed. So someone made this error and that's something
they're going to have to live with.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, can we talk about how we outage proof ourselves,
because the only thing I can see that would have
been helpful for those people who tried to call Triplo
and couldn't connect is either having another phone in the
house on a different network or having a landline. Is
that the only way we could have gone about protecting
ourselves from not being able to reach emergency services in
(07:50):
that instance.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's a good observation, but I think if you're worried
about this kind of thing, that you absolutely could broadly
outage proof yourself. Now, the example I'll give you is
when the Optus network outage happened in twenty twenty three.
I knew about that at four am, and it was
impossible to call anyone an Optis why because they were
all on Optus. In fact, none of the OPTS team
could communicate because they were all an Optis. Today, every
(08:14):
representative at management levels of all the telcos have multiple
SIM cards in their phones. So a Telstra executive would
have in their phone a votaphone or an Opta SIM card,
because then they've got the backup if anything goes wrong.
We can do that too. Now it sounds like an
expensive thing to say, oh, put another SIM card in
your phone, but two things. Modern smartphones and most people
(08:34):
have got a phone from the last three or four years,
have the capability of a thing called an e SIM,
which is an electronic sim card. You don't need to
physically put a plastic SIM in your phone. You can
just get it off the internet, so that means that
it's technically very easy to do. They can both be
running at the same time, so it can be turned
on and waiting to be used. But critically it doesn't
have to cost a lot of money. You could get
(08:55):
a Cogan Mobile SIM for one hundred and fifty dollars
a year, a little over ten dollars a month. That'll
give you a backup on the Votaphone network if you're
a Teltra customer. If you're an Opti's customer, you could
get a Telstra SIM card from ALDIMobile. They're only available
plastic sims at the moment, but next month they'll be
E sims. Five dollars will get you one year. Now
(09:16):
you can't make a lot of phone calls for that
five dollars, it'll very quickly run out. But you're only
using it for emergencies. So five dollars for three hundred
and sixty five days of back up coverage so that
if something does go wrong you can switch to that line.
I think it's really really handy to think about having
a second SIM on your existing phone and running them
both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Okay, what about a broader outage though, when it comes
to things like remember CrowdStrike that took out almost everything
that was windows, and then we were stuck not being
able to get money out of the bank or not
being able to pay for groceries, Like, how do we
outage proof ourselves from things like that?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Look, at some point you have to accept these things
are going to happen, and another point you need to
err on the side of I'm going to prep for doomsday.
Like in our house, we've got a safe in the garage,
which is where we keep our wedding certificate, our birth certificates,
our passports, and there's a little bit of cash in there. No,
it's not going to pay this month's mortgage if needed.
But if I I need cash. It's there, and I
(10:11):
think in those emergency situations most of the times when
you can't pay for a coffee, well, you know what,
maybe just go half an hour without a coffee and
let's move on. But if something needs to be bought,
paid for, done, whatever, then having cash is not a
bad thing. Technology wise, it's impossible to say to someone
you should have a Windows computer a Mac computer, and
you have two Internet connections. We're getting to the point
of that's a bit of overkill for your average person.
(10:34):
But this is what businesses do. Businesses have a redundancy.
So a big business will have a big Internet connection
to one company, but then if that fails, there'll be
a redundant one that they use. The same with all
of their systems. I think that people that should most
worry about that kind of thing are people that have
medical concerns. You know, my mother in law has pretty
serious medical and health concerns. I want to make sure
(10:54):
that they have a backup SIM card and that they
have back up ways of using the Internet, because they're
the most vulnerable. We need to think about the most
vulnerable among us, and the rest of us should probably
take a breath and just go. You know what, I
had a power outage the other day. I sat in
darkness and I just enjoyed some time with my thoughts.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, we don't do that very often, and all these
days do we? I guess, just finally, where do we
see this going? Do we see outages becoming more frequent?
Or are we getting better at them not becoming more frequent.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It's impossible to really be clear on that because the
fact is, no, you won't ring Telstra today and say hey,
you guys immune from this. They would never say that
because no one predicted this. I just couldn't have predicted this.
It's a tragic outcome of a crazy situation that should
never have happened. People make mistakes, Technology can and does fail,
and it takes time to recover from those failures. Sometimes
(11:45):
it's minutes, sometimes it's ours. We do need to accept
that they will exist in our lives.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Unfortunately, thanks Trevor putting an eSIM on the to do
list immediately. Okay, in case you missed it. Some think
the world is ending today. Alaria Brophy has more.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Raptor coming. That's when other Christians are gonna have just appair.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
If you don't know you well be left behind.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Like my entire childhood is just rapture trauma.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
It's the reason I can't plan ahead. It's the reason
I can't say money.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
The rapture could come.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Just keep calm, take a deep breath, slowly release it
and keep your face looking upwards and pray you're not
on the toilet. Social media is utterly spiraling as apparently
the rapture is coming today. So it's pretty much the
belief that both the living and the dead will be
(12:41):
taken up raptured from earth to meet Jesus in the air.
It all kicked off after a South African pastor shared
his vision on sent Wins TV.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
The rapture is a bonus whether you are radio or not.
Your God took me to see the future, and then
he brought to me in a drone room. I see
Jesus sitting on his tool, and I will give him
very loud and clear. I am coming soon, it says
to me.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
On the twenty third and the twenty fourth, twenty twent
dy five, I will come to tig my church.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
The rapture is often linked with end Times prophecy, the
second coming of Christ, and the Final Judgment, but let's
get an expert to explain. Associate Professor in the Sociology
of Religion at Deacon University, doctor Anna Halifoff breaks it down.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
So, the Rapture is a Christian belief, but it's primarily
held by evangelicals, so it's not really one that's widely
held among the broader Christian population. There's multiple interpretations of
these events, the Rapture, the Last Judgment, the Second Coming,
the apocalypse, and in terms of the timing and the
(14:06):
precise kind of order of these events, there's a lot
of debate and diversity between the different traditions. So in
terms of the Rapture, it's said to be a time
where it precedes a period called the Great Tribulation, which
is a period of great hardship and Christian persecution on earth,
(14:28):
and that period is kind of time wise, relatively short,
and then it seemed to end in Christ's Second Coming,
and then that leading to a period of harmony, prosperity,
and of Christ's reign on Earth.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So depending on whether you're a believer, this could just
be the end of how things have been or actually
the end of the world.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
According to the evangelicals, the only people who get to
go up and be saved from this period of great tribulation.
It's the true believers, so it's people who really put
their faith in Jesus Christ. There's been a lot of
social media on this and some debate around whether it's
only relates to humans or whether it's also like non humans,
(15:16):
including people's beloved pets and animals. So I think, according
to the evangelical view, like if you're in a household
and you believe altogether in this, well maybe your pets
will go with you or maybe not. We don't really know.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And this is not the first time the rapture prophecy
has come and gone without incident, So why do some
of us keep believing?
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I think people keep believing in events such as the
rapture or the other big one was, you know, the
twenty twelve Mayan prophecy of end times, but also another
interpretation of that was the sort of time of renewal.
So I think they're there in scriptures, they're there in
sacred texts, well at least there's kind of inference to them.
(16:02):
So I think as long as we have those texts,
we're going to keep believing in these narratives of end times,
and Buddhists call it, you know, a degenerative age, so
they're across a lot of different religions and spiritual traditions.
But I also think there's something in it about us
humans that we are really drawn always to these kind
(16:24):
of supernatural themes, like the big questions of who we are,
what are we doing here, how do we live a
good life for ourselves but also for others, how do
we address some of the ills that humanity has created
and violence against one another or in the world. We
tend to often go to these kind of spiritual narratives
(16:45):
for those types of answers. But I think at the
moment we are living in a time of what's been
described as poly crisis, where we are confronted with so
many things all at once, horrible wars, horrible violence in
Palestine and in Ukraine, and also environmental crisis closer to home,
(17:07):
just economic crisis that people are having to into your
health crisis. So I think it is a time we're
certainly seeing in the research, like, not just in Australia
but internationally, an uptake of interest in spirituality.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Whether you're a believer or not. The rapture has definitely
become one of the most talked about elements of modern
Christian prophecy, inspiring best selling novels like Left Behind films
and now rapture talk.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
There was this show called The Leftovers. It's like one
of my favorite all time TV shows and it has
a crazy last season actually set in Australia, so definitely
have a look at that one. But even now, like
something like the popularity of the show Wednesday and earlier
forms of things like The Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
(17:59):
these things really appeal to people, and especially I think,
you know, young people and teenagers.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So if you're starting to get some sweaty palms like myself,
how do we prepare for the rap.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
I think regardless of when this raptor is coming or
when these end times am I. The really important thing
that I think all traditions, spiritual traditions and wisdom traditions
point to is to try to be as good a
person as possible, and not just for your own benefit,
but for the benefit of others. You know, so resist
(18:32):
harming others, try to be compassionate, try to be kind,
try to be loving, try to be of benefit to others.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by myself, Claire Murphy
and Alaria Brophy, with audio production by Low Hill
You're listening to a Muma Mia podcast. Mumma Mea acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
is recorded on Hi. I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mumma
MIA's twice daily news podcast, The Quickie. A dodgy firewall
upgrade is reportedly behind an Opt to S outage that
led to their customers across four states last week being
(00:33):
unable to access emergency services on Triple O. It's a
story we're hearing more often that an upgrade has taken
out a major telco or web service, leaving a strandd
But can you actually outage proof yourself in twenty twenty five,
That's the question we're asking today and later. Americans think
that the rapture is coming. Alaria Brophy finds out what's
(00:53):
led to the end of days again. But before we
get into that, here's the latest from the Quickie newsroom. Tuesday,
September twenty three, officials from ABC in the US say
they have now reinstated Jimmy Kimmel and his late night show.
In a statement, the network wrote, We've spent the last
day's having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations,
we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.
(01:16):
They had suspended him indefinitely after Kimmel made comments about
the assassination of right wing activist Charlie Kirk, saying the
magagang was desperately trying to characterize the kid who allegedly
murdered Kirk as anything other than one of their own.
The suspension comes after the Trump administration has followed through
on threats to hold media companies accountable for commentary against
the President. Trump himself settling court cases against both the
(01:39):
ABC and CBS over their coverage. He's also filed lawsuits
against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times
while Congress stripped funding from networks PBS and NPR. The
federal government has been accused of failing Australians by not
implementing a triple O custodian before the recent OPTAs outage.
Thursday's service interruption was the second time in two years
(02:01):
that an optust network issue meant Australians couldn't access the
emergency line. After the twenty twenty three outage, a review
recommended the government implement to triple zero custodian with oversight
and responsibility for the emergency network, including monitoring its end
to end performance. Communications Minister Annaka Wells considered that while
the role has been established, it was not yet fully implemented,
(02:24):
explaining that giving the custodian power requires a legal change
which the government has not yet legislated. Opposition Communication spokesperson
Melissa Macintosh noted the government had more than eighteen months
to implement the recommendations, saying it's beyond frustrating that it's
taken another triple zero network outage to find out those
urgent recommendations have not been implemented in full. Investigators locked
(02:47):
in a four week manhunt for alleged police killer Desi
Freeman could soon face the prospect of having to draw
a line in the sand as resource restraints and costs
pile up. Freeman allegedly fatally shot Neil Thompson and Vadim
de vaud Hottat at Poorpunker on August twenty six. The
fifty six year old has been on the run ever since,
fleeing into dense bushland. About four hundred and fifty per
(03:09):
police personnel have been scouring harsh and challenging bushland caves,
mine shafts, huts and properties by air and land in
the hope of finding the alleged culprit. But as the
manhunt continues with yet no confirmed sightings of the trained
bush survivalist, police must balance the search with budgetary constraints.
Police resourcing for travel, accommodation and meals for officers redirected
(03:30):
from other teams to Poorpunker, and the cost of operating
equipment has put a huge dent in the force's bottom line.
Retired Victorian Police detective Senior Sergeant Charlie Bazina told AAP
that costs are well within the hundreds of thousands of dollars,
if not by the time this is completed into the millions.
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has been dumped as
(03:51):
patron from several children's charities over an email she's sent
to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. In the correspondence, the Duchess
was explaining to Epstein that she'd been forced to give
an interview being critical of him. In order to protect
her career as a children's book author and philanthropist, she'd
promise never to have anything to do with Epstein. Ever
again calling alone she'd taken from him a gigantic error
(04:13):
of judgment. However, in the email, she said that she
considered Epstein a steadfast, generous and supreme friend. Epstein had
long been linked to Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson's ex husband,
who she still lives with in a home on the
royal estate. Andrew settled a civil lawsuit against one of
Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giffrey, and was stood down from royal duties.
(04:34):
That's what's happening in the world today.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Next.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Optus failures have put ossies at risk, But is there
anything we can do to avoid being at the mercy
of our tech? On Thursday, the grandmother of an eight
week old baby boy called Tripolo when she found him
not breathing. The call failed, so she tried again. When
(04:58):
it still didn't go through, she grabbed another phone in
the house that wasn't on the same network as hers,
and finally she connected. While it's since been decided that
the passing of that little boy was not a direct
result of that call not connecting, there were four other
people whose lives ended that day where an Optus outage
was literally the difference between life and death. OPTA CEO
(05:20):
Stephen Rule said the outage was caused by established processes
not being followed, that they were speaking to the individuals involved,
that the full technical details of the network failures were
still being investigated. He said in the short term, Optus
would be halting any further changes to the network system
until they have a better understanding of what happened. But
of course this isn't the first outage to have a
(05:41):
major impact on Australians. It's not even Optuses first. Back
in twenty twenty three, all of their Internet, mobile and
fixed services went down directly affecting more than ten million
people and four hundred thousand businesses. The crowd strike outage
in July twenty twenty four caused Windows systems to crash,
affecting banks, airlines, government services, supermarkets, the postal service and
(06:04):
many others. In that instance, we saw people abandoning their
shopping trolleys of the checkout as the greens blanked out
with an error message. So is there anything we can
do to try and ensure we're covered when something like
this happens. Do we just go back to having a
landline always keeping cash on hand? Technology journalist and host
of the Two Guys Talking Tech podcast, Trevor Loong has
(06:25):
some tips for that. So Trevor, first up, I think
I would like to address why these outages happen. We
seem to be told every time that it's due to
an upgrade that's gone wrong. Why is that?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Because things go wrong? I mean it's technology. Unfortunately, things
go wrong. The bizarre thing for Optice is their major
network outage in twenty twenty three was essentially very similar.
Was a upgrade to some hardware. In that case, it
was routers, which are things that connect all the Internet together.
In this case it was what they call a firewall,
which is a thing that kind of protects different parts
(06:57):
of the network, but they're essentially the same. They did
an update and it caused this issue. Now, an update
might be because they've got a new piece of equipment
equipment pages and you need to put new ones in.
It might be because they did a software update on it,
just like we all do software updates on our phones
and computers. The issue is that when they did the update,
they did some tests. It all looked okay, but they
(07:18):
didn't check triple zero and as the CEO confirmed on
the weekend. The issue was caused by normal processes not
being followed. So someone made this error and that's something
they're going to have to live with.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, can we talk about how we outage proof ourselves,
because the only thing I can see that would have
been helpful for those people who tried to call Triplo
and couldn't connect is either having another phone in the
house on a different network or having a landline. Is
that the only way we could have gone about protecting
ourselves from not being able to reach emergency services in
(07:50):
that instance.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
It's a good observation, but I think if you're worried
about this kind of thing, that you absolutely could broadly
outage proof yourself. Now, the example I'll give you is
when the Optus network outage happened in twenty twenty three.
I knew about that at four am, and it was
impossible to call anyone an Optis why because they were
all on Optus. In fact, none of the OPTS team
could communicate because they were all an Optis. Today, every
(08:14):
representative at management levels of all the telcos have multiple
SIM cards in their phones. So a Telstra executive would
have in their phone a votaphone or an Opta SIM card,
because then they've got the backup if anything goes wrong.
We can do that too. Now it sounds like an
expensive thing to say, oh, put another SIM card in
your phone, but two things. Modern smartphones and most people
(08:34):
have got a phone from the last three or four years,
have the capability of a thing called an e SIM,
which is an electronic sim card. You don't need to
physically put a plastic SIM in your phone. You can
just get it off the internet, so that means that
it's technically very easy to do. They can both be
running at the same time, so it can be turned
on and waiting to be used. But critically it doesn't
have to cost a lot of money. You could get
(08:55):
a Cogan Mobile SIM for one hundred and fifty dollars
a year, a little over ten dollars a month. That'll
give you a backup on the Votaphone network if you're
a Teltra customer. If you're an Opti's customer, you could
get a Telstra SIM card from ALDIMobile. They're only available
plastic sims at the moment, but next month they'll be
E sims. Five dollars will get you one year. Now
(09:16):
you can't make a lot of phone calls for that
five dollars, it'll very quickly run out. But you're only
using it for emergencies. So five dollars for three hundred
and sixty five days of back up coverage so that
if something does go wrong you can switch to that line.
I think it's really really handy to think about having
a second SIM on your existing phone and running them
both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Okay, what about a broader outage though, when it comes
to things like remember CrowdStrike that took out almost everything
that was windows, and then we were stuck not being
able to get money out of the bank or not
being able to pay for groceries, Like, how do we
outage proof ourselves from things like that?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Look, at some point you have to accept these things
are going to happen, and another point you need to
err on the side of I'm going to prep for doomsday.
Like in our house, we've got a safe in the garage,
which is where we keep our wedding certificate, our birth certificates,
our passports, and there's a little bit of cash in there. No,
it's not going to pay this month's mortgage if needed.
But if I I need cash. It's there, and I
(10:11):
think in those emergency situations most of the times when
you can't pay for a coffee, well, you know what,
maybe just go half an hour without a coffee and
let's move on. But if something needs to be bought,
paid for, done, whatever, then having cash is not a
bad thing. Technology wise, it's impossible to say to someone
you should have a Windows computer a Mac computer, and
you have two Internet connections. We're getting to the point
of that's a bit of overkill for your average person.
(10:34):
But this is what businesses do. Businesses have a redundancy.
So a big business will have a big Internet connection
to one company, but then if that fails, there'll be
a redundant one that they use. The same with all
of their systems. I think that people that should most
worry about that kind of thing are people that have
medical concerns. You know, my mother in law has pretty
serious medical and health concerns. I want to make sure
(10:54):
that they have a backup SIM card and that they
have back up ways of using the Internet, because they're
the most vulnerable. We need to think about the most
vulnerable among us, and the rest of us should probably
take a breath and just go. You know what, I
had a power outage the other day. I sat in
darkness and I just enjoyed some time with my thoughts.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Yeah, we don't do that very often, and all these
days do we? I guess, just finally, where do we
see this going? Do we see outages becoming more frequent?
Or are we getting better at them not becoming more frequent.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It's impossible to really be clear on that because the
fact is, no, you won't ring Telstra today and say hey,
you guys immune from this. They would never say that
because no one predicted this. I just couldn't have predicted this.
It's a tragic outcome of a crazy situation that should
never have happened. People make mistakes, Technology can and does fail,
and it takes time to recover from those failures. Sometimes
(11:45):
it's minutes, sometimes it's ours. We do need to accept
that they will exist in our lives.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Unfortunately, thanks Trevor putting an eSIM on the to do
list immediately. Okay, in case you missed it. Some think
the world is ending today. Alaria Brophy has more.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Raptor coming. That's when other Christians are gonna have just appair.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
If you don't know you well be left behind.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Like my entire childhood is just rapture trauma.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
It's the reason I can't plan ahead. It's the reason
I can't say money.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
The rapture could come.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Just keep calm, take a deep breath, slowly release it
and keep your face looking upwards and pray you're not
on the toilet. Social media is utterly spiraling as apparently
the rapture is coming today. So it's pretty much the
belief that both the living and the dead will be
(12:41):
taken up raptured from earth to meet Jesus in the air.
It all kicked off after a South African pastor shared
his vision on sent Wins TV.
Speaker 4 (12:52):
The rapture is a bonus whether you are radio or not.
Your God took me to see the future, and then
he brought to me in a drone room. I see
Jesus sitting on his tool, and I will give him
very loud and clear. I am coming soon, it says
to me.
Speaker 6 (13:12):
On the twenty third and the twenty fourth, twenty twent
dy five, I will come to tig my church.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
The rapture is often linked with end Times prophecy, the
second coming of Christ, and the Final Judgment, but let's
get an expert to explain. Associate Professor in the Sociology
of Religion at Deacon University, doctor Anna Halifoff breaks it down.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
So, the Rapture is a Christian belief, but it's primarily
held by evangelicals, so it's not really one that's widely
held among the broader Christian population. There's multiple interpretations of
these events, the Rapture, the Last Judgment, the Second Coming,
the apocalypse, and in terms of the timing and the
(14:06):
precise kind of order of these events, there's a lot
of debate and diversity between the different traditions. So in
terms of the Rapture, it's said to be a time
where it precedes a period called the Great Tribulation, which
is a period of great hardship and Christian persecution on earth,
(14:28):
and that period is kind of time wise, relatively short,
and then it seemed to end in Christ's Second Coming,
and then that leading to a period of harmony, prosperity,
and of Christ's reign on Earth.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
So depending on whether you're a believer, this could just
be the end of how things have been or actually
the end of the world.
Speaker 5 (14:53):
According to the evangelicals, the only people who get to
go up and be saved from this period of great tribulation.
It's the true believers, so it's people who really put
their faith in Jesus Christ. There's been a lot of
social media on this and some debate around whether it's
only relates to humans or whether it's also like non humans,
(15:16):
including people's beloved pets and animals. So I think, according
to the evangelical view, like if you're in a household
and you believe altogether in this, well maybe your pets
will go with you or maybe not. We don't really know.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And this is not the first time the rapture prophecy
has come and gone without incident, So why do some
of us keep believing?
Speaker 5 (15:41):
I think people keep believing in events such as the
rapture or the other big one was, you know, the
twenty twelve Mayan prophecy of end times, but also another
interpretation of that was the sort of time of renewal.
So I think they're there in scriptures, they're there in
sacred texts, well at least there's kind of inference to them.
(16:02):
So I think as long as we have those texts,
we're going to keep believing in these narratives of end times,
and Buddhists call it, you know, a degenerative age, so
they're across a lot of different religions and spiritual traditions.
But I also think there's something in it about us
humans that we are really drawn always to these kind
(16:24):
of supernatural themes, like the big questions of who we are,
what are we doing here, how do we live a
good life for ourselves but also for others, how do
we address some of the ills that humanity has created
and violence against one another or in the world. We
tend to often go to these kind of spiritual narratives
(16:45):
for those types of answers. But I think at the
moment we are living in a time of what's been
described as poly crisis, where we are confronted with so
many things all at once, horrible wars, horrible violence in
Palestine and in Ukraine, and also environmental crisis closer to home,
(17:07):
just economic crisis that people are having to into your
health crisis. So I think it is a time we're
certainly seeing in the research, like, not just in Australia
but internationally, an uptake of interest in spirituality.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Whether you're a believer or not. The rapture has definitely
become one of the most talked about elements of modern
Christian prophecy, inspiring best selling novels like Left Behind films
and now rapture talk.
Speaker 5 (17:37):
There was this show called The Leftovers. It's like one
of my favorite all time TV shows and it has
a crazy last season actually set in Australia, so definitely
have a look at that one. But even now, like
something like the popularity of the show Wednesday and earlier
forms of things like The Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
(17:59):
these things really appeal to people, and especially I think,
you know, young people and teenagers.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
So if you're starting to get some sweaty palms like myself,
how do we prepare for the rap.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
I think regardless of when this raptor is coming or
when these end times am I. The really important thing
that I think all traditions, spiritual traditions and wisdom traditions
point to is to try to be as good a
person as possible, and not just for your own benefit,
but for the benefit of others. You know, so resist
(18:32):
harming others, try to be compassionate, try to be kind,
try to be loving, try to be of benefit to others.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Thanks for taking some time to feed your mind with
us today. The quickie is produced by myself, Claire Murphy
and Alaria Brophy, with audio production by Low Hill
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