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American Blackout

When America's power grid is taken out by a cyber-attack, the nation is plunged into darkness for days.

2013-11-02_2259In 1983 in The Day After the threat was a nuclear attack. The telemovie from ABC had a profound effect on US audiences.

Now 30 years later the threat is cyber. What would happen if the entire power grid of the USA was shutdown in a cyber-attack?

That’s the premise of National Geographic’s movie American Blackout.

Attempting to take the form of a documentary, this combines newsreel footage together with actors in “found footage” scenes filmed on mobile phones and hand-held cameras. There’s no central character, but a cluster of groups who we follow across the days of a national disaster. This non-traditional approach works pretty well so long as you don’t suffer from camera sea-sickness (think Blair Witch, Cloverfield or Paranormal Activity).

When the blackouts begin it’s a mix of the unknown, and a bit of a party atmosphere. Some neighbourhoods have street BBQs and there is talk of a baby boom in 9 months.

Amongst those we meet are 4 students trapped in an elevator; a pregnant woman and her young family; a young couple in a penthouse apartment; a teenage vlogger at home; and a family prepared for the worst thanks to their gung-ho father.

News broadcasts working on generators also interject with the latest reports and factual information is typed upon the screen. I had no idea America’s energy for air conditioners is more than the rest of the world put together. That’s pretty sick.

Soon the party atmosphere descends into chaos as a ripple effect impacts on safety and survival. Trains and elevators stop, phone communication is cut, traffic lights are out (there are massive traffic jams and accidents), petrol stations can’t pump gas, food disappears in panic-buying, water can’t be pumped into homes, fires can’t be extinguished. Citizen turns against citizen amid panic, riots, looting, hunger and thirst -and nobody comes to help in the US of A.

The characters depicted in five scenarios all go from bad to worse as they struggle on their own. We engage with their individual stories amid the bigger, rolling disaster.

Actual footage draws upon previous disasters in New Orleans, New York, and various cities. Even President Obama can be seen issuing emergency warnings and some of the cityscape shots of buildings without power are pretty impressive.

There is never any attempt to reveal who launched the cyber-attack. It’s enough just trying to cope with the immediate disaster.

However it’s a little far-fetched to believe the characters depicted have battery-power to keep filming across the duration of the lengthy blackout (it stretches for days) so you’ll need to suspend disbelief. This works against the realism of the doco-narrative.

While I usually expect National Geographic to be slightly less histrionic in its storytelling, it’s hard to avoid the fact that a real-life American Blackout is the country’s worst nightmare just waiting to happen.

American Blackout premieres 9:30pm Monday November 4 on National Geographic.

6 Responses

  1. I tried to watch this but I found it to cheesy for me. I enjoy the SI-FI Revolution series much more, better story line and acting. But back onto the American Blackout I just could not stand the acting and hated the fact that they used footage from Hurricane Sandy.

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