My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated

One home tinkerer lifted a cable in his bomb-shelter server nook and watched his “MiLiTaRy GrAdE” fiber line turn to cookie crumbs. The armored jacket from FS.com disintegrated in seconds, exposing wiry guts, and every attempt to tape it back just triggered more breakages. Cue the internet piling on. The spiciest take: “’Military grade’ is snake oil,” snarled one commenter, roasting the marketing hype while others posted memes dubbing it “crumb‑grade.” Another camp went full science: one reader wondered, “Could something be generating ozone in there?” — suggesting a reactive gas might be eating the plastic. A third group chimed in with lived experience: “soft-touch usb cables… disintegrate like this,” blaming certain rubbery coatings that turn to dust over time, even untouched. Practical voices arrived to clean up the mess: humidity blamed, storage with tight coils slammed, and a chorus sang “install conduit or cry,” arguing you should run cables through replaceable tubes rather than burying them under concrete. The original poster’s regret was real: skip the armoring for moving parts, use a wall patch panel, and swap cheap-to-replace lines like LSZH (low-smoke, safer plastic) when needed. Outcome? A home office on life support—and a comment section at full burn.