Dennis Quaid is stretching beyond his acting chops to issue a dire warning about the U.S. power grid, cautioning an outage of the system would potentially send America “back to 1880” and “make COVID look like a kids’ show.”
Quaid, who recently released a documentary titled “Grid Down, Power Up,” told “Jesse Watters Primetime” small attacks have already unfolded on the power grid and the prospect of more enormous catastrophes should be on people’s minds.
Considering the grid’s significant role in almost every facet of life — from transportation to heat and food procurement — Quaid said the issue is of the utmost importance.
“This is not ‘The Day After Tomorrow,’ by the way; this is tomorrow,” Quaid told Fox News, underscoring the urgency. “I think it could happen, and it’s a problem that we can fix.”
The actor discussed a massive 2003 power outage impacting New York and other areas for days — a strange event reportedly originating in Ohio after a power line hit some overgrown trees and shut down.
Chaos ensued, with traffic lights out, the NYC subway system down, looting, and other negative reactions. People were also trapped inside elevators and 400,000 were stranded in subway cars, needing to walk to their final destinations. Some were without power for days.
Quaid said this event should serve as a lesson, especially when considering the efforts of those seeking to harm American interests.
“That was just a small little event, but a GMT event — a bad actor could take it out through a Chinese balloon, for all we know,” Quaid said. “It could be up to, like, 30 days, but what we’re talking about is like a nuclear explosion up in space.”
He continued, “It would take us back to 1880, and you wouldn’t be able to get gas, you wouldn’t be able to get food.”
Quaid warned energy and utility companies seem reluctant to upgrade systems and install safeguards — and warned they should, estimating the cost of said security, over time, would be about $50 billion.
“We keep talking about it, but nothing gets done,” Quaid said.
“Grid Down, Power Up,” which is streaming here, warns grid failure is a “real and imminent threat” that could lead to massive shortages of food, water, and heat.
“If protective measures are not taken, we will experience catastrophic failures leaving citizens in states of starvation, death, destruction, and darkness for months,” a description reads. “Reports released from Texas’ 3-day ‘snowmageddon’ indicate a minimum death toll of 246, with some estimates climbing as high as 702. An outage of 1-2 years would lead to 10,000,000+ deaths.”
Find out more about the film.