Everything as we know it has ended, as Google’s ubiquitous instant messenger GoogleTalk has suffered a worldwide outage. With people cut off from their loved ones, colleagues, and randoms they added because they were drunk at the time, civilisation as we know is has collapsed into a state of primordial chaos.

Google is reportedly working to fix the problem, but at press time, unconfirmed reports of robot megasharks in downtown Tokyo and giant velociraptors in Bergvliet are inundating social networks, as people scramble to stock up on supplies and ammo.

“I knew I should have built that underground bunker in the backyard,” said one survivor. “But you just don’t ever expect something like this to actually happen. I don’t know where my children are, or if they’re even still alive. Who will I share my lolcat links with now?”

We’ll keep you updated until the power grid shuts down.

UPDATE 15:09

Gtalk still down.

Terrifying scene from Cape Town, as the city is engulfed in vengeful waters.

UPDATE 16:30 (James)

Google’s Gtalk service has been experiencing a prolonged downtime today, and numerous South African users can still not use the popular messenger program.

Google confirmed the problems which started early on Thursday morning, saying that “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Talk”.

Shortly after its first announcement which was made at 12:40, the company said that “We’re aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users. The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior.”

The latest from the company, at 15:50, is that “We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 4:50 PM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.”

UPDATE 16:46 (Tarryn)

We have had to shoot James for food. Quinton and Jeremy have left MyGaming HQ to scavenge for garlic and fresh dill while I prepare a white wine cream sauce over the burning remains of our salary cheques. Money will be of no use to us in the Gtalk post-apocalypse.

UPDATE 16:55 (Zombie James)

Braaaaaiiiiiins…

UPDATE 16:58 (Tarryn)

Gtalk back up and running. We’ll miss James. Actually, we are missing him right now – his body has disappeared from the copier room.