"The inability of the Maduro regime to restore power supplies to more than an intermittent fraction of Venezuela's population has provided the 21st century with its first glimpse of what a network collapse can do to a modern society. The EMP Commission Report anticipated civilization's increasing dependency on electric power, telecommunication, banking, fuel, transportation, food distribution, water supply and emergency services grids.
They concluded that if these crashed our seemingly solid world could come tumbling down faster than we think.
Nearly a week after the Guri dam, which provides most of Venezuela's base electric load, broke down people are drinking from sewers, patients are dying in hospitals, prisoners are starving in their cells, gasoline is running out at stations from lack of distribution, food is rotting in the reefers and looting has become widespread.
All cascaded from a fault that till now has not yet been fully explained.
One Venezuelan described the day the grid died almost as if civilization were in the past tense.
I left the office on Thursday afternoon and when I got home the lights were out. I stopped by one of my neighbor’s apartment and we had a few beers while we waited for the power to come back on. Three days later, we still have no water, no electricity, no food, no cash and no explanations (or help whatsoever) from the authorities.
Since then, the country has turned into a ghost town. Survivors roam the empty streets looking for mobile signal, food, water, and a plug. Most stores remain closed; they say hundreds have died in public hospitals or at their homes, unable to contact anyone for help; fear has conquered the streets; looting and small protests have been reported across the nation; fires have gotten out of control. Every hour that goes by without electricity, everything gets harder to find, more expensive, scarier and sadder.
Reports describing widespread looting in Maracaibo suggest the Venezuelan state has in parts disintegrated..."
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