Yes, I just experienced the great eastern blackout<\/b> of 2003. My first inkling of the problem came when I talking with my boss at around 4 and the lights started blinking on and off. When I got outside, I saw that the traffic lights weren’t working. I took the train to work today, as I do once a week, and wouldn’t you know, no train service home — I walked up to the station and it was quieter than a New Years morning. But there is a bus that goes near my house, so I went over to the stop and waited for about a half hour amidst a nervous crowd. After two of those busses passed without stopping, I opted for third best, a bus that gets within 2 miles of home. The ride was slow and the walk was long and hot, but I made it.<\/p>\n
It looked like it was going to be a candle-light evening without the Internet, but just after9 pm the refrigerator started rumbling and all the little red lights on my consumer electronics lit up. Twenty-first century techno-civilization was back in my neighborhood. Cool. But let this be a reminder. 21st century techno-civilization is still a very frail thing, something that can disappear in the blink of an eye. This time it was just a lightening bolt in Niagara Falls, but next time it could be a rocket-propelled grenade launched by a terrorist. The deep, terrible dark night<\/b>, which I saw along my street just a half hour ago, is never all that far away. (And the lights are still flickering a bit here).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, I just experienced the great eastern blackout of 2003. My first inkling of the problem came when I talking with my boss at around 4 and the lights started blinking on and off. When I got outside, I saw that the traffic lights weren’t working. I took the train to work today, as I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}