Welcome to Holland: Day One Without WiFi, Civilization Ends
Oh, what a beautiful day in the Netherlands. The sun rises over a flat, trembling land not with tulips and windmills, but with the anguished wailing of middle-aged men in boxers clutching broken iPhones like sacred relics. A disaster has struck. What kind of disaster? Nobody knows. But one thing’s clear: the TV won’t turn on, the fridge is warm, and there is NO. INTERNET. CONNECTION.Cue national meltdown.
THE GREAT BLACKOUT: Day One of the End of Everything
Power’s gone. Just gone. Electricity, pfffft. Internet? LOL. Phones are glorified bricks. Supermarkets? Shuttered like it’s the zombie apocalypse. And the fridges, oh the fridges—shutting off like tiny traitors in the night, taking everyone’s overpriced oat milk and chicken-free nuggets with them.
Three-quarters of the Dutch population now faces imminent death-by-snack-deficit. Many haven’t seen a vegetable that wasn’t pre-washed in five years. And now the spinach is slime.
People are standing in the streets. Crying. Literally crying. Wearing pajamas with “Sleepy Unicorn” printed on them. One man in Haarlem asked if it was a terrorist attack or a “solar eclipse thingy.” Another woman in Utrecht said, “This is literally like Handmaid’s Tale,” as she scrolled aimlessly on her dead phone, hoping the WiFi would return like Jesus.
Spoiler: It didn’t.
A Nation of Spoiled Pudding Cups
Let’s review some shining examples of the national character.
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Mark from Rotterdam tried to Uber Eats a sandwich despite zero phone service. When informed the app was down, he simply stared at the screen, whispering, “But I’m a premium member…”
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Sanne from The Hague broke down after realizing her espresso machine was, in fact, a paperweight. “I just… I don’t know how to make coffee without it,” she sobbed into her avocado plant.
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Rick from Eindhoven wandered the streets asking if anyone had a “power bank the size of a car battery,” as he needed to charge his MacBook to see if the apocalypse was trending.
Meanwhile, little children stood on sidewalks asking, “Mama, can we just get new electricity from Amazon?”
The Liberal Enlightenment Collapses in Yoga Pants
For a country that prides itself on tolerance and logic, the first 24 hours without power revealed something closer to the emotional resilience of damp cardboard. All the Twitter warriors, the progressive bloggers, the eco-activists who claimed to be “off-grid-curious”? Caught weeping behind their Teslas, which now serve as climate-controlled bunkers with NPR podcasts trapped forever in mid-sentence.
It’s not just the urbanites. Even farmers were seen staring blankly at silent milking machines, muttering, “But the app said the cows were happy…”
A sociology professor from Leiden, who once gave a TED Talk titled “Resilience in the Digital Age,” was last seen at a gas station trying to pay for gas with exposure.
Reality Checks Are Not Vegan
There’s no food. There’s no plan. There’s no clue. But there is a lot of crying. And blaming. And tweeting into the void (well, trying). The government? Also crying. Parliament declared an emergency meeting, only to realize the coffee machine was down. They canceled it on the spot.
No one knows how to cook. No one owns a candle. A lighter is considered a right-wing artifact. One woman said, “Why don’t they just fix it?” as if there’s a Big Electricity Switch behind the dunes.
It’s chaos—but tasteful, organic chaos.
Conclusion: The Softest Apocalypse in History
This isn’t Mad Max. It’s Sad Max: Dutch Edition. No warlords. Just whining. No survival instincts. Just Huel addicts with no blender. The most lethal weapon available is a crusty baguette from last Thursday.
And in the background, the faint sound of someone asking if there’s a “backup democracy server.”
BREAKING:
Entire Dutch Population Forgets How to Human After 12-Hour Blackout
A National Tragedy of Lukewarm Vegan Cheese and Bluetooth Dependency
Picture it: The Netherlands. Land of bikes, smug urban planning, and people who genuinely believe they’ll live forever as long as they eat enough hummus. Now picture it without power. No lights. No WiFi. No soy lattes. Just a flat, overengineered swamp full of fragile, freshly waxed humans, sobbing into their climate-neutral pillowcases.
Some call it an “unidentified infrastructural cascade failure.”
Others call it “the day the influencers stopped influencing.”
I call it what it is: Tuesday, if society were made of pudding.
HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND
The blackout hit around 3 a.m. No explosions, no sirens, just… silence. The first symptom was subtle. Phones wouldn’t charge. Then, TVs refused to obey. And finally, with a majestic whimper, the routers died.
Within minutes, Amsterdam devolved into chaos. Not actual chaos. Not like, “someone set a fire.” No. That would’ve required flint or matches, which nobody owns. This was liberal arts chaos— people standing around asking questions like,
“Does anyone have signal?”
“Is this a blockchain thing?”
“Do you think someone hacked us to destabilize queer narratives?”
And my personal favorite:
“What if we’re in a simulation and the servers got unplugged?”
A man in Jordaan was seen climbing onto a park bench, screaming “CAN ANYONE STILL ACCESS DROPBOX?” before collapsing into a pile of oat dust.
THE GREAT FRIDGE MASSACRE
By sunrise, tragedy struck kitchens nationwide.
The fridges were warm. The tofu had turned.
Panicked citizens opened their high-tech Bosch appliances to discover what no Dutch person had experienced since 1944: perishable food going bad.
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In Utrecht, a woman threw her gluten-free lentil curry against the wall in despair.
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In Nijmegen, a man lit a citronella candle and cried over the slow death of his microgreens.
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In Groningen, a couple tried to use their dishwasher as an oven.
“I don’t understand,” sobbed Femke, a 27-year-old ‘experience architect’ wearing a woolen poncho, “I bought local! I composted! I do everything right! This isn’t supposed to happen to me!”
THE PANIC BUYING… THAT WASN’T
The nation’s elite fleet of cargo bicycles, once a symbol of smug, sustainable superiority, lay abandoned in driveways. There was nowhere to go. Supermarkets were shuttered, powerless, and guarded by employees who had no idea how to function without barcode scanners.
Attempted looting was unsuccessful. In Rotterdam, one confused man broke into an Albert Heijn and was immediately immobilized—not by police, but by an overwhelming inability to locate anything he could cook without scanning a QR code.
Elsewhere, two influencers were caught trying to cook gnocchi in a USB-powered foot spa.
“We are strong,” said one of them, live-streaming via a slowly dying iPhone.
“We are resilient. And this content is gold.”
They disappeared shortly after, presumably into the canals.
DEATH BY DESIGNER COUCH
Let us not forget the architects of this tragedy: the gentry class, who, for years, have been one yoga retreat away from complete detachment from physical reality. The ones who installed floor-to-ceiling touchscreens in their homes but can’t boil water unless the kettle confirms it’s fair trade.
A tech entrepreneur in Delft was found trying to swipe left on his front door to escape.
Another tried to turn on his emergency power generator using voice commands:
“Alexa, apocalypse mode.”
No response. Alexa had already fled.
Meanwhile, an Amsterdam couple with a €5,000 eco couch were found curled up under a €300 wool throw, refusing to move because “the app that tells us what to do isn’t working.”
GOVERNMENT BY CANDLELIGHT
At the Dutch Parliament, leaders held an emergency summit in darkness. The last working Nespresso machine had failed, and several MPs had already fainted from lack of artisanal caffeine.
A junior minister attempted to write emergency legislation by hand, but no one could remember how pens worked. Someone brought out a typewriter, which triggered a full-scale panic:
“It’s making noise! Why is it so loud!?”
Rutte, clearly in survival mode, asked the room:
“Does anyone have a Nokia? One of the old ones? That might still work.”
A woman whispered, “My grandma buried one in a drawer… for Y2K.”
THE CHILDREN OF SOFTNESS
We mustn’t forget the little ones.
Young Finn and Juna, usually pacified by iPads and Montessori-approved VR, now wandered the house in circles, muttering,
“I don’t like outside. Outside is weird.”
A 12-year-old boy attempted to make fire by rubbing two yoga blocks together. It didn’t work, but he did manage to tweet, “send help lol ” before the battery died.
Meanwhile, a group of TikTok teens from Zaandam started a “#BlackoutChallenge” that involved crying in the dark while describing what they would be eating if food existed.
A NATION REBORN IN CRIPPLING DEPENDENCY
And so, the land of bicycles, bureaucracy, and baguette-sized joint rollers falls to its knees—not from war, not from famine, but from a mild inconvenience to the WiFi.
You see, the Dutch were never meant to suffer. Their worst historic trauma is “having to wait two weeks for furniture delivery.” They have no spiritual framework for discomfort. They paid their taxes. They read de Volkskrant. They signed every petition.
And now the universe has betrayed them.
POST-DUTCH COLLAPSE: SOCIETY SHATTERS LIKE A BIKE HELMET UNDER STRESS
Day Two of the Great National Pout: Still No Internet. Still No Dignity.
laughing softly into a warm tin of beans while the world burnsGood morning from your correspondent, broadcasting from what used to be the country of the Netherlands and is now a performance art piece in mass infantilization. It’s been two full days since the blackout began, and society is now a sad, flaccid IKEA tent collapsing into itself.Here in Amsterdam, the once-proud capital of Dutch pragmatism and high-functioning neurosis now resembles a live-action reenactment of Lord of the Flies—but make it gentrified. There’s no electricity. There’s no running water. There’s no clue.A man just tried to microwave a burrito using his emotional support crystal.
It’s that bad.
RISE OF THE FEEBLE CLANS
Without phones or bureaucracy to shield them from raw human experience, the Dutch have devolved into factions. Behold:
- The Hummus Cult – Camped outside an abandoned Lidl, worshipping the memory of refrigeration and offering melted vegan cheese in tribute.
- The Cyclists – Still clinging to the idea that mobility equals salvation, these tragic spandex gladiators ride aimlessly through the city, trading route tips for stale energy bars. No one tells them the traffic lights don’t work anymore.
- The Techies – Living in denial inside co-working spaces, pretending to still be in Zoom meetings. They organize seating charts using Post-its. No one speaks. They just cry and occasionally whisper, “Agile…”
HUNGER GAMES: ARTISAN EDITION
Food riots? Oh, darling. No. Too gauche.This is the Netherlands. People are fighting over chia seeds and debating whether expired oat milk is still “ethically viable.” Someone in Eindhoven tried to barter an unopened bottle of truffle oil for a can of lentils.
“I’ll throw in my reusable straw,” she said.
“And access to my Substack.”
“I DEMAND TO SPEAK TO A SURVIVAL MANAGER”
Tempers are flaring. But instead of armed conflict, we’re seeing entitled tantrums. Like toddlers with credit cards.
- “Who’s in charge here?”
- “Why didn’t anyone prepare ME for this?”
- “Where’s the emergency hotline? I want to file a complaint!”
- “Can someone please charge my dog?” (He had a smart collar. It died. So did his spirit.)
Sweetheart, you don’t even have light.
CANALS FULL OF TEARS
As sewage systems begin to falter, Amsterdam’s iconic canals are filling—not with filth, but with metaphorical tears.People have gathered to hold candlelight vigils for lost influencers.Others perform interpretive dance rituals, pleading for the return of Spotify.Everywhere you turn, the national motto seems to be:
“Help, we’ve run out of normal.”And somewhere in the night, a solitary man screams, “WHY DIDN’T I LEARN TO COOK?” into a wind turbine.
THE LAST BOUTIQUE STANDING
In a surreal twist, one boutique shop in The Hague still operates: a tiny survival store run by a conspiracy theorist named Dirk, previously ignored for his “feral prepper vibes.”Now he’s king.He accepts cash, bullets, and hand-drawn nudes as currency. You want a flashlight? That’s five cans of beans and a meaningful compliment. You want a battery-powered radio? Give him your shoes.Some say he’s building a commune. Others say he’s building a cult.
Either way, Dirk has candles. And in this world, that makes him a demigod.
DAY TWO—THE MORNING AFTER THE FALL
Let’s take stock.
- 3 million Dutch citizens haven’t pooped in 36 hours because the smart toilets stopped flushing.
- 60% of the country thinks this is “a prank show,” waiting for Tim Hofman to jump out and say “GEGRAPT!”
- One woman in Amersfoort invented a new religion based on heatless tea.
Why? Because the first question everyone asked wasn’t “what happened?”
It was:
FINAL THOUGHTS FROM THE ASHES
They said the Dutch were calm. Rational. Intelligent. Organized.What they are, it turns out, is a society held together by espresso machines, external validation, and Google Calendar. Strip that away, and you get a nation of softly sobbing adults wearing fleece onesies, begging the sky for Deliveroo.Here’s to Day Three.
May it bring WiFi, or at least some goddamn candles. Currently accepting payment in dried pasta and compliments on my boot.
“Ik kan nie op Feesboek!!!”
No comment. This one deserves to be put in a museum. Somewhere between Van Gogh and a bag of fries with joppiesaus. A perfectly tragic scream into the void of lost Likes.
