Blackout Picture From Space

[West]

I know someone posted a pic just like this a few weeks ago. Well here it is at the time of the huge power outage. :doh:

[s13chica]

That is soooooooo crazy. It still boggles my mind that someone could have made such a stupid mistake...people can be real idiots sometimes.

[crioten]

ive heard a lot of rumors, but what actually happened?



someone **** on a wire that went to a larger wire? lol

[-E-]

O damn good thing I dont live in anymore :(

[AKADriver]

That picture is a fake. There are real pictures (see the other "lights" thread) but that one is not. If you raise the levels in photoshop you'll see that someone apparently just used mspaint to "spraypaint" out the northeast in black.

By the way, the real cause was a break in a line that led to generators overloading to try to compensate and shutting down, and as more generators shut down more overloaded, leading to a cascade failure. The exact failsafes that were designed after the '77 blackout to prevent this from happening pretty much caused it, thanks to our positively ancient power grid.