Zap!

Suppose you woke up late tomorrow because your alarm clock didn’t go off. Then you notice that the power is out. Eventually you come to realize that nothing that uses electricity will work. Something fundamental changed and electricity simply doesn’t work anymore (we’ll ignore lightning for the moment, and bioelectricity, as well as the fact that this would only happen if the fundamental nature of the universe changed).

Obviously society can thrive without electricity, as it did for thousands of years. But being reduced overnight to such a so-called “primitive” state would result in some serious trouble for the world. The entire economy would collapse. Your bank account would no longer exist. I know I don’t carry cash these days, and I doubt the banks have any paper records anymore. We’d be back on the gold standard instantly.

So you’d have no money and no car because the electrical system, including the starter and sparkplugs, doesn’t work. We would be reduced to steam power. The internet would be gone instantly. We would have to go back to hand-operated printing presses. There would be no movies or computer games or even radio. We’d have to read for entertainment!

Assuming we didn’t all starve or kill each other off, I think we’d eventually overcome most of the problems, though. People are resilient. I’m sure we’d still be able to annoy each other sufficiently without blogs.