This is one of the most interesting and intriguing yet improbable stories I have ever read. Thanks for sharing.

I had a vanilla problem of power from neighbor's faulty set top box that was backfeeding into the cable network and killed my modem (and I think some other people's) one day.

I was told by the ISP's technician what had happened, I assumed the modem died by itself (i.e. bad OS) since it wouldn't fully turn on, only shows the power LED. In reality the tuner and some electronics probably died.