British TV Show 'Blackout' Triggers Online LOLs

judgecorp writes "Britain's Channel 4 screened Blackout, a drama about a cyber-attack which crashes the national power grid. The show was silly enough, with a strong message about the dangers of lighting candles in such a situation, but the Twitter responses were even better. The show terrified some viewers who apparently didn't realise that their TV screen was powered by the grid."

Comments

hey stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

don't put power grids on the open internet. DUH.

Re:hey stupid

[fridaynightsmoke]

How do you suggest the control room communicate with all the various power stations and electricity consumers across the country then?

Perhaps, I don't know, they could piggyback a communication network onto the physical power network they own, airgapped from the internet? Maybe they could call each other on the phone like they did for the first ~80 years of the grid's existence?

Re:hey stupid

[Jawnn]

Do we really need to explain that a network need not be connected to the Internet to be, you know, a network?

Why is this even on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody tell me why this submission should even be on Slashdot?

It'd be one thing if this had to do with an actual blackout, and the technological aspects of it. But this submission has absolutely nothing to do with that. It's about people reacting to a work of fiction. That's it. Nothing more.

The reactions mentioned in the article aren't interesting or insightful, and they aren't even funny.

Seriously, this is the kind of useless material I'd expect to be subjected to if I were in a goddamn college film studies course. This is not "news for nerds", this is not "stuff that matters", and it should not be wasting space here on Slashdot. Give us something actually related to computers, mathematics, science, or technology, damn it!

Re:Why is this even on Slashdot?

[Thud457]

-1 we already have a way to deal with this sort of thing

if some of us lazy asses would mod the submission queue, maybe crap like this could be avoided.

Re:Remember what George Carlin said

[Russ1642]

Half the population isn't dumber than the average. That's not what average means. (pun intended)

Re:LOL

[glavenoid]

Al right, joke's on us. I just read the /. submission title again:

"British TV Show 'Blackout' Triggers Online LOLs"

STOP THE PRESSES! SOME SHOW TRIGGERS LOLS!! I can see timothy scrambling like a madman to get this thread out of the submission queue and onto the front page. This in the running for the most ridiculous title I've ever seen here, even worse then the gloriously daft "OMG PONIES LOL!!!"

Re:Luddites.

[HornWumpus]

Even though it's much less satisfying, try feeding them into the chipper shredder head first.

Re:Fond memories of Threads

[MrNemesis]

Just to chime in with a "me, too!" but The Day After is very much a Hollywood version of nuclear war. Threads (and to a lesser extent 1965's The War Game which inspired the structure of the film but was banned from being broadcast) is essentially some of the most harrowing TV you can put yourself through. If you like your post-apocalyptic stuff then despite its pitifully small budget Threads is hard to beat; just don't expect to feel too chipper afterwards.

It's might not be well known outside of the UK, but part of what made Threads so chilling was the fact that the documentary-style delivery was done partly with excerpts from Protect and Survive, a real PI film, just to show how ineffective and futile the advice being given out by the government would really be. I think the nearest US equivalent is Duck and Cover.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Threads
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_survive