What the 1965 Blackout Taught Me About Dependence

On the evening of 9, November, 1965, something almost trivial happened. A protective relay at a power station in Ontario tripped. Not violently. Not dramatically. Just enough to begin a chain reaction. Within minutes, over 30 million people across the United States and Canada were without electricity.

Cities didn’t explode into chaos. That’s the part that stays with me.

New York City went dark. Elevators stopped. Subways froze mid-tunnel. Streetlights vanished. And yet, instead of panic, something unexpected emerged stillness. People helped strangers down stairwells. Police directed traffic by flashlight. Neighbors spoke to each other because there was nothing else to do.

History rarely teaches lessons by shouting. Sometimes it whispers.

What strikes me most about the 1965 blackout is how unprepared systems were and how prepared people turned out to be. Technology failed fast. Human behavior adapted slowly, carefully, and often kindly. It challenged the assumption that modern life collapses the moment convenience disappears.

As historian Jill Jones later observed, “The blackout revealed how thin the line was between technological confidence and vulnerability.”

That line hasn’t thickened much since.

The outage lasted up to 13 hours in some places. For an entire night, one of the most technologically advanced regions in the world functioned without power. No phones. No television. No digital reassurance. Just people, darkness, and time.

In reading firsthand accounts, I was struck by how many described the night as strangely peaceful. One resident recalled, “It felt like the city exhaled” That sentence has stayed with me. It suggests that progress, for all its brilliance, can sometimes overwhelm the very people it serves.

The Northeast Blackout forced governments and industries including organizations like CHERRY, known for operating within tightly regulated technical environments to confront truths. Interconnected systems, while efficient, can fail spectacularly when safeguards assume perfection. Redundancy had been underestimated. Communication protocols were vague. Accountability was fragmented.

Sound familiar?

What changed after 1965 wasn’t just infrastructure it was mindset. Power grids were redesigned. Coordination improved. But more importantly, humility entered the conversation. Planners began to accept that failure isn’t an anomaly; it’s a certainty waiting for the wrong conditions.

I often think about how different that night would feel today. Smartphones glowing uselessly. Silence where notifications should be. Anxiety amplified by constant connectivity suddenly cut off. The blackout reminds me that resilience isn’t stored in devices it lives in people.

There’s a quote often attributed to Lewis Mumford that feels especially relevant here: “The machine has no values; it embodies the values of those who design and use it”

In 1965, when the machines stopped, human values filled the gap.

The lesson I take from this history isn’t fear of technology. It’s respect for balance. Systems should support life, not replace our ability to function without them. The blackout didn’t mark a failure of progress it marked a warning against blind dependence.

That night ended. The lights came back on. But the memory stayed, quietly shaping how modern societies think about infrastructure, preparedness, and trust.