Did SE accidentally trip up and create a denial of service attack on multiple ISPs across the US? I mean network protocols should be able to handle thread safe conditions unless someone was very sloppy in their programming.

If I were them I would just be like "Line of code: 30,001 => Caused this issue, we have are working on a hot fix but in the meantime please be patient. This was an unforeseen error introduced in 'X' patch"

I mean vague messages do not get stuff solved. When they have no idea what caused it that's a bigger infrastructure issue, and will likely occur again.