Could a 24 hour post "lock" be placed upon new accounts created to prevent all this spam that has been clogging everything up for the past week?

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That's certainly an option. However, most people who want to post on the forums (and create an account to do so) would probably be turned off by such a restriction.

In the past week, we've implemented several changes to deal with the spam problem. This includes using Spamhaus and Stopforumspam IP/domain lookups on registration. We also now limit new accounts to three topics a day. This is in addition to the Google Captcha we use. Since we implemented these changes, the amount of spam has grown, but my experience with these types of attacks (such as DDOS attacks) is that after the attacker realizes you're fighting back, they will up their game. If you can successfully wait it out, usually they give up and leave.

If you have additional suggestions, we're all ears. We don't like the spam either.

You could deputize temporary moderators who are around at odd hours to nuke the spambots.