Jason Makansi | Author

Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, The Global Economy and What it Means to You (Wiley & Sons, 2007)

Chapter 1 | Night of the Living Dead | excerpt

You are into day three without electricity at your residence. The heat wave is scorching and you have no air-conditioning. Friends up the street who really can’t stand the heat booked what they claim was one of the last rooms available at a hotel still connected to the grid. All the food in the refrigerator is fast becoming fodder for the dumpster. The security system has exhausted its last electrons of backup battery power.

The line last night at the only Mickey D’s still able to serve up burgers was brutal. The land-line phones in the house have been down since the storm blew through because they are all remotes that require an electrical connection. You’ve resorted to burning gasoline in your car to keep the cell phone charged up and your body cool, but you are wondering if you can refill the automobile’s tank because half the local stations can’t run their pumps. You’re taking quick showers, careful to use as little hot water as possible, knowing that the water heater’s controls are also electronic and don’t work without power.

In the initial hours of the outage, you learned to live without Internet and cable television. These aren’t essentials, you think to yourself, although your kids have a different opinion and have spent most of the day moving from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another. Meanwhile, more gasoline is consumed.

You go upstairs to use the bathroom and discover that the water tank on the toilet isn’t filling back up. That’s weird. The cold water supply to the sink and the bathtub are also low. Check with the neighbors. Same issue. Is there a connection to the electrical outage? Perhaps. The city water system may have lost one or more of the pumps that keep the water pressure high enough to reach the upper floors of homes. Or the water flows had to be redirected because of pump outages, a water main broke from being overloaded, and less water is now in the system. Indeed, in the morning you read that a water main broke less than a mile from your home.
Many of the neighbors have fled to relatives or friends who live in outlying areas. They’ve been told of the news reports presaging no relief from the heat wave.

On the first night or two, there was some comfort, even gaiety, as neighbors gathered on front porches to share storm stories while curious others walked by with their dogs and kids. You were busy keeping chins up in the face of adversity and just thankful that no one in the neighborhood was hurt. Now, it’s the third night without power. The neighborhood is eerily quiet. No lights, no security systems. The city’s a mess with thousands of trees down. Police, firefighters and even the National Guard are working to locate individuals who may be at risk of heat stroke. You live in a historic city neighborhood where gang-related petty crime is always an issue, but now everyone’s talking about looting. How long before the frustration turns to anger, anger turns to opportunity, and gangs of marauding youth begin plundering the homes?