Ray9
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2016
- 2,707
- 4,471
- 1,970
Pay close attention to what’s going on in California-blackouts and power outages due to wildfires sparked by leaking energy from giant, isolated transformers high above the ground susceptible to wind and elements of weathering.
We are modern humans and we owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The magic juice that comes through wires has transformed the world in ways that allow humanity to escape the drudgery of survival that separates us from the animal kingdom. Electricity is power and that power can be used in place of human sweat to stay warm, launder clothes, operate heavy machinery, light cities and homes and communicate at the speed of light from coast to coast.
When what we now take for granted is suddenly taken away, cold-turkey reality descends on us like a time machine erasing comfort, safety and security leaving us in the dark, the cold, the dirty and the uncertain. The genie that came out of that bottle is not our slave, it is our master, but it is a master built on a foundation of outdated, archaic, methodology that has remained in a near-static state changing only in grudgingly small ways leaving itself vulnerable to natural and unnatural threats.
The Panama Canal was dug in 11 years; the interstate highway system took about four decades to complete yet the delivery system of US electrical grids is essentially the same as it was in the early nineteenth century when the Tesla Coil and alternating current won out over Thomas Edison. Today much of our electricity comes to us through copper wires strung through poles just as signals from the first telegraph were sent when it replaced the Pony Express in the 1860’s.
It’s windy and dry in California and fires are ignited by a grid that’s the same as it was when Franklin Roosevelt called for electricity to be delivered to rural farms in the 1930’s. Why are these power companies not updating and upgrading putting the wires underground and protected like they do in cities?
A few months without electricity due to a natural event or a terrorist act will regress us back to animals. Why are those that control the strings of electrical power never called on this? Electricity is as important to humanity as the discovery of fire making or agriculture. Not worried? Wait till it’s gone.
We are modern humans and we owe a great debt of gratitude to Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The magic juice that comes through wires has transformed the world in ways that allow humanity to escape the drudgery of survival that separates us from the animal kingdom. Electricity is power and that power can be used in place of human sweat to stay warm, launder clothes, operate heavy machinery, light cities and homes and communicate at the speed of light from coast to coast.
When what we now take for granted is suddenly taken away, cold-turkey reality descends on us like a time machine erasing comfort, safety and security leaving us in the dark, the cold, the dirty and the uncertain. The genie that came out of that bottle is not our slave, it is our master, but it is a master built on a foundation of outdated, archaic, methodology that has remained in a near-static state changing only in grudgingly small ways leaving itself vulnerable to natural and unnatural threats.
The Panama Canal was dug in 11 years; the interstate highway system took about four decades to complete yet the delivery system of US electrical grids is essentially the same as it was in the early nineteenth century when the Tesla Coil and alternating current won out over Thomas Edison. Today much of our electricity comes to us through copper wires strung through poles just as signals from the first telegraph were sent when it replaced the Pony Express in the 1860’s.
It’s windy and dry in California and fires are ignited by a grid that’s the same as it was when Franklin Roosevelt called for electricity to be delivered to rural farms in the 1930’s. Why are these power companies not updating and upgrading putting the wires underground and protected like they do in cities?
A few months without electricity due to a natural event or a terrorist act will regress us back to animals. Why are those that control the strings of electrical power never called on this? Electricity is as important to humanity as the discovery of fire making or agriculture. Not worried? Wait till it’s gone.
