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I used to dabble in the vintage stereo culture a bit. Like us with our cars, there are audiophiles who are devoted to one make over others, tube vs. transistor etc. The hunt for vintage tubes, NOS parts is every bit as fun and challenging too. Purists tend to view eastern European tubes as a mixed blessing. While certainly a necessity to keep the hobby going, like everything else there’s a wide variation in quality. And guys who swear they can "hear" differences between different batch runs of vacuum tubes let alone different brands are not easily satisfied. Quality control standards apparently not nearly as high in Eastern Europe as when Westinghouse or Zenith made tubes.

There's a novel from maybe 15 years ago titled "One Second After" about a targeted low level nuclear attack on North America using the resulting EMP to take out things like communications and the electrical grid rather than destroying cities. It paints a rather bleak picture as to how dependent modern civilization might be in terms of a fragile technology. Found the premise very thought provoking and very disturbing to say the least.