Lights Out by Ted Koppel

[ZanaHart]

I did a review with reading notes of the book. My one quibble was that he only lightly touched on distributed energy, things like solar panels on rooftops. When we lived in Colorado, we had those on our house. Now, just on our old motorhome. I have Mormon ancestors and even though my grandparents left that church, the tendency to stock up has come down through the generations.

[Gregg]

3 months seems like a long time for a hurricane or tornado-induced blackout.

We lost power for just over 6 weeks in an ice storm when I was a kid. We lived on a ranch and were pretty much self-sufficient so it was little more than inconvenient for us. All of us kids actually thought it was fun and I think my dad even liked it a little bit. Mom not so much since she didn't have power in their house until she was in high school (in the mid-1950s) and she had no desire to go backwards. Anyway, if we had been in a city instead of out on the great plains it would have been an entirely different story.

I haven't read Koppel's book yet, but did listen to a Commonwealth Club podcast where he was the guest speaker talking about it. I have to say that I didn't hear him say anything that didn't make sense or that I didn't agree with. Pretty scary stuff when you start talking about the worst cases.

[catherine]

We lost power for just over 6 weeks in an ice storm when I was a kid.

I didn't win points with my classmates during the Blackout of 1965, when I was in 8th grade. All the kids used it as an excuse to not do our homework assignment (which Sister Theresa Claire bought), but not only did I do mine (by candlelight), I then wrote a poem and presented it to the class about what it's like to do your homework with no power. Yeah, I was not voted the most popular kid in class that year.

[ZanaHart]

Just saw this on the internet news

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/politi...security-hack/

Might not have given it a thought before reading Koppel's book.