As with soybeans, power is being speculated, bought and sold on the open market for whatever the market will bring. Our utility companies are going broke fast. Business and consumers are caught up in this struggle. Silicon Valley is truly dependent on reliable power. Without power, productivity drops to zero as workers sit in their office cubicles in the dark, staring at blank screens.
Traffic signals fail and elevators stop, trapping people in the dark.
Cable systems go into standby as homes fade into darkness. Cable modems drop offline en masse, triggering a torrent of alarms at cable headends and monitoring systems. As the cable office goes dark, all of the phones go silent, monitors fade and employees look at each other in disbelief. They wait for a word from their supervisors about what to do. Moments later, the Nextel phones begin to chatter.