excerpts from power loss story

Some excerpts from the story.
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On September 28th of the year 2016, a world-changing phenomenon known as “The Disaster” occurred. It was the result of the planet Earth passing through a severe solar storm. For several minutes starting at 12:01 PM GMT, electronic devices were being fried. Simple electrical devices such as incandescent light bulbs, basic radio systems, and even the ignition of old cars were able to continue working even with their power sources disconnected. However, most electronic devices were destroyed. Smartphones, televisions, medical monitoring equipment, and anything with a computer were fried.
The solar storm which caused The Disaster were predicted a week in advance, stirring up the population and causing panic, until it was discovered that the solar storm was not going to hit the Earth at all. The problem was that the storm did not work as the scientists expected, it was only within three hours of the storm occurring that anyone realized that the storm was going in the exact opposite direction. There was a mad scramble by hospitals, police stations, and other tech-heavy public institutions to roll back to pre-electric technology, but three hours was simply not enough.
Over the course of the next day, the solar storm had damaged nearly every area on the Earth, aside from a small region of eastern Australia and much of Antarctica. The majority of the world, however, had lost power.
It took nearly two hundred years for society to rebuild, thanks in part to those who took the time to preserve knowledge and wisdom from the 1900s to the 2000s. It is only now: 2214, that we have finally brought our civilization back to the former glory it once held.

 The above is an excerpt from a paper written by the 16 year old tertiary school student Herman Brannon. He didn’t actually like his history class. It was boring and focused too much on technicality. He was a fan of history, and it showed in his presentations. His inability to pay attention to class was no problem, he had his hand computer and the wonders of the Infonet to keep his interest in history strong. Indeed, he tended to use the hand computer during class, which didn’t have a positive effect on his grades, though the teacher didn’t really care.
 One Monday--a weekend day--he and his friends Fred and Bill were visiting his grandmother’s house. They were there to help move their grandmother out of her house to a smaller apartment, and they were in the basement packing. Fred inspected a couple of white boxes on a shelf.
“Hey Herman, what’s this?” said Fred.
“I dunno, let me see," said Herman. Herman took the old cardboard box and put it on the table. “Looks like some old notebooks," said Herman. “Huh. This is a really old notebook,"
“Let’s take it up and ask your gran about it," said Fred. They went upstairs and showed it to Herman’s grandmother.
“Hey Grandma Elizabeth, what’s this?” asked Herman.
“Oh that? That’s just some old stuff your great great grandfather has kept from the old house in Greensboro," said Elizabeth.
“My Great Great Grandfather… that was Gregory Charles Brannon the second, right?” asked Herman.
“Yes, I believe so. He was the… err… let me see," Elizabeth said, straining to remember.
“The engineering professor?” Suggested Herman.
“No, no, that was your mother’s great grandfather," said Elizabeth. She thought for a few moments. “Gregory Jr. was the astronomer. My father told me stories about how he was obsessed with The Disaster and learning about how the Sun works,"
“Oh, so these are his journals," said Fred, holding up a notebook that was written on in black ink marker “Gregory Brannon,"
“No, these are much much older than that. Those notebooks were from the original Disaster period. This was from Gregory Thomas Brannon. That would be Herman’s Great Grandfather with six greats," said Elizabeth."

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"The road home was a devastating sight. Several cars had crashed into trees and other vehicles, with no power steering or engine power to stop. I heard the howls and screams of a man who had broken his arm. It was already past the one hour mark in our voyage, and my legs were killing me. We had to take a break from walking, and we had our snack of cheez-itz and cookies. (stolen from the vending machines) We started walking again, and as we reached the bridge that went over the highway, we couldn’t help but watching in awe at the destruction.
 For miles the road was packed with crashed cars of varying levels of damage. People were walking in a line to try to find some kind of safety. As we crossed the bridge, my shins felt like they were going to break under the physical stress. Right past the bridge was the turn onto my street, and we were very nearly there. Just a short walk up the hill and down the other side, and there was our house. The door wasn’t locked, so we didn’t have to break in. As we finally arrived at my house, we let off all of our bags of snack food. I breathed in and out, sighing in relief. I walked into the living room and collapsed onto the recliner.

 A few hours later it was time for dinner. I decided that we should eat from the refrigerator first, while the stuff in there was still good. No microwave meant that to prepare our food we either had to eat it cold or cook it on the coal-fired grill. As such, we made an inventory of the fridge, prioritizing when to eat what.
We moved the foods that were most important to refrigerate into the colder freezer. We then took out all of the stuff that didn’t really need to be cold. For dinner we decided that we would eat cheeseburgers, making use of the already fairly old ground beef in the freezer. After a long day of walking and trying not to think too hard about the anti-technological future, a surprisingly good medium-rare cheeseburger really hit the spot. Theo, a vegetarian, ate a banana and some bread. He said that he was going to do his best to maintain his vegetarianism unless he absolutely had to. A noble goal, perhaps.
I’m not really sure if most people knew that the world had just ended. Heck, I’m pretty sure most of my friends who I brought here didn’t really believe it either. I wasn’t so sure either, but the lack of any sign of technology coming back anywhere after a whole day didn’t really reassure me."