Electricity.  The energy that keeps our lives running smoothly, a convenience we begin to take for granted.  Everything from lights to refrigerators to chargers and signals (and thus our phones and laptops and the internet) all depend on one thing to continue functioning.  And while I could go on a whole spiel about the sources of electricity and how we are killing our planet and messing with the Earth’s climate—something on which every known living thing depends—I’m going to go in a different direction; I’m going to discuss how quickly our lives can fall apart when we lack electricity itself.

              Some of you already know this, but for those of you that don’t—I work at a campground called Driftstone on the Delaware in Mt. Bethel, Pennsylvania.  I mainly work in the store, where we take calls and reservations, check people in and out, handle customer service, and sell and stock goods, among other things.  Well let’s just say that this past weekend was not the best weekend to go back to work.  Saturday afternoon, right around 4:30 pm, a power surge through the outside electric lines left us without power.  Now, since this is actually a pretty common occurrence and Driftstone is a small business, we do have a backup generator just in case.  But what happens when you don’t have a generator or a generator malfunctions?  What happens when everything goes wrong?

            Seeing as that is exactly what happened, let me tell you.  And keep in mind, this is not, in any way, an exaggeration…

            So when the power at the campground goes out, we hook the tractor up to the generator and power the store and bathrooms so business can continue pretty much as normal.  But this weekend when we hooked up the tractor?  Everything was shot to hell.  Because this time, the generator wasn’t working correctly and power surges were being sent into the store, wreaking havoc wherever they went.

            Imagine walking into a store, and seeing all the lights along the ceiling flickering on and off, on and off.  You look back to the ice cream freezer and dairy case only to see the lights go out and find they are no longer working.  The ice freezer begins to make a noise that sounds a lot like a roller coaster decompressing at the end of a ride, going off every 5 minutes or so.  Then the computers start to smoke, the copier refuses to work, and the registers both blow.  Next go the games in the game room, and then you hear that none of the washers or dryers in the bathhouse are working.  Without the generator going there isn’t any electricity to work the well pump, and without the pump…well, no well, no water.  Somehow the one phone in the store still works, but while you can receive calls, you can’t dial calls out.

            So once we realize that the generator is what’s causing this slew of problems, it’s turned off.  The generator from my house down the street is brought over, as well as another employee’s generator.  This allows us to power the ice cream freezer and ice freezer as well as the back fridge (which is somehow still working), but also leaves my family and another’s without power at our houses—and my house is old and creaky and pretty dang creepy when pitch black and lit only by candles.  Campers are complaining, the power company keeps pushing back the time when the power lines will be fixed, and all transactions in the store are being recorded and categorized by hand.

            In other words, it was terrible, almost beyond description.  And even when the power came back on, most of the machines and appliances were still down.  A few power surges and the business was left scrambling, attempting to continue normal operating procedures while missing vital equipment.

            Imagine if this wasn’t just a local power surge.  Imagine something like this but on a larger scale, bringing down counties, states, or even countries.  Imagine the chaos, the panic, the helplessness.  See the smoke, the flickering lights, the darkened cities.  Watch people scramble around searching for power, somewhere, anywhere, while everyone else does the same.  What would happen?   Would we all band together to face this challenge, or would society fall to ruin as everyone turned against everyone else?  Who would hold the conch, and how long would it be before we all turned savage?

            Only one person staying at the campground ended up angry rather than just annoyed at the loss of power.  But if that one person is multiplied by a thousand or a million?  What then?  Could you handle the inconvenience?...

P.S.  Everyone should comment!!  Had any horrible power outage/electricity experiences of your own?  What do YOU think would happen if your area or the nation or the globe was left without power, even for a short time?  Any random comments or topic ideas?  Speak to me!!!