When the power goes out: what do you do? I remember the Blackout of 2003, a hot time in the city. People cooked up everything in the fridge in giant backyard barbecues. People talked. The cellphone had not yet entirely taken over, but it was getting there. With power out, a certain ratio of chaos strafed the roadways. Many businesses shut down for days; others, like bars and restaurants, kept going until supplies ran out. With cash registers knocked off line, ad hoc transactions flew to the fore. I got out of Detroit with a tank full of gas, a fully charged mobile phone and a grilled hamburger donated by neighbors, dodging traffic and heading for Chicago, still powered up.
Now, mass power outages are even more disruptive to the fragile ecosystem of advanced technology. Katrina pretty much indicated how bad things could get in the USA, short of full-scale war. In Iraq and in many countries, the power grid has gone down often, sometimes with notice, often without. When the power goes out, good luck!
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
3 comments:
Erik, we usually bail to the beach house where there is still Thumb Power!
Yep, pretty scary. I have a grill so the first thing I do when a long term outage hits us is barbecue all the meat in the fridge.
You may recall that Chicago had a brutal heat wave in 1995 in which hundreds, mainly the elderly poor, died, because they couldn't open their windows or leave their homes due to fear of crime. We had a blackout in my area that lasted several days. I was home with a year old baby who to this day hates heat.
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