Blackout On This Day in 1965

November 9, 2007

Dear Thor and List,

On this day in 1965 the entire Northeast section of the United States experienced a blackout that affected 30 million people for 13 hours. I thought it would be interesting to see how this event manifested in the SAMVA USA chart. I believe the stationary movement of the functional malefics Saturn, Rahu and Ketu contributed to the crisis.

L8 Saturn, ruler of obstructions, was the main period lord and Mars, ruler of energy, was the subperiod lord. In transit, Mars was in infancy, badly placed in H6, and also suffering from a weak dispositor. Because of this transit weakness, the otherwise strong natal Mars had difficulty protecting itself from the stationary (and thus more powerful) transiting nodes which afflicted it (77%).

Communication and transportation were chaotic as millions of people were stranded during rush hour. Natal Mercury, natural significator and L3 (communication) was afflicted by transiting Rahu (83%). In transit, Mercury was afflicted by Saturn (72%) . Transiting Saturn also afflicted natal Rahu (86%) further adding to the confusion while natal Ketu afflicted transiting Saturn (86%).

Other afflictions occurred, but to a lesser degree.

Warm regards,Shayn

November 9, 2007

Dear Shayn,

Thanks for this insight. I add some additional information for the benefit of list members - as well as the chart in gif file.

Interestingly, the blackout occurred 42 years ago, to the day: "At 5:27 p.m., November 9, 1965, the entire Northeast area of the United States and large parts of Canada went dark. From Buffalo to the eastern border of New Hampshire and from New York City to Ontario, a massive power outage struck without warning. Trains were stuck between subway stops. People were trapped in elevators. Failed traffic signals stopped traffic dead. And, at the height of the Cold War, many thought Armageddon had arrived. One pilot flying over a darkened New York City stated, "I thought, 'another Pearl Harbor!'" By 5:40 p.m. that evening, 80,000 square miles of the Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada, were without power, leaving 30 million people in the dark." http://blackout.gmu.edu/events/tl1965.html

What happened: "The cause was a "single faulty relay at the Sir Adam Beck Station no. 2 in Ontario, Canada, which caused a key transmission line to disconnect ("open"). This small failure triggered a sequence of escalating line overloads that quickly raced down the main trunk lines of the grid, separating major generation sources from load centers and weakening the entire system with each subsequent separation. As town after town went dark throughout the northeast, power plants in the New York City area automatically shut themselves off to prevent the surging grid from overloading their turbines. Within a quarter of an hour the entire CANUSE area was down. Investigators referred to the 1965 blackout as a "cascade effect"-much like a row of dominoes falling one after another."

The blackout only lasted 14 hours: "By 11 o'clock, the power was restored in 75 percent of Brooklyn, and by 2 a.m., the borough was fully equipped with electric power. By midnight, much if the Bronx and Queens were lit. And, at 6:58 a.m., almost fourteen hours after the massive blackout struck New York, power was restored citywide. "

More importantly, the blackout caused no serious setbacks: "The massive blackout of 1965 had many ramifications. It forced Americans to reconsider their dependence on electricity, and propelled electrical engineers to reexamine the power grid system."

The event is clearly seen in the SAMVA USA chart by way of MASSIVE stationary afflictions in the chart:

Saturn-Moon period was running. At the time the blackout struck, transit L1 Moon at 3° 29' Taurus H11, exactly opposite to natal L6 Jupiter at 4° 25' Scorpio H5. Moreover, transit stationary Ketu at 11° 17' Scorpio H5 was conjunct natal L10 Mars at 10° 08', while transit stationary Rahu in Taurus H11 afflicted natal L3 Mercury at 12° 06' Capricorn H7. Transit stationary L8 Saturn at 17° 07' Aquarius H8 was afflicted by natal Ketu at 17° 47' Libra H4.

Best wishes,