When India’s vulture population mysteriously collapsed, the consequences were deadly: festering carcasses, a surge in rabies, and ancient rituals left undone. In this eerie bonus episode of Phantom Bytes, we follow the chilling parallel between the vanishing of nature’s cleanup crew and the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattack—a digital poisoning that turned trusted monitoring software into a silent weapon. From dead skies to compromised networks, this story reveals what happens when the guardians we depend on are the first to fall.