The Flicker

Incident 02-01-2016, otherwise known as "The Flicker", is a prominent event that transpired in the Backrooms, and is still ongoing in considerable capacity. The event's start is marked by the occurrence of a Backrooms-wide anomaly, wherein, at exactly 2:21 PM on February 1st, 2016, every Backrooms level underwent a total blackout. All electrical power sources failing across every level, along with every outdoors level temporarily losing their suns and/or moons, resulted in the entirety of the Backrooms descending into absolute darkness for an extended period of time.
The effects of The Flicker were all-encompassing and quite complex in nature, so for the purposes of simplicity, these effects will be summarized and categorized into its most notable traits and events, listed in general order of occurrence.
== The Initial Failure ==
With no warning prior to the Flicker's beginning, almost all wanderers and outposts were left stranded within moments, almost every electronic means of communication collapsing due to outages - including internet - and many explorers not having reliable personal light sources such as flashlights when the lights went out. As a result, details about the events of the initial power failure are sparse at best, nonexistent on average.
One of the first communities to successfully re-establish communications would be Base Blink on Level 1, trying their best to spearhead coordination and recovery efforts across any settlements they could contact. These efforts would progress at a snail's pace for much of the incident, however, with the first few days of isolation alone inciting mass hysteria and dealing the first signs of attrition. Many settlements began to crack due to the blackout within just the first week, and few even threatened to collapse completely. 
Most notable among the struggling communities - as well as a community that would ultimately be devastated by the Flicker - was the Megacolony of Level 399, with its ranks suffering casualties almost immediately as residents repeatedly fell in the Plane of Clouds while trying to get food, only to strangely never reappear safely as expected. Further casualties would mount before the end of the first week as some residents attempted to venture out into other levels for food and supplies, few if any returning as the colony's stockpiles began to dwindle at an alarmingly rapid pace.
It almost goes without mention how many lone wanderers found themselves in almost immediate peril as the Flicker hit, being away from colonies or perhaps not even having contacted one yet before becoming lost in the dark. Even still, however, the estimated total of those declared missing both within the first week and going further forward amounted to staggering numbers for many, with some speculating that the total vanished wanderers during the incident numbered easily somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. It is after recovery from the Flicker finally began in earnest that such estimations brought about the theory of the Night, a hypothesized "living level" that abducted many missing wanderers by unknown means.
== Mass Entity Disruption ==
Very soon into the Flicker, many wanderers began to notice and report sharp upticks in entity behavior, almost certainly emboldened by the darkness. While this increase in activity was likely relatively minor initially, one entity that drastically surged in sightings almost immediately were smilers. Reports would come in droves as the event went on of these entities appearing in levels hitherto thought devoid of activity (such as Level 37), and utterly overwhelming levels already dangerous for wanderers (such as Level 3).
As the event continued on, activity from other hostile entities would only grow in tandem. Possibly the most infamous example of this threat would come to be the incursion on Level 6.1, taking place a fair length after the initial blackout. The level's manmade complex - which had already been overcrowded by scores of refugees from other colonies - would suffer heavy losses in both lives and secure territory as its inhabitants barely managed to regain control in time to fortify what remained of the colony, creating the current perimeter zone known as the Food Court.
Arguably most devastating of all, however, would be the actions of those infected with Sanguine Festivus during the course of the blackout. Starting within just the first two weeks of the initial failure, broadcasts began being detected on radio communications and internet telecoms falsely directing those lost or seeking refuge to SFV encampments as contact was lost with several lesser settlements. 
This activity would eventually peak with an all-out invasion of the Level 399 Megacolony by SFV forces, with survivors describing seeing hundreds of residents killed, and thousands dragged off for later infection. Many victims of the virus present were said to be wearing tattered Party Crasher disguises salvaged from casualties in the Euphoric War just a few years prior (presumably how the SFV forces were able to gain entry to the Megacolony in the first place), and some eyewitnesses even claimed that the group was personally led by Caius Taggert - AKA the "Party Host" - himself. To this day, the several-day-long incursion is referred to as the "Second Euphoric War" by many in the Backrooms, including most members of the Party Crashers.
== The Grim Discoveries ==
While much of the Flicker saw devastating effects and events unfold, it also surprisingly saw advancements made in the exploration of the Backrooms, with several levels of note being found during the peak of the blackout that have been named by some researchers as "the Grim Discoveries".
One of the first levels discovered amidst this period of time would be Level 188. Initially thought to be some superstition spawned from darkness-induced paranoia (particularly due to the bizarre nature of the level's entrance), the level quickly became a curiosity to many groups in the Backrooms due to its properties and incredibly confined size. This initial discovery would result in a brief spike in expedition and colonization missions throughout the Backrooms despite the effects of the blackout, resulting in further newly-found locales.
The Grim Discoveries would eventually contribute to even further exploration and more new levels with the Flicker's (technical) passing, with findings such as Level 188.1 being made thanks to routes through locales found during the blackout. Many groups even attribute the influx of discovered levels to their adoption of the Casper-Bray Numbering System, cementing it as the method of categorization for all normal levels in the Backrooms.
== The Collapse ==
As the Flicker dragged on, its negative effects would only compound and mutate, further inflicting dangers and difficulties on all wanderers in the Backrooms, eventually reaching a tipping point that would send shockwaves across all known levels. 
Base Blink would be among the first settlements to notice temperatures in the Backrooms beginning to steadily decline around February 10th, 2016, further adding onto resource strain for many settlements as environments in some levels crept towards freezing conditions. Several questionable reports however would simultaneously claim the inverse happening in some levels, reports of Level 37 for example ranging from claims of its waters reduced to solid ice, to claims of thick steam and sweltering heat choking its halls. 
In the wake of freezing conditions, high entity populations, and waves of refugees from lesser communities, many major settlements and even entire groups began to collapse outright by this point, with dozens never managing to recover. The biggest of these communities to fall would be the M.E.G. and its many colonies, with New London descending into chaos within just two weeks of the Flicker's onset and never returning to M.E.G. control. Just a few weeks afterwards, organization within the group would crumble and membership would drop exponentially as 60% of its personnel died or disappeared, leaving the current state of the organization a shell of its former self.
Even entity-led communities weren't spared devastation during the blackout. Presumably due to confusion and miscommunication caused by the Flicker's conditions, the civilizations of glowfolk and penumbras quickly developed hostilities towards each other within the first couple weeks of darkness in the Backrooms, soon escalating into an all-out military conflict between the two as dozens of penumbra tribes formed a coalition army and attempted an invasion of the glowfolk home level. This would later backfire with the glowfolk launching their own counter-offensive, besieging Level 813 and decimating 1/3 of the penumbra population at the time (or roughly 700k) in what the penumbras would later refer to as "The False Dawn". Many consider the exchange between these two entity species to be one of the bloodiest - if not the single bloodiest - event of the Flicker.
== Arrival of the Lueks ==
As the Flicker reached the height of its devastation, stories would begin to spread of a strange new entity in the Backrooms. Wanderers would appear at settlements claiming they had been stranded in the dark or pursued by hostile entities only to be rescued by a towering emaciated figure dressed in rags with a head made of pure glimmering light. Before long, even photographs began to make their way to colonies depicting these creatures, with many soon thereafter referring to them as "lueks".
To this day, little is known about the lueks outside of their behavior towards humans. Nothing can be said about where they came from, what caused them to first appear during the blackout, or what their motivations were for intervening and assisting during the Flicker. What meager information we do know about them is that given the nature of their sudden appearance, they are not bound by the same rules as other entities in the Backrooms. Many wanderers report sighting them on levels that even during the blackout had no signs of entities, describing how the presence of a luek nearby would send hostile entities running and how short-circuited lights nearby would briefly roar to life again as they passed by.
Stories of luek encounters describe them helping to guide wanderers to settlements or otherwise safe places, procuring food and medicine from their robes to offer to those they found in need, and even chasing off packs of hostile entities threatening endangered settlements. M.E.G. operatives would even recount being stranded in New London as it collapsed only for a pair of lueks to enter the city and drive off the entities besieging it, before rounding up all surviving citizens still within the settlement and leading them to safety at Base Blink before vanishing into the dark.
As the blackout began to conclude, however, so too did the presence of the lueks. Sightings of the entities dried up as the Backrooms would begin to recover, with the last confirmed sighting being just before 2016's conclusion. While rumors still circulate of them appearing here and there to help wanderers lost in dark levels, most consider them to now be all but gone from the Backrooms, having vanished just as strangely as they appeared.
== Scars of the Blackout ==
Just as it was the first settlement to adapt to the outage, Base Blink would celebrate as Level 1 became the first level to regain power on April 26th, 2016, with its inhabitants declaring that the Flicker's end was finally in sight. Slowly but surely, more locales would regain light as the months dragged on, with over half of all known levels having their power restored before the year's end. Other levels however would see the event drag on far longer as power would take years to finally return, only be restored partially, or outright never come back online. As of this document's writing, the most recent level to regain light is Level 7, its skies finally bright again as of October 3rd, 2023.
As for many of the levels that have regained power (even partially), they have been left somehow altered by the effects of the Flicker. These alterations take a wide variety of forms, but one common feature throughout many affected levels seems to be the "derelict" nature they have taken on, appearing as though they've fallen into disrepair and being absent of any life they were previously noted to have had - or to the contrary, being overrun with entities or otherwise now being extremely dangerous.
Locales such as Level Fun, Level 188, and presumably Level ! have been altered by unknown forces and left almost unrecognizable compared to their pre-blackout states, while yet more levels such as Level 6.1 have been greatly damaged by the known events of the Flicker and are now a shadow of their former selves. Even locations not discovered until after the initial blackout's end are believed to have been altered by the outage, such as Level 271. 
==The Surge==
Even after the blackout's conclusion, many claim that the Flicker itself is not yet over. Many levels are still without light, many groups and settlements still have yet to recover, and many places have been left permanently altered by the event's effects. For some levels even, the initial blackout has now become just that - the "initial" one.
Several levels have seen additional outages since regaining light, with periods of darkness bringing on the same dropping temperatures and disruptions in entity behavior before letting up again days or weeks later. Many colonies have been forced to permanently adapt to operating in darkness due to this - and yet more elsewhere have adapted out of fear of their level suffering an outage next - with many communities trending towards more militaristic existences, building layers upon layers of defenses and arming their residents with anything they can. 
Larger groups especially have moved to invest further in fighting back the elements of the Backrooms rather than just running away, with groups like the M.E.G. arming their members with the best weapons they can such as kalthoff rifles, and the Party Crashers increasing their patrols and relief efforts to levels exceeding that prior to the Euphoric War, actively recruiting as many new members as they can from settlements all across the Backrooms.
For many, they claim that the Flicker has not ended, but rather instead has simply entered a new stage. Wanderers now set out from their home outposts armed and on-edge, trade routes have grown more numerous and heavy-trodden, and scores of the Backrooms' residents now claim that this already dangerous environment is no longer safe. For many, the Flicker has evolved into "the Surge", a time where few now take light for granted, and most refuse to let their guard down.
Because if it happened once, it could always happen again.
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Category:Phenomena
Category:The Flicker