* I don’t know how you first reacted, but a wave of dread enveloped me when the announcers suddenly fell silent and the lights began extinguishing during last night’s Super Bowl blackout. It was kinda like the feeling I used to get during the Cold War at the start of those “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin” announcements.

* I had to turn to Twitter after a couple minutes because CBS just wasn’t giving anybody any information about what was going on. Thankfully, ABC was on the case…

ABC News reporting Dept. of Homeland Security says “nothing nefarious” about Superbowl power outage #superbowl #abc7chicagonews

— Ravi Baichwal (@BaichwalABC7) February 4, 2013

* After feeling a sense of relief that we weren’t under attack again, I noticed that lots of people I follow retweeted the Johnny-on-the-spot Oreos post…

Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

AdAge had a great piece on the company’s tweet…

The Oreo graphic was “designed, captioned and approved within minutes,” according to Sarah Hofstetter, president of the cookie brand’s digital agency of record, Dentsu-owned360i. All the decisions were made in real time quickly because marketers and agency members were sitting together at a “mission control” center, or a social-media war room of sorts, at the agency’s headquarters in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan. Among those who were there were two brand team members from Oreo, and nearly a dozen creatives, strategists, community managers and social-media listeners.

It took just five minutes to post that tweet.

* Major League Baseball also got into the, um, game…

We thought we’d take this brief pause to remind you pitchers and catchers report in 8 days.

— MLB (@MLB) February 4, 2013

And…

8 days. We repeat EIGHT DAYS: twitter.com/MLB/status/298…

— MLB (@MLB) February 4, 2013

* My former intern Barton Lorimor must’ve been having flashbacks…

I pity the intern whose job it is to reset all of the clocks on microwaves in the Superdome box suites.

— Barton Lorimor (@bartonlorimor) February 4, 2013

* Best Illinois tweet…

Change of pace –> rich people stuck in the Superdome in a crisis.

— John Fritchey (@johnfritchey) February 4, 2013

* Some locals used the opportunity to mock the President…

WH says don’t worry, the power is recovering.

— Dan Curry (@dancurry) February 4, 2013

* Others tried to make a broader political point…

Would now be a good time to have a discussion about the nation’s decaying infrastructure? #SuperBowlHalfBlackOut

— MrJM (@misterjayem) February 4, 2013

And…

RT @lucyalloyd: Dear #NOLA, every ComEd customer feels your pain. #twill

— Scott Musser (@S_Musser) February 4, 2013

* My personal fave…

Superdome lights return as all 53 49ers are lying motionless on ground. Whereabouts of Ray Lewis unknown #SuperBowl

— Onion Sports Network (@OnionSports) February 4, 2013

* And my own take at the time…

Doesn’t CBS have any reporters at the superdome who could fill us in?Learned more about outage from Twitter

— Rich Miller (@capitolfax) February 4, 2013

* I have to admit that I was confused at first about the #SB47 hashtag, thinking it must be a bill number. I even looked it up. Nope, that couldn’t be it.

Apparently, I spend way too much time thinking about Illinois politics.

Your own thoughts?

…Adding… My favorite Super Bowl ad also had a local angle. Ram Trucks used the late, great Illinoisan Paul Harvey in its moving spot…

Share the video and Ram will make a donation to “support FFA and assist in local hunger and educational programs.”