17 July 19

Report from Manhattan during Saturday’s power failure, from a friend and colleague:

“My wife and I had been in NYC all week.

It was still light outside early Saturday evening. We were enjoying dinner on a secluded outdoor terrace at a Manhattan restaurant.

Then, the blackout happened!

Owing to ambient light, we didn’t immediately understand what was happening, but we did note a sudden, and accelerating, increase in sirens and emergency vehicles, with their emergency lights on.

Our waiter guessed it was a local power failure, but I watched as buildings went dark, one after another, and I knew it was something much bigger!

I straightaway called our hotel. They still had power.

Hastily paying our bill and leaving our dinners on the table, we departed immediately.

We got a Lyft driver to get us out of there and back to our hotel, some distance away from the heart of the city.

We passed dark, congested streets with no traffic lights, subway stations with throngs of people spilling on to the street, and theaters in the process of unorganized evacuation.

Our quick and decisive action got us out of the center of what would turn out to be a five-hour outage and a resultant monumental, disorganized hoard of confused, directionless, often panicked humanity.

Many were isolated in upper floors of high-rise buildings, and stuck for hours in motionless elevators.

In contemptuous defiance of NYC’s ‘rules,’ otherwise known as ‘A Socialist’s Guide to Being Good Little Victims,’ we had with us our customary complement of emergency equipment, including cash, sturdy footwear, tactical flashlights, OC, pistols (concealed), blades, and fully-charged cell phones.

We’re glad it had it- all of it!

Yet, I was amazed at the percentage of apparent native New Yorkers who are utterly unprepared for this sort of thing, and were taken completely by surprise. They run-around half-naked, utterly unequipped, and wearing flip-flops.

Power failures, in NYC and elsewhere, are not exactly unprecedented!”

Comment: With any luck, my travel plans will never include NYC!

The flimsy veneer we laughingly call “civilization” is far thinner that most believe, and general panic is never more that minutes away, as we see.

The sage go prepared, everywhere!

“Superior ambitions have to do with the development of character, rather than status.

Status you can lose.

You carry character with you everywhere.”

Jordan Peterson

/John