The Last Blackout

By David Lipschitz

BLACKOUT

It’s a rainy winter’s day in Cape Town. I wake up to find load shedding is happening. There was no warning, and I looked forward to breakfast with a close friend.

Load shedding is our South African Electricity Utility, Eskom’s name for planned power interruptions. It happens when more power stations are off than planned.

I open my EskomSePush app, and there is no news. I load Twitter and look at the Eskom feed. No news.

I go to the bathroom to wash and find no water pressure. I try to flush the toilet, which flushes but does not fill.

How odd!

I go snack something, open the fridge for some butter or milk and discover that the fridge is a bit warmer than expected. The butter is a bit soft. How long have we been off, I wonder?

I went to sleep at 9.30 pm and woke at 6 am, as usual.

I look at my phone again and realize there is no signal. This usually only happens at Stage 4 or 5, and I think that maybe it’s because the generators have run out of fuel.

“Maybe we’ve been off since 1 am”, I think.

Then I notice the eerie silence. Normally during load shedding, some people’s burglar alarms go off as batteries start going flat. “Nothing?”

I switch on my laptop, with its own battery. “No internet”.

I phone a friend across town who is never off at the same time as me. He’s also off!

Then I phone my friends in other cities, and they’re also off. I start getting worried.

I’ve been distracted recently by lockouts, the latest international war news, the newest possible pandemic, and I’ve just finished reading Vaccine Epidemic and Empire of Pain, and I’ve been spending too much time in confusion wondering where fake news is coming from. Is it possible that these are half-truths? True some of the time, but not all the time?

It’s 7.30 am by now, and I can’t get hold of my friend.

I manually open my garage door, get the car out, and think I’ll meet my friend at the coffee shop. I get to the first big intersection and discover that those traffic lights, which always work, even during load shedding, are off, and traffic is beginning to build.

I’m really getting worried now. I decide to go back home and pass my local shop. They have a generator but are in darkness. Candles burn, and there’s a big sign saying “50% off all cold and frozen food”.

I go inside to chat to my favourite Greek Grocer, who says, “I’ve been here since 4 am to bake the bread, and we’ve been off the whole time. We’re never off for more than two or three hours. And I woke up at 3.15 am for a shower, and there was no pressure. I used our backup 500-litre tank, and luckily it’s raining at the moment, so it’s full, but it’s still a hassle to go outside and fill up the bucket. It’s 8 am, and we’ve been off since at least 3.15 am when my phone alarm woke me. The other odd thing is that there’s been no 4G or 3G or even cell phone signal the whole morning. And my office fibre line is down, and I can’t get hold of my bank. The credit card machine isn’t working, and I can usually phone the bank for manual authorization, but that isn’t working at the moment. Most people who shop here are my friends, so I’ve been writing invoices, and my customers have signed IOweYou’s. What do you think is happening?”

I say that I don’t know, but my friend across town is also off and my friends in Durban and Joburg, who still have Telkom lines, are also off.

My friend and shopkeeper has just boiled some coffee on his gas hob (range) and is handing out steaming coffees and hot chocolate to a few of his friends and customers standing around.

That’s when it hits us all.

©2022 David Lipschitz (P) 2022 David Lipschitz

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Lipschitz
• Release date: Oct 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005937607

David Lipschitz

Books about how we can fix our world, if we want to. It has to start with us accepting responsibility for our mistakes, and deciding what is affordable.

Book preview

The Last Blackout

Author: David Lipschitz

Published 2022

Copyright

This book is Copyright

© David Lipschitz, July 2022.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781005937607

Publisher: Smashwords, Inc.

Cover Coal Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash

Table of Contents

Books published by David Lipschitz

Preamble and Disclaimer

Acknowledgements

Taxonomy

The Cast

Bibliography

Part 1: Scenario 1: A rainy Saturday next Winter

Act One Scene I – At a house in Cape Town, a city in South Africa

Act One Scene II – A house in Milnerton, a suburb of Cape Town

Act Two Scene I – David’s House – The Interview – David and Sibongile 1

Act Three Scene I – David’s House – The History of Building Resilience – David and Sibongile 2 – David tells his story

Act Three Scene II – David’s House – The History of Building Resilience – David and Sibongile 3 – David tells his story

Act Three Scene III – David’s House – The History of Building Resilience – David and Sibongile 4 – David tells his story

Act Three Scene IV – David’s House – The History of Building Resilience – David and Sibongile 5 – David tells his story

Act Four Scene I – David’s House – Emergency Response – David and Sibongile 6

Act Five Scene I – Gugulethu Township – Jabulani’s Flat – Saturday to Tuesday

Part 2: Scenario 2: A hot Wednesday next Summer

Act Six Scene I – Bravo Call Centre – Cape Town – A Wednesday next Summer – Background

Act Six Scene II – Bravo Call Centre – Cape Town – A Wednesday next Summer – Blackout

Books published by David Lipschitz with the first publishing year

Non-fiction full length

The Torah as an Enlightenment Toolkit, 2020

A User Manual for Life on Earth, 2020

Ramblings of an Alien, 2020

Non-fiction short stories

Retirement, 2021

Omicron (A South African Variant) and the Message of Covid, 2021

Fiction

The Last Blackout Series

Books in the Series:

Book 1: The Last Blackout, 2022

Preamble and Disclaimer

The book is written in the future. It presents possible scenarios, made up by the author.

The book is Science Fiction, because it is written in the future.

All trademarks are recognised although for ease of reading, the author hasn’t used the trademark or registered trademark symbols in the text.

This book is a work of fiction. It paints a hypothetical scenario to engage people in thought and debate around a highly relevant topic – energy security. As a work of fiction, the author/publisher cannot and does not warrant, guarantee or promise the outcome of a scenario set out in the book. Furthermore, if any character described in the book bears a resemblance to a real, living or legal person, this is merely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many friends and colleagues and contacts who have supported my research and development over the decades, and who have kept me sane whilst the world called me a quack and worse. I’ve been de-platformed, cancelled, and worse. But as Anne Frank said in her diary (I feel the same way about our (common) environment):

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder, I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come out right one of these days, that this cruelty (to the environment) will end, and that peace (peace is shalom; the same consonants in Hebrew is shalem – wholeness; so we are whole when we are at peace and we are at peace when we are whole) and tranquillity will return again. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals for perhaps the day will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

I added the bits in brackets.

I would like to thank the special animals who live with us. They make my life a joy. Their constant love and affection is infectious, and like my computer, they love me no matter if I shout at them or am gentle with them.

And lastly, I want to thank my ever-patient wife, Mirjana, for her unconditional love, her gentleness, her kindness, her patience and her generosity.

David Lipschitz, 1st July 2022

Taxonomy for the book and series

Collection

Encyclopaedia / Series

Book

Section

Part / Scenario

Chapter / Act

Scene

This first book in The Last Blackout Series is a discussion, a play, with Acts and Scenes.

Part 1 takes place next winter, starting at 6.30 am on a rainy winter’s Saturday.

Part 2 takes place next summer, starting at 11.07 am on a hot summer’s Wednesday.

The first book is called The Last Blackout.

The Cast - in order of appearance

Bongani - our narrator, a good