Countdown Days Quotes

Those deep set eyes that look like they could tell stories for days, and that wavy brown hair that feels soft between my fingers. I try to memorize the angles of his jaw and the lines of his lips, because I know. I know this may be the last time I ever see him. Breathe fills my lungs, my throat relaxes, and I can't help but smile. Because I can see what he's thinking as clearly as if he'd spoken. He doesn't want to leave - he doesn't want to go home. He's going to choose me instead.

His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.

Logan: 7 days to go. Amanda: Really, asshole? A countdown? Logan: 6 days to go. I bet you can't wait to see me. Amanda: I'm already regretting this. Logan: 5 days to go. OMG! What am I going to wear? Amanda: I thought I told you not to contact me for a week. Logan: 4 days to go. Seriously though, what do you want to do? Amanda: Not go on a date with you? Logan: 3 days to go. I'm pretty fucking excited to see you. Amanda: Shut up. Logan: 2 days to go. Just thought I would remind you, in case you had forgotten. Amanda: Who is this? Logan: 1 day to go. I'll call you tomorrow. Amanda: I'll be busy. Logan: I'm calling you in 5 minutes. You better answer. You promised my 'nephew' a date with me. Amanda: Fine!

As Mike McConnell, the former director of national intelligence, told a US Senate committee in 2011, “If the nation went to war today, in a cyberwar, we would lose. We’re the most vulnerable. We’re the most connected. We have the most to lose.

Scripture is also clear that it is not by works of righteousness we have done but by God’s mercy that He saves us.

Nothing done in Jesus’ name is wasted.

There are two critically important prophecies about the future of Iran in the last days. The first is found in Jeremiah 49:35-39.

There was nothing like staring down the barrel of a suspected cyberweapon to clear the fog in your mind.

It wasn’t only the danger of the bomb exploding. If one of

swallow your pride, examine yourself, and humble yourself before God.

For with God nothing will be impossible.

In the days when money was backed by its face value in silver or gold, there were limits to how much wealth could flow around the world. Today, it's virtual money that the bank lends into existence on a computer screen. "And unless the economy continually expands, there is no new flow of money to pay back that money, plus interest." . . . "As it stands now, if banks start loaning money more slowly than they collect debts, the quantity of money in the economy goes down, and it's impossible to pay back debts. So we get defaults on houses . . . our economy plunges into misery and unemployment. Under our current monetary system, the only alternative to that is endless growth. So one absolute thing we have to change is the whole nature of the monetary system. . . . we deny banks the right to create money." . . . There's a challenge with that solution, he admits. "You're trying to take the right to create wealth away from some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

The countdown is finally over and in a few short days I will have the love of my life standing in front of me. I’m terrified to look into his eyes. The last time I saw them they were bloodshot and broken. Broken because of me. Will he ever be able to mend all of his broken pieces? Will he need to be without me in order for his broken pieces to heal? I’m scared to find out, but I desperately need to know." ~Presley Quinn

But withholding information about vulnerabilities in US systems so that they can be exploited in foreign ones creates a schism in the government that pits agencies that hoard and exploit zero days against those, like the Department of Homeland Security, that are supposed to help secure and protect US critical infrastructure and government systems.

They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio's steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.

The horrors and costs of war encourage countries to choose diplomacy over battle, but when cyberattacks eliminate many of these costs and consequences, and the perpetrators can remain anonymous, it becomes much more tempting to launch a digital attack than engage in rounds of diplomacy that might never procedure results

Frickin’ cell phones are the scourge of our existence.  Here you go, you’re gonna pay a shit load of money each month, to carry around this over-sized hunk of crap in your pocket, and then anybody in the world will be able to call you anytime they damn well please, and interrupt whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re at, anytime day or night.  And you signed up for that shit?  Come on . . . They need to bring back pay phones.  You want to talk about nostalgia, think about standing there, jukebox blaring, finger stuck in one ear, trying like hell to hear what the person on the other end was saying.  And then you get that notification; the countdown, that if you don’t immediately put more money in that damn thing, they’re gonna cut you off.  Digging in your pockets for a dime or a nickel, but you never found it in time, did you?  Remember that shit?  Those were the good old days.

Cross that gap and everything changes. Being on this side of it means that time becomes your enemy. You don’t grind the day—the day grinds you. With the passing of every month your embarrassment compounds, accumulates with the inevitability of a simple arithmetic truth. X is less than Y, and there’s nothing to be done about that. The daily mail bringing with it fresh dread or relief, but if the latter, only the most temporary kind, restarting the clock on the countdown to the next bill or past-due notice or collection agency call.

After two months passed and they were still finding holes, the company canceled the testing and just shipped the kiosks out. O

Civil War general Robert E. Lee said famously that it was a good thing war was so terrible, “otherwise we should grow too fond of it.

lived.

In the Hindu scripture, in the Bhagavad Gita, it says ‘Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.

graduating from the Naval Academy,

Under the new policy, any time the NSA discovers a major flaw in software, it must disclose the vulnerability to vendors and others so the flaw can be patched.

The 5 Second Rule.” Just like NASA uses a 5-4-3-2-1 countdown to launch a rocket, I counted down 5-4-3-2-1 to launch myself into action before my negative thoughts pinned me down. I’m dead serious. Alarm rings. No staring at the ceiling. No panic attack. No snooze button. No rolling over and shoving your head under the pillow to blot out the day. 5-4-3-2-1: kick your own ass.

On days she is half-lucid, Rob finds Manika a bore, too self-absorbed and a little shallow, removed from reality, a spoiled kid from Manila, where she is heiress to billions—or stolen billions, as his father would say.

He'd learned a lot in the short time he'd been with the Cahills, and one of the biggest lessons was not to hold back. Go for it now, because you never knew what could happen the next day, or even the next minute . - Pony

Richard Clarke, former cybersecurity czar under the Bush administration and a member of the panel, later explained the rationale for highlighting the use of zero days in their report. “If the US government finds a zero-day vulnerability, its first obligation is to tell the American people so that they can patch it, not to run off [and use it] to break into the Beijing telephone system,” he said at a security conference. “The first obligation of government is to defend.”40

Germany, a Wassenaar member, already has a law that effectively prohibits the sale of exploits as well as the practice of giving them away for free, something that security researchers do regularly among themselves to test systems and improve security.

What a skeletal wreck of man this is. Translucent flesh and feeble bones, the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes. Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear. When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now. We all have a little sin that needs venting, virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails? Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve? When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned. For the rest of us, there is always Sunday. The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath, so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book. To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers. A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube, and hope you get a taste. WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP! I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we? Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do, and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs, haven’t felt like this in years. The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, and punch me into the dead spout again. That’s where you go when there’s no one else around, it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there? Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse, and a finger on the trigger. CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT! Government is another way to say better…than…you. It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick, it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food, but you can’t touch the silverware. Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for. Humph, isn’t that sweet? And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way, and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little, when your gaffer taped in the middle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening. SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I’m sorry, I could go on and on but their times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident. Forget the freak, your just nature. Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort, and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run. Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.

The nations, of course, that are most at risk of a destructive digital attack are the ones with the greatest connectivity. Marcus Ranum, one of the early innovators of the computer firewall, called Stuxnet 'a stone thrown by people who live in a glass house'.

Under a $652-million clandestine program code named GENIE, the NSA, CIA, and special military operatives have planted covert digital bugs in tens of thousands of computers, routers, and firewalls around the world to conduct computer network exploitation, or CNE. Some are planted remotely, but others require physical access to install through so-called interdiction—the CIA or FBI intercepts shipments of hardware from manufacturers and retailers in order to plant malware in them or install doctored chips before they reach the customer.

FACT FILE Excess salt can cause water retention and increase blood pressure. Restrict salt to 6 g, roughly about 1 teaspoon, per day. Substitute extra salt with herbs and spices such as oregano, basil, coriander and parsley, or use seasonings like lemon, garlic or pepper.

Each time Stuxnet infected a system, it “phoned home” to one of two internet domains masquerading as soccer fan sites—mypremierfutbol.com and todaysfutbol.com. The domain names, registered by someone who used fake names and fraudulent credit cards, pointed to servers in Denmark and Malaysia

These incidents were all accidental, but in Poland in 2008 a fourteen-year-old boy in Lódz caused several trains to derail when he used the infrared port of a modified TV remote control to hijack the railway’s signaling system and switch the tram tracks. Four trams derailed, and twelve people were injured.

Elam is one of the ancient names of Iran, just like Persia. The passage tells us that in the last days, God will scatter the people of Iran all over the earth. For many centuries, this seemed impossible because we Persians are such a proud and nationalistic people. But as incredible as it was, this prophecy actually began to come to pass in 1979.

But he insisted his reasons for supplying to governments went deeper than money: “We mainly work with governments who are facing national security issues … we help them in protecting their democracies and protecting lives.… It’s like any surveillance method. The government needs to know if something bad is being prepared and to know what people are doing, to protect national security. So

Like conventional weapons, most digital weapons have two parts—the missile, or delivery system, responsible for spreading the malicious payload and installing it onto machines, and the payload itself, which performs the actual attack, such as stealing data or doing other things to infected machines. In this case, the payload was the malicious code that targeted the Siemens software and PLCs.

In amassing zero-day exploits for the government to use in attacks, instead of passing the information about holes to vendors to be fixed, the government has put critical-infrastructure owners and computer users in the United States at risk of attack from criminal hackers, corporate spies, and foreign intelligence agencies who no doubt will discover and use the same vulnerabilities for their own operations.

One such middleman is a South African security researcher based in Thailand who is known in the security community by his hacker handle “The Grugq.” The Grugq brokers exploit sales between his hacker friends and government contacts, pocketing a 15 percent commission per transaction. He only launched his business in 2011, but by 2012 sales were so good, he told a reporter he expected to make $1 million in commissions.

4. People talk about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, like it just happened one day. All the dinosaurs were hanging out, all together in an open field, and the asteroid slammed down and destroyed them, killed them all and all at once. Not so, of course. Some died on the day, no doubt about it, and probably a lot—but the whole business took years. Generations, maybe. They can’t say for sure. They know that a ten-kilometer

Fathers are unwitting objects of fascination for their daughters, and the interlude of their childhood leaves a bittersweet taste: never again, for anyone else, will we be domestic demi-gods, greeted like long-awaited saviours when we come home for dinner at the end of the working day. The years go by and their joy becomes less and less palpable, until one day they fail to greet us at all. This time is past and the countdown reaches zero. We had known it would happen, we just hadn't expected it to happen so quickly

I’ve got an idea I want to run by you,” he murmured, his lids growing heavy. Oh. Back to that. Ever since I’d returned, I’d been avoiding the subject of My Promise, hoping Brandon would take a hint. In texts, he’d actually begun counting down the days left until my birthday—like he had a cherry countdown widget. When I caught him sneaking a glance at my chest, his expression one of longing, I remembered a movie where one of the heroines had likened boobs to smart bombs. I’d laughed. Now I marveled at how right she’d been.

This wasn’t the only mistake they made. They also botched the cleanup operation on the servers they could access. They had created a script called LogWiper.sh to erase activity logs on the servers to prevent anyone from seeing the actions they had taken on the systems. Once the script finished its job, it was also supposed to erase itself, like an Ouroboros serpent consuming its own tail. But the attackers bungled the delete command inside the script by identifying the script file by the wrong name. Instead of commanding the script to delete LogWiper.sh, they commanded it to delete logging.sh. As a result, the LogWiper script couldn’t find itself and got left behind on servers for Kaspersky to find. Also left behind by the attackers were the names or nicknames of the programmers who had written the scripts and developed the encryption algorithms and other infrastructure used by Flame. The names appeared in the source code for some of the tools they developed. It was the kind of mistake inexperienced hackers would make, so the researchers were surprised to see it in a nation-state operation. One, named Hikaru, appeared to be the team leader who created a lot of the server code,

Men of letters were not immune to the Pearl Harbor spell. One of the most distinguished poets of twentieth-century Japan, Saito Mokichi, fifty-nine at the time, recorded in his diary: “The red blood of my old age is now bursting with life! … Hawaii has been attacked!” The thirty-six-year-old novelist Ito Sei wrote in his journal: “A fine deed. The Japanese tactic wonderfully resembles the one employed in the Russo-Japanese War.” Indeed, that war started with Japan’s surprise attack on Russian ships in Port Arthur on February 8, 1904, two days before Japan’s formal declaration of war. Japan won that war. Even those Japanese who had previously disapproved of their country’s expansionism in Asia were excited by Japan’s war with the West. In an instant, the official claim, gradually adopted by the Japanese government over the preceding decade, of liberating Asia from Western encroachment gained legitimacy in their eyes. Until then, the innately self-contradictory nature of fighting an anti-imperialist war for Asia against fellow Asians in China had tormented them. Takeuchi Yoshimi, a thirty-one-year-old Sinologist, now said he and his friends had been mistaken in doubting their leaders’ true intentions:

If you were lying on your deathbed in six months, what would you look back on with regret? Ask yourself this: How would you feel if your time was suddenly limited and you could never complete the work, book, or project you really want to do? Because really, your time is limited. From the day we’re born, the countdown to dying begins. You’re gambling that you’ll have forever if you continue in the comfort of what you’re feeling now. With every decision you’re stuck on, here’s a simple process you can use to cut through the muck and arrive at a clear decision: Imagine yourself six months, one year, or five years into the future and look back on the decision you’re about to make.

The main Stuxnet file was incredibly large—500 kilobytes, as opposed to the 10 to 15 KB they usually saw. Even Conficker, the monster worm that infected more than 6 million machines the previous two years, was only 35 kilobytes in size. Any malware larger than this usually just contained a space-hogging image file that accounted for its bloat—such as a fake online banking page that popped up in the browser of infected machines to trick victims into relinquishing their banking credentials. But there was no image file in Stuxnet, and no extraneous fat, either. And, as O’Murchu began to take the files apart, he realized the code was also much more complex than he or anyone else had previously believed. When

Imagine you have only ten minutes to live. What would you do? Imagine you have only ten days to live. What would you do? Imagine you have only ten months to live. What would you do? Imagine you have only ten years to live. What would you do? Imagine you have only the rest of your life to live. What would you do? Looking at your answers to these questions, you have a lot of information about yourself. In this exercise we are talking about your endgame. Can you think of any changes you would like to design into your self-image? Start designing and changing! None of the friends I just told you about knew when they would enter the final countdown. I don’t know when mine will come, and you don’t know yours either. One thing for sure—it is closer today than it was yesterday, and it will be closer still tomorrow. So now is the time to develop into the person you want to be.

During that first month, Walsh’s disbelief and even fear about what was happening in the White House moved her to think about quitting. Every day after that became its own countdown toward the moment she knew she wouldn’t be able to take it anymore—which would finally come at the end of March. To Walsh, the proud political pro, the chaos, the rivalries, and the president’s own lack of focus and lack of concern were simply incomprehensible. In early March, Walsh confronted Kushner and demanded: “Just give me the three things the president wants to focus on. What are the three priorities of this White House?” “Yes,” said Kushner, wholly absent an answer, “we should probably have that conversation.

Panzergrenadiere, Vorwärts, zum Siege voran! Panzergrenadiere, Vorwärts, wir greifen an! —Robert Seeger, “Lied der Panzergrenadiere

Most people enjoyed their summer break. The sunshine, the beach, the cold drinks on a hot day, and, most importantly, not being at school. But not Hannah, she didn’t find them interesting at all. Of course, most people didn’t enjoy school as much as she did. There was something about the buzz of getting things right, the way things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown calendar, that would take up a few minutes of her boring existence. “You’re not going to laze about here all summer.” Her mother, the irrepressible Coco, butted into her thoughts. She stood over her, both hands on her hips, with that ‘I’m not taking no for an answer’ look on her face. Hannah hated that look. “Well you wouldn’t let me go to summer school, so what am I supposed to do?” “Get a job, I don’t care, just get out of this house. Be normal for once in your life and have some fun.” Coco turned and left her there, letting her words sink into the seemingly impenetrable skull of her daughter. Hannah waited just long enough for it not to be because she was told, to get up and do as she was told. She picked up her handbag and made a point of slamming the front door behind her. So she was outside of the house, just like Coco ordered her. But now what? She looked from left to right at the other houses in the street. They were all exactly the same, two storey, shutters on the windows, friendly doormats on the porches. It seemed like the entire world was conforming and giving up on any hope of being an individual.

The following year, US forces in Kabul seized a computer in an al-Qaeda office and found models of a dam on it along with engineering software that could be used to simulate its failure.21

was

Bainbridge, the test director, called the explosion a “foul and awesome display.

I could have used what little money I made to add a homey feel to the place, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was temporary. That my attempt at escape was nothing but a childish delusion, and each day was nothing but a countdown until I was dragged back home and made to suffer for my crimes.

When Oppenheimer came to shake Bainbridge’s hand, the soldier did not take hold. He looked Oppenheimer in the eye and said, “Now we’re all sons of bitches.

the flight back to Washington, D.C., Nixon’s campaign manager, Leonard Hall, told the vice president the Democrats stole the election. They had received reports of voter fraud in a number of key states, including Illinois, Texas, and Missouri. He pressed Nixon to do something about it, maybe even contest the election. Nixon took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to make a hasty decision on something that would divide the nation. No, he’d have to think about that, talk it over with GOP leaders. He didn’t want to be a sore loser.

was too young. Too inexperienced. He was a Roman Catholic, no less. But with his younger brother’s brilliant campaign strategy, and his father’s money and unscrupulous connections, Kennedy had captured the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House.

Mazo explained that the election fraud he uncovered would make a difference. He might be elected president. But Nixon said it didn’t matter. The cost was too high. “Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis—and I damn well will not be a party to creating one just to become president or anything else,” Nixon said.

It didn’t mean that election fraud didn’t happen. All sides agreed that it did. It was a question of the extent of the fraud: Would it have been enough to overturn the results in key states like Texas and Illinois? And if a few select states were lawfully restored to Nixon, could the course of history have gone a different way? To this day, the questions remain unanswered.

Democracy works when there is a peaceful transition of power after an election—especially from one political party to another. Peaceful transitions require all lawmakers and citizens to uphold democratic institutions and norms, including the rule of law, despite their personal interests. Without that common agreement, democracy dies.

Gaby laughed, only halfway present as she focused on the black of the outside and a million and one thoughts whizzed through her mind. All she could really concentrate on was the countdown of the minutes until her phone rang. She may have denied it to Mia, but this in fact was life-changing. People meet every day. Few people meet and have a connection. Few people meet and have a connection with a man like Mavi Magaña. Maybe she wouldn’t be alone and maybe she wouldn’t have to settle to avoid it. It was all pleasingly petrifying.

To sum up, then, the message of the prophets in general, and Ezekiel in particular, is not simply instruction addressed to their own day and age. Still less is it a manual to help you interpret current events in the Middle East and work out the countdown to Armageddon. The message of the prophets is Jesus, and specifically “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.” Thus, when you interpret Ezekiel correctly, without allegory, you will find that his message is not primarily morality, or social action, or eschatology. His central message is Jesus.

God established the pattern of one man–one woman marriage on the sixth day of creation (Genesis 1:26-27). Any deviation from that norm—adultery, unbiblical divorce, or homosexuality—is wrong.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. —2 Peter 3:10

The long-term consequences of dropping the atomic bomb were also as poorly understood in the 1940s as the consequences of unleashing digital weapons are today - not only with regard to the damages they would cause, but to the global arms race they would create.

something about the buzz of getting things right, the way things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown

...August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but — so the evidence suggests — not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts

You couldn't bomb a plant you didn't know about, but you could possibly cyberbomb it

When he’d assumed custody of his best friend and business partner’s orphaned daughter six months ago, his patience countdowns had begun at ten. He’d always had a soft spot for Haley, but while caring for her through her dad’s illness and death, he’d grown to love her as much as if she were his. Nonetheless, after weeks of arguing night and day with F. Lee Haley, his cool-off time had stretched to fifty seconds. Then last month, she’d secretly begun cutting school to lie in bed all day and stare at the ceiling, and he’d had to raise it to a hundred.

during the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, thirteen bullocks are sacrificed. Then, every day for the next six days, one less was sacrificed until on the twenty-first there were only seven bullocks sacrificed. This countdown from thirteen to seven gave a total of seventy bullocks during those seven days. Thirteen, seven, and seventy—they had already seen how a combination of those numbers gave the year of the Messiah’s birth. This symbolism added credibility to those who believed that Yeshua was born during the Feast of Tabernacles. What did the Gospel of John say concerning the Messiah—“And the Word was made flesh, and tabernacled with us.

things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown calendar, that would take up a few minutes

But all of this confirmed that as shocking as the revelations about Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame were, they likely were just the shallow tip of a stockpile of tools and weapons the United States and Israel had built.

So carefully considering the text, we can conclude that the construction of the ark did not involve the 120 years mentioned in Genesis 6:3 but 75 years at the most. Years until the Flood Event Bible reference 120 Countdown to the Flood begins Genesis 6:3 100 Noah had Japheth, the first of his sons, when he was 500 years old Genesis 5:321, 10:212 98 Noah had Shem who was 100 two years after the Flood Genesis 11:103 ? Perhaps 95 or 96, the same time between Japheth and Shem Ham was the youngest one born to Noah and was aboard the ark, so he was born prior to the Flood Genesis 9:244; Genesis 7:135 ? Perhaps 20-40 years for all of the sons to be raised and find a wife Each son was old enough to be married before construction on the ark began Genesis 6:186 ~ 55–75 years (estimate) Noah was told to build the ark, for he, his wife, his sons, and his sons’ wives would be aboard the ark Genesis 6:187 Ark Completed ? Gather food and put it aboard the ark Genesis 6:218 7 days Loading the ark Genesis 7:2-39 0 Noah was 600 when the floodwaters came on the earth. Genesis 7:610

soon lie. The hospice nurse said she’ll pass by the end of the day. It’s odd. Some people never see it coming, others have a countdown, and I don’t know which is worse.

Isn’t it funny how you can go up and down the same hill every day and think that’s completely normal? Then suddenly you do the same thing with someone else and you can’t imagine going back to how it was before.

And so each day was converted from normal life into a countdown to unthinkable loss.

The details were right, but a small voice in the back of my head nagged that everything was still wrong. Time was running out. I could hear the clock ticking in my head, but I didn’t know what happened at the end of its countdown.

Now look at verse 22.” Ibrahim continued reading. “‘With pestilence and with blood I will enter into judgment with him; and I will rain on him and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire and brimstone.’” “Here the Lord talks of the judgment he will bring against Gog, the Russian dictator, and his allies. This will be the most terrifying sequence of events in human history to date. On the heels of a supernatural global earthquake that will undoubtedly take many lives will come a cascading series of other catastrophes. Pandemic diseases, for example, will sweep through the troops of the Russian coalition. And the attackers will face other judgments such as have rarely been seen since the cataclysmic showdown in Egypt between Moses and Pharaoh. Devastating hailstorms will hit these enemy forces and their supporters. So, too, will apocalyptic firestorms that will call to mind the terrible judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Scriptures indicate that the firestorms will be geographically widespread and exceptionally deadly.” Birjandi took a sip of tea as he let the implications of the words sink in. “Think about it, gentlemen. This suggests that targets throughout Russia and the former Soviet Union, and perhaps throughout some of Russia’s allies, will be supernaturally struck on this day of judgment and partially consumed. These could be limited to nuclear missile silos, military bases, radar installations, defense ministries, intelligence headquarters, and other

You’re absolutely certain this War of Gog and Magog has never happened before?” they pressed. “Yes,” he replied directly. “So you’re certain these are End Times prophecies?” “What does the text say?” he asked. “It says this will happen in the ‘last days.’” “Do you think this will come to pass soon?” “I don’t know,” Birjandi conceded. “But what’s intriguing to me is that as you examine the text carefully, you’ll see at least three prerequisites before the prophecy may fully come to pass.” “What are they?” Ali asked. “First,” Birjandi explained, “Israel must be reborn as a country. Second, Israel must be ‘living securely’ in the land. And third, Israel must be prosperous. Let’s consider these in reverse order.” He paused for a moment, then inquired, “Do you feel Israel is prosperous?” “Yes, of course,” Ibrahim said. “Why?” “Well, it’s certainly better off economically than any of its immediate neighbors.” “That’s true,” Birjandi said. “Israel as a nation is wealthier than Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon, and its economic growth rate is far better than Egypt’s. In fact, the Israeli economy is consistently growing at 4 or 5 percent a year—faster than any of the major industrialized countries of the West, including the United States. And did you know that the Israelis have in recent years discovered massive amounts of natural gas offshore? There is even growing speculation that there may be enough to make Israel not only energy independent but a net exporter of natural gas, mostly to Europe. And which European country would be harmed most if Israel began selling massive amounts of natural gas?” “Russia,” Ali said. “Exactly, but why?” Birjandi pressed. “Because right now they’re the major supplier of gas to Europe, and the Kremlin is getting filthy rich as a result.” “Correct again. Now let us consider Israel’s security. Obviously at the moment, the Israelis cannot be described as living securely in the land. But what if they win this war? What if they destroy all of Iran’s nuclear warheads and decimate most of our offensive military capabilities and shame the Twelfth Imam? What if they pulverize Hamas and Hezbollah, too? Wouldn’t that suddenly make them more secure than at any time since 1948?” They agreed that it would. “But you know what’s most remarkable of all?” Birjandi asked them. “So many skeptics say that the events of Ezekiel 38 and 39 will never take place, but the fact is that Ezekiel 36 and 37 have already come to pass.

Turn in the Old Testament to the book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39.” Birjandi then proceeded to walk them through a series of prophecies he said was widely known as the War of Gog and Magog. They revealed an apocalyptic showdown against Israel and the Jewish people that would be led by a nation called Magog. “There are quite a few clues that make it clear the nation referred to as Magog is modern-day Russia,” Birjandi said, “including the writings of Flavius Josephus, a Roman historian. But what’s critical for us to understand is Ezekiel 38:5. What is the first country mentioned that will form an alliance against Israel?” “Persia,” Ibrahim said. “Exactly,” Birjandi confirmed. “The ancient prophecies speak of a Russian-Iranian alliance sometime in the future. To many scholars, this has seemed very odd, given that for most of the last several thousand years, the Russians and we Iranians have never had such an alliance. Indeed, the leaders of these countries have hated each other. Until 1943, the Russians occupied parts of northern Iran. Under Khomeini, we prayed for Allah to bring judgment upon the heathen, godless, atheist Communists in the Kremlin. But then what happened? We suffered through eight years of the war with Iraq. We had lots of oil money but desperately needed new weapons. The Soviet Union imploded,

Well, it seems contradictory. Is God going to destroy us or bless us?” “Could it be a little bit of both?” the old man asked. “Look, gentlemen, the truth is that God loves the people of Iran. He has a beautiful future planned for us. He promises to bless us in the last days. But before he can bless us, he has to purify us. Which means he is going to judge our political leaders and our religious leaders and our military leaders. He’s going to break them and shatter them and consume them. Not all the people, but the leaders. See how he specifically refers to the ‘king and princes’? The Lord is talking here about judging the leadership of the country. Not the people. Quite the contrary. The Lord says he is going to restore our fortunes and move his throne here—right here, in Iran.” Ali and Ibrahim were silent, poring over the text and trying to grasp the magnitude of its importance. “Can you imagine?” Birjandi asked. “Are you saying that after God judges our leaders and military, he’s going to allow the people of Iran to become politically free and economically prosperous?” Ali asked. “That’s one interpretation, and I would certainly love to believe that. However, I lean more toward the interpretation that God specifically means he will bless the people of Iran spiritually. I believe he is going to pour out his love and forgiveness and his Holy Spirit on the people of Iran. He’s going to open their hearts and their eyes and help them to see clearly that Jesus Christ is the only Savior and Lord in this world. And when he says

Ibrahim found the passage and began to read it. “‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, I am going to break the bow of Elam, the finest of their might. I will bring upon Elam the four winds from the four ends of heaven, and will scatter them to all these winds; and there will be no nation to which the outcasts of Elam will not go. So I will shatter Elam before their enemies and before those who seek their lives; and I will bring calamity upon them, even My fierce anger,” declares the Lord, “and I will send out the sword after them until I have consumed them. Then I will set My throne in Elam and destroy out of it king and princes,” declares the Lord. “But it will come about in the last days that I will restore the fortunes of Elam,” declares the Lord.’” “Elam is Iran?” Ali asked. “Yes,” said Birjandi, still leaning back, eyes still closed. “Elam is one of the ancient names of Iran, just like Persia. The passage tells us that in the last days, God will scatter the people of Iran all over the earth. For many centuries, this seemed impossible because we Persians are such a proud and nationalistic people. But as incredible as it was, this prophecy actually began to come to pass in 1979. In that year, for the first time in history, our people were scattered all over the globe. When the Shah’s regime fell and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, Iran went into upheaval. Many were overjoyed, myself included. We were deceived. Our eyes were blinded. But many others understood the evil Khomeini represented. They understood Islam was not the answer and jihad was not the way, which is why many fled Iran as soon as they could. Guess how many Iranians now live outside our country.” “Half a million?” Ibrahim guessed.

and the Russians suddenly had lots of weapons but desperately needed money. Sure enough, in the mid nineties, Iran started buying weapons from Moscow. When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, we started buying even more weapons. When Hosseini and Darazi rose to power, we hired the Russians to help us build our first nuclear power plant and other nuclear facilities. They sold us nuclear materials and trained our nuclear scientists. Today, as you well know, we’ve developed military, diplomatic, and economic ties between our two countries, just as Ezekiel 38 suggests will happen.” Birjandi explained that the prophecies indicated that this Russian-Iranian alliance would also draw more nations. Ancient Cush, he said, was modern Sudan. Put was modern Libya and Algeria. Gomer was modern-day Turkey, and Beth-togarmah he described as a group of other countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia, all with Muslim majorities or strong Muslim minorities, that would come together under Russian leadership intending to attack Israel and plunder the Jewish people. “Now, look at 38:16,” the aging scholar said. “When does God say this war is going to happen?” Ali read the verse. “‘It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land.’” “Precisely,” Birjandi said. “So this is clearly an End Times prophecy. It’s future-oriented, not something that has already happened.” “So who wins this apocalyptic Russian-Iranian war with Israel?” asked Ibrahim.

I learned very quickly to either lie down and give up or fight for what I believe in. Every day since then I’ve been tested in ways I never thought possible. Show me a man with a brash manner and I’ll show you someone who’s respected and revered.

Most people enjoyed their summer break. The sunshine, the beach, the cold drinks on a hot day, and, most importantly, not being at school. But not Hannah, she didn’t find them interesting at all. Of course, most people didn’t enjoy school as much as she did. There was something about the buzz of getting things right, the way things were organized, and the idea you had to do something a certain way that just pleased her. It was everything else in the world that scared her. Unpredictability was a nightmare. Hannah slumped on the chair, counting in her head how many days she had to wait for the chaos to be restored. Ninety-three, that’s how many. She considered making a countdown calendar, that would

COSMOPOLITANS AT THE PARADISE Cosmopolitans at the Paradise. Heavenly Kelly's cosmopolitans make the sun rise. They make the sun rise in my blood. Under the stars in my brow. Tonight a perfect cosmopolitan sets sail for paradise. Johnny's cosmopolitans start the countdown on the launch pad. My Paradise is a diner. Nothing could be finer. There was a lovely man in this town named Harry Diner. Lighter than zero Gravity, a rinse of lift, the cosmopolitan cocktail They mix here at the Paradise is the best In the United States - pink as a flamingo and life-announcing As a leaping salmon. The space suit I will squeeze into arrives In a martini glass. Poured from a chilled silver shaker beaded with frost sweat. Finally I go Back to where the only place to go is far. Ahab on the launch pad - I'm the roar Wearing a wild blazer, black stripes and red, And a yarmulke with a propeller on my missile head. There she blows! Row harder, my hearties! - My United Nations of liftoff! I targeted the great white whale black hole. On impact I burst into stars. I am the caliph of paradise, Hip-deep in a waterbed of wives. I am the Ducati of desire, 144.1 horsepower at the rear wheel. Nights and days, black stripes and red, I orbit Sag Harbor and the big blue ball. I pursue Moby-Dick to the end of the book. I raise the pink flamingos to my lips and drink.

Time is the great intimidator, steadily stealing away precious seconds with no pause in the stealing. And such thievery leads us to believe that in time, the pilfering of these seconds will eventually exhaust all such seconds, leaving us at the ‘end’ of everything. Yet, God states that the seconds are actually the countdown to the ‘beginning’ everything.

But this wasn’t the end of it. Normal malware executes its code in a straightforward manner by simply calling up the code and launching it. But this was too easy for Stuxnet. Instead, Stuxnet was built like a Rube Goldberg machine so that rather than calling and executing its code directly, it planted the code inside another block of code that was already running in a process on the machine, then took the code that was running in that process and slipped it inside a block of code running in another process to further obscure it.

Although more than 12 million viruses and other malicious files are captured each year, only about a dozen or so zero-days are found among them.

FALLIERE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT, with the dark, Gallic looks of someone who seemed like he’d be more at home DJing trance music in an underground Paris nightclub than poring over reams of printed computer code during a commute on the Métro. In reality, he was fairly shy and reserved, and sifting through dense computer code was in fact a much bigger draw to him than spending sweaty nights in a throbbing club.

Before Stuxnet’s malicious commands went into action, the malware sat patiently on the PLC for about two weeks, sometimes longer, recording legitimate operations as the controller sent status reports back to monitoring stations. Then when Stuxnet’s malicious commands leapt into action, the malware replayed the recorded data back to operators to blind them to anything amiss on the machines

0x19790509. If it found the string, Stuxnet withdrew from the machine and wouldn’t infect it. Chien had seen “inoculation values” like this before. Hackers would place them in the registry key of their own computers so that after unleashing attack code in a test environment or in the wild, it wouldn’t come back to bite them by infecting their own machine or any other computers they wanted to protect. Inoculation values could be anything a hacker chose. Generally, they were just random strings of numbers.

Packers are digital tools that compress and mangle code to make it slightly harder for antivirus engines to spot the signatures inside and for forensic examiners to quickly determine what a code is doing.

Two of the underground buildings were each about the size of half a dozen football fields and were heavily reinforced with concrete walls about six to eight feet thick. The Iranians were obviously fortifying them against a possible air strike. The tunnel leading down to the buildings was also built in the shape of a U instead of a straight line—a common tactic to prevent missiles sent into the mouth of a tunnel from having direct aim at a target on the other end.

My days as a princess now have a set expiration date. The countdown to becoming a queen has begun.

In addition to these spreading mechanisms, Stuxnet had a peer-to-peer component that let it update old versions of itself when new ones were released. This let them update Stuxnet remotely on machines that weren’t directly connected to the internet but were connected to other machines on a local network. To spread an update, Stuxnet installed a file-sharing server and client on each infected machine,

Each time Stuxnet infected a system, it “phoned home” to one of two internet domains masquerading as soccer fan sites—mypremierfutbol.com and todaysfutbol.com. The domain names, registered by someone who used fake names and fraudulent credit cards, pointed to servers in Denmark and Malaysia that served as command-and-control stations for the attack.

That’s when the British captain, Eric Moody, made one of the most famous understatements in the history of aviation. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he told the passengers, “this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four of the engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

The month was Nisan, and the year was 445 BC. This was the moment of the prophecy; this was the start of the countdown.