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afternoon, Eric."
    "Good afternoon, Sir," the chairman said. "I'm afraid I'm calling with
    unhappy . . ."
    It was then that it happened.
    Amid the bank of instruments under the sign LA MISSION NO- 5 a buzzer,
    urgently insistent, sounded a series of short, sharp notes. Simul-
    taneously, amber and red warning lights began blinking. The inked needle
    Of NO- 5's chart recorder faltered, then descended steeply.
    "My God!" someone's shocked voice said. "Big Lil's tripped off the line."
    There remained no doubt of it as the recorder and other readings slid to
    zero.
    Reactions were immediate. In the Energy Control Center a highspeed
    logging typewriter came to life, chattering, spewing out status reports
    as hundreds of high voltage circuit breakers at switching centers and
    substations sprang open at computer command. The opening of the circuit
    breakers would save the system and protect other generators from harm.
    But the action had already plunged huge segments of the state into total
    electric blackout. Within two or three successive seconds, millions of
    people in widely separated areas-factory and office workers, farmers,
    housewives, shoppers, salesclerks, restaurant operators, printers,
    service station attendants, stock-brokers, hoteliers, hairdressers, movie
    projectionists and patrons, streetcar motormen, TV station staffs and
    viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists,
    veterinarians, pinball players . . . a list ad infinitum-were deprived
    of power and light, unable to continue whatever, a moment earlier, they
    had been doing.
    In buildings, elevators halted between floors. Airports, which had been
    bursting with activity, virtually ceased to function. On streets and
    highways traffic lights went out, beginning monumental traffic chaos.
    More than an eighth of California-a land area substantially larger than
    all of Switzerland and with a population of about three millioncame
    abruptly to a standstill. What, only a short time ago, had been merely
    a possibility was now disastrous reality-and worse, by far, than feared.
    At the control center's communications console-protected by special
    circuits from the widespread loss of power-all three dispatchers were
    working swiftly, spreading out emergency instructions, telephoning orders
    to generating plants and division power controllers, examining
    pedal-actuated roller system maps, scanning cathode ray tube displays for
    information. They would be busy for a long time to come, but actions
    triggered by computers were far ahead of them now.
    10
     

"Hey," the Governor said on Eric Humphrey's telephone, "all the lights
    just went out."
    "I know," the chairman acknowledged. "That's what I called you about."
    On another pbone-a direct line to La Mission's control room-Ray Paulsen
    was shouting, "What in hell has happened to Big Lil?"
    2
    The explosion at the La Mission plant of Golden State Power & Light occurred
    entirely without warning.
    A half hour earlier the chief engineer, Walter Talbot, bad arrived to
    inspect La Mission No. 5-Big Lil-following reports of slight turbine
    vibration during the night. The chief was a lean, spindly man, outwardly
    dour, but with a puckish sense of humor and who still talked in a broad
    Glaswegian accent, though for forty years he had been no nearer Scotland
    than an occasional Burns Night dinner in San Francisco. He liked to take
    his time about whatever be was doing and today inspected Big Lil slowly and
    carefully while the plant superintendent, a mild, scholarly engineer named
    Danieli, accompanied him. All the while the giant generator poured out its
    power-sufficient to light more than twenty million average light bulbs.
    A faint vibration deep within the turbine, and differing from its normal
    steady whine, was audible occasionally to the trained cars of the chief and
    superintendent. But eventually, after tests which included applying a
    nylon-tipped probe to a main bearing, the chief pronounced, "It's