A sudden brownout, or a blackout, what happens? Classes cancelled, underground carparks goes dark, elevators and escalators cease to function, office work lost because it was not saved, water pumps stops functioning, traffic lights go on vacation, petrol pumps can't do their job... A lot of things happen.

So, what ensues after a blackout is something which will end up in a chaos. People leave work for home because no power means no work can be done, they leave in dozens in their cars, entering the traffic snarl waiting for them outside because the traffic lights are out of order and presto, an instant gridlock. At the same time, people curious about what happened calls their friends and family to check if their places are also affected, or calling them to go out for some bite, or just to look for them in the mess and presto, an instant cellular network jam and failure. People unfortunate enough trapped at their workplace will congregate at the nearest mamak which is already filled to the brim just to get away from reality for a moment. When work goes undone, productivity goes down and the economy receives a kick in the ass, so stock market will plunge and investors will be disappointed. Panic-striken people starts calling the TNB 15454 number and will end up jamming the lines, and all questions about the blackout went unanswered. Fearing the worse, some people will squirm to the nearest sundry shop, supermarket, hypermarket and hardware stores to stock up supply, fuel and electric generators in their homes and presto, causing an even worse traffic gridlock. In those stores, queues at the cashier lanes rival the long queues at the toll plazas during the balik kampung season, impatient people will simply walk out of there and if someone sees them doing this, they'll follow them (the typical Malaysian attitude, they will only do it when some brave soul managed to prove that its ok to do so), security guards are overwhelmed by the "catch and carry" patrons, looting then breaks out and havoc everywhere. Police is called in and if not enough, FRU rolls in with their water cannons and tear gas cans. And presto, mass riot and looting in the streets. Nervous wrecks around town go on overdrive mode and start packing up to leave town or turn their homes into WW2 bunkers. A national emergency is announced, martial law and curfew imposed. And rumour mongers tells everyone that terrorists are behind the power outage thus feeding the public's fears.

No, that didnt happen today, thank god we're all civilized people. But hold that breath, this happened before and it happened in the world's financial capital, New York City in the 70's when a major blackout hit the city. And does the looting sound familiar to you? Just a few years ago, in the same 21st century, looting happened in Nilai after some customers waiting for a warehouse to open its doors became rowdy. And our nation is not alien to having rioters walking down the street, in our 47 years of independence, we had at least 2 riots in the capital. A bunch of disgruntled Indonesian workers went on a rampage in Nilai just a couple of years ago, overturning police cars and destroying public properties. And after all that, everyone stats to point finger on whose fault was it. And the government will start saying "Kita seharusnya bekerjasama dalam keadaan yang tidak menentu dan elakkan ini daripada berlaku lagi", dozens of campaigns and enquiries will spring out which leads us to nowhere, and in a few months time, everyone forgets.

This goes to show that we all live in a society bounded by daily routines, like computers following a path of commands rigidly. And if something were to happen, something that would knock of our spot unexpectedly, we would crash like a computer with a destructive virus. Just imagine how fragile we are....