Although I wasn’t there, in New York, I do remember the events adequately because it was freaky to my eight-year-old brain. My parents were watching a movie (Made for Each Other, had to look it up!) on CBS/Channel 3, WCIA and boom, right near the end, CBS crapped out. I’m certain my parents checked the only two other channels we could get, pretty much the same. Then a message came up about how the network lost its signal due to a power outage. My anxiety and immediate fear of this being a nuclear war wouldn’t kick in until St. Reagan’s reign of error.
When the local newscast followed, the main story was how New York was plunged into chaos with looting everywhere. The city wouldn’t have enough power restored until late into the following day. The finger-pointing and blame throwing was already underway given America’s biggest city already being a disaster: crime, pollution and bankruptcy mixed in with the Son of Sam murders. It was the cover story with the next Time magazine my parents subscribed to. ABC developed a made-for-TV movie about the events within a couple years to turn a bad situation into money.
I did go back to dig deeper, namely on how it happened since the 2003 debacle was better remembered and documented. Turns out there were several lightning strikes that hit over an hour before the power collapsed. As the strikes damaged electrical infrastructure, the various power companies had to adjust and compensate until they blew it…boom! Most of the five boroughs went dark. The only areas spared were parts of Queens and some sections still using Edison’s original DC power-generation stations which could only drive a few blocks. If it weren’t for Tesla’s development of AC, we’d be stuck with those clumsy DC-only solutions every half mile. I was also wrong on when the blackout officially began. My flawed memory said about 10 minutes before 10 PM Central. History says more like 9:20-9:30 PM Central was when it hit the fan.
Lately, nobody thinks much about the event, including me. What got me remembering it again was a free reprint of a Marvel What If…? comic book. It was a story asking, what if Conan the Barbarian ever visited the “real world?” What luck! He showed up in New York, during the very same blackout, protected some helpless folks from muggers and had a romantic liaison with the big-chested (female) cab driver who encountered him in the beginning. Then he returned to his mythical past, hoping to kill the sorcerer who sent him to our horrible world. I wish he showed up on January 6, 2021 and killed some of those shit head Oathkeeper thugs.