Thats pretty much what happened here in Australia (or maybe just WA?). Several people injured (severely?) and the police basically said no more run and grab style super limited discounts. We still get the holiday sale (here its day-after-xmas 'boxing day' sale) just noone gets things like 50-75% off half a dozen high ticket items...

I do kind of wish we had a pre-xmas sale to save on gifts though... the good ones are after or at mid year :(

Actually, I'm not sure you would want this mode of failure if you were actually at war (a la cold war-war). Denying your enemy to fight back just by breaching the system is probably just as effective as neutralising them as hitting them with some missile.
Actually penetrating the system and using your enemies armaments against themselves is just getting cocky...
Although in today's "terrorist" wars, a fail-unusable situation is better than having all the codes set to 00000...

Discussing open network initiatives with members of '%' government? Inconceivable!