Welcome to the Long Emergency. 🚔

The turbine in the Big Allis Power Plant spun for one hour after loosing all power and lubrication to its bearings during the 1965 black out. It was running at full output when all four substations feeding the plants oil pressure pumps failed during the city wide black out.

It turns out it’s nearly impossible to stop the forward motion of a gigawatt power turbine in an emergency. At least it was just a fossil plant.

A lot of big institutions are like Big Allis. They can fail catastrophically and keep going for years if not decades all while their burning up inside. It’s hard to stop momentum even when things go catastrophically wrong. Big institutions don’t stop on a dime.

The stagflation monster we are building right now with Coronavirus is some point going to break free and it’s anybody guess if it can be broken without a lot of pain.