Man's survival in face of disaster

Hurricane Katrina and the power outage in Los Angeles today reminded me of this movie I'd seen a few years back - The Trigger Efect. It's one of the noir movies that inspire a cult following amongst few despite getting mediocre ratings and box office success.

http://movieweb.com/movies/synopsis.php?id=2220&ns=1

The film focuses on a family in the middle of an unexplained power outage. The breakdown of modern society without the power that runs everything is a lesson that we all need to examine. There are a few lessons that we need to learn:

- This is an important issue - you can't explain away what happened in LA today as a mistake by a utility crew. The progressive deterioration of basic infrastructure in USA is making it look more and more like the third world - from Louisiana to LA to NY to the rotting downtown areas in major US cities.

- Our reliance on modern technology is making us less and less able to cope with disasters. In Louisiana, the best form of communication would have been CB radios and AM radio stations. But I doubt that many people their had AM or CB radios - 'cos no one uses them anymore. The modern alternatives - cellphones, internet, IM, etc. don't work very well in tough conditions - as was well demonstrated here. While CB radios are bulkier, we do have the FRS radios today that are quite ubiquitous - but we need a nationwide emergency channel, nationwide weather channel, etc. on FRS frequencies and we need to popularize these radios for emergency and relief situations.
The Trigger Effect (2003) Synopsis - MovieWeb