Solar flares? Russian nukes? Theories swirl for what caused cell outage

News Snapshot:

It was like a game of telephone, only with no cell phone service. Theories about Thursday massive disruption swirled on social media, with blame for the widespread outage leveled at US foes Russia and China, as well as aliens, solar flares and even Netflix — which some suggested created the havoc to promote an apocalyptic film with an eerily similar tech blackout. No official reason has yet surfaced for why reportedly more than 74,000 AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users lost cell service Thursday morning. Some police departments stopped receiving 911 calls during the ongoing outage, while similar issues were reported...