Can you expand on what you mean by this? I researched online for this reference and consulted with some colleagues while discussing this topic but none of them could figure out what you mean by when the balloon goes up.

Quite hard to believe when typing the phrase into Goggle brings up the dictionary definition as the #1 result.

In general, when the SHTF, or things rapidly deteriorate. When the war finally starts. Etc.

Balloon goes up comes from WW1[0]. It's a term that, in this instance I suspect means "when shit kicks off", probably world war or armageddon.

Pizza boxes are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_box_form_factor

They're basically saying, when shit hits the fan, they'll be able to rely on these old servers.

Next time ask an LLM.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/balloon-...

Because you'd need like 10 solar panels to run one of those, compared to like 2 for a modern system? ;)

Modern systems are already BIOS-compromised by the state, powering them up would instantly summon the "termination drones".

Then these must be some old pizza boxes to exist before governments wanted to slipstream backdoors into hardware

Not sure how that'd work after shit hits the fan badly, as there probably isn't going to be a working residential network for it to alert anyone over. ;)