Another of the TV shows that I caught up on (thanks Netflix!) is a show that aired a few years ago called Revolution. The series kicks off with someone coming home and instructing their family to fill up all empty containers with fresh water, fill the tub, fill the sinks, and so on. He looks at this pendant he's got and...power goes off!  Oh snap!

Flash forward to 15 (or so) years after the power went off.  We are brought to the "Monroe Republic" where a dictatorial leader (Monroe) collects taxes (at gun point) from the now agrarian society that has emerged.  While the power is off, anything that is non-electronic (like guns) still works.   Some of the main cast set out to find "uncle Miles" who may be able to help them get the power back up (hey! the power can come back up?  Why didn't they do this before?!)

In any case,  The first season is about the quest to bring the power back online.  We find out that the power didn't magically go off.  The US government developed nano technology which was supposed to target the bad guys of the day (was it Osama bin Laden? Or had we moved to ISIS by that point).  No electronics means that it would be (in theory) easier to combat them.  Well, guess what?  It fired back on you and now everyone is without power because the fracking nanobots are everywhere.  At the end of season 1 they are about to shut those little buggers down...but a new enemy shows up - the Patriots, who are basically related to the old US government (if the old US government lost all of its remaining morals and were out just for themselves...). It was they who sabotaged the attempt to shut down the nano tech, and in the process launched nuclear weapons toward both Monroe Republic and the Georgia Republic (taking out the competition, I guess).

Season 2 we get to see the nano tech gain sentience, they try to understand humanity.  We still see the US Government, aka Patriots, try to extend their domain, now to the State of Texas, and beyond, and we get to see a rekindling of the bromance between Miles and Monroe (oh yeah, they were friends before the series started, but all the events just of the series lead us to believe that there was some ruffled feathers).  The series ends with Texas going to war with the USA after the USA failed to implicate the Californian Commonwealth in an assassination/terrorist attempt that they tried (and failed) to carry out.  No season 3.  That ending was NOT satisfactory.  Apparently there are 4 comics that exist that wrap up the story - so I need to find them :-)

One of the things I like with shows like these is the world building aspects.  What does the world look like once things go to hell in a hand-basket?  Well, I don't know about the world, but this is how  the US (or former US) looks like:




In essence, thus far, the show is about human hubris, which lead to human stupidity, which brought us to the Matrix...  Good going, Humans!

In the end, not a bad show. I wish they had a third season though.  It was interesting.