The first lightening strike hit a substation on the Hudson River, tripping two circuit breakers in Westchester County. The second lightening strike resulted in the loss of two 345, 000 volt transmission lines. Of course, when the lights all went out and everybody panicked, people started looting and vandalising, with the worst areas hit including the suburb of Crown Heights. People even started intentionally setting fire to houses and small businesses. The subway services were halted and both the LaGuardia and Kennedy airports were closed.
Nowadays, NYC is known as "the city that never sleeps". It's always lit up with thousands and thousands of lights. You see all the hipster photos of the city centre lit up, all the high-rises with all their windows lit up. Can you imagine if as large a blackout occurred nowadays? Not just in NYC but also in the other large capital cities? I mean, what if Tokyo had a large blackout? Or even cities like Sydney or Melbourne? What would happen then? And the fact that people started stealing and setting fire to things doesn't really bode well for humanity, that we would lose our heads so quickly and kind of go into a headless panic.
I bet that it's all because of some lingering fear of the dark like when we were kids. Probably.
Image available: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/07/summer_of_sam_revisited_the_19.html
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