You almost lost me at the apocalypse metaphor but I catch your drift. Weeks at a time of no power aren't easy to be prepared for, but I feel like this event should be one more reason we need more distributed power generation in the US. Less single points of failure.
Yeah sorry I didn't mean to suggest a religious apocalypse, but any civilization-ending event which apocalypse also means: whether cooling and global glaciation, warming and ocean inundation, all-out global nuclear exchange between superpowers, the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, large meteor impact, "inevitable" Carrington event, 1 in 1000 year worldwide tsunami, etc. But it can be local too and without outside support is the same as world ending if you can't get out. If you have power loss for weeks in an area that is totally power dependent you start to see civilization meltdown. The situation in Puerto Rico recently was an example, another is the Haiti earthquake before that. Neither has recovered years later.
You make a good point about distributed distribution. Would have to be very local to avoid this wildfire problem as PG&E is doing (shut off power instead of deal with actual issue). The wildfire problem is one that is decades in the making and coupled with poor open areas management by government policy in general and not just the power company, in particular not allowing periodic fires to burn out underbrush. I had this huge pile of brush in my backyard. When it burned it was very dangerous. Now I make sure to do more regular smaller burns as giant burns are not easily manageable.
I like the solution of small Hitachi style safe nuclear reactors that service neighborhoods of around 2000-10000 people, can't meltdown or breech, are useless to terrorists, and require no maintenance. Doubt we'll go that way though.
