Sandy shut off power to much of the Northeast. Could anything kill all the world's electricity?

  • 1Is it all Going to Turn Off?

    Bankrate.com

    The darkened skyline of a major metropolis may be an eerily peaceful sight, but it is never a comforting one. It almost certainly portends tragedy, as it did when lower Manhattan went dark on account of Superstorm Sandy slamming into the seaboard last year.

    Yes, many were without "Homeland" and their Twitter feed for what must have felt like an eternity, but hospitals running out of backup generators and a city with a lack of general structure have a way of compounding into, well, total disorder.

    That's also supposed to be the premise of J.J. Abram's show, "Revolution," on NBC. The intro tells of a post-apocalyptic America in which the power inexplicably went out in a worldwide blackout. The pilot includes the main character proclaiming that, "It's all going to turn off, and it will never ever turn back on!"

    Why not? If Abrams' "Lost" is any guide, we may never know. In the meantime, of course, anarchy ensues, as the world is a completely different place without power. Major outages such as the 2003 Northeast blackout might make us wonder if someday we'll all be yelling that "It's never going to come back on!" Considering we're an increasingly wired society, is a total blackout even possible?