Except for a few little storage-battery or Diesel generator systems,
that couldn't handle one tenth of one per cent of the barest minimum
load, it's been the only source of electric current here since 1962,
when the last coal-burning power plant was dismantled. Knock this plant
out and you darken every house and office and factory and street in the
area. You immobilize the elevators--think what that would mean in lower
and midtown Manhattan alone. And the subways. And the new endless-belt
conveyors that handle eighty per cent of the city's freight traffic. And
the railroads--there aren't a dozen steam or Diesel locomotives left in
the whole area. And the pump stations for water and gas and fuel oil.
And seventy per cent of the space-heating is electric, now. Why, you
can't imagine what it'd be like. It's too gigantic. But what you can
imagine would be a nightmare.
"You know, it wasn't so long ago, when every home lighted and heated
itself, and every little industry was a self-contained unit, that a fool
couldn't do great damage unless he inherited a throne or was placed in
command of an army, and that didn't happen nearly as often as our
leftist social historians would like us to think.
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