Why my Amazon EC2 instance limit is zero by default?

I was successfully using Amazon S3 for some time. Now I was trying to start EC2 instance, but I got an error about exceeding my limit.

I went to "Limits" tab in EC2 menu and I see that all my instance limits are set to zero.

I've sent a limit increase request about 16 hours ago but got no reply.

1. Is that normal that all EC2 instance limits are set to 0 by default?
2. Is than normal that there is no reply to my request for 16 hours already?

Thanks!

To answer your questions directly.

0) Limits protect AWS infrastructure from overuse, prevent significant loss by fraud, and prevent customers from running up large bills unintentionally. More here. For example, if your access keys are made public by mistake someone could spin up many p2.16xlarge instances to run crypto currency mining at $14/hr.

1) No. The region you select should allow at least one t2.micro, as per the free tier. Once you establish that you will actually pay your bill AWS will raise limits.

2) I wouldn't call 16 hours unusual. The first time I requested an increase it took 12 hours to reply and 4 days to do the increase. The second time it took a couple of hours to reply and around 36 hours to do the increase.

Edit August 2018

I was on an AWS training course recently. We had scripts create a number of AWS accounts. One of those accounts had a limit of zero EC2 instances in some regions, with only a single t2.micro and another t2 instance size I don't recall available. I got an email in the next 12 hours saying the limits had been increased and instances could be created. There's was a theory that the region we were using (US-East-1) had some kind of a temporary resource constraint.

So in some cases the answer is "be patient, limits will automatically increase". The default limits do increase over time, which I assume is to protect AWS against people and automated systems taking advantage of their free tier.