What I learned from watching the Revolution pilot:
1. When the power goes out all planes immediately go into a flat spin and kill everyone in them, but cars nicely stop, and no accidents.
2. 15 years in the future no one has figured out how to make a steam engine or a windmill, but there are plenty of brand new skinny jeans, leather jackets, freshly pressed t-shirts, and hair product. The grand tradition of distilling is still alive though.
3. Bullets require electricity, so everyone is using muskets. Except pistols, those are fine.
4. There are giant old growth forests (with RVs in them) a couple days walk from Chicago.
5. Magically USB keys not only power computers after the crash, but also cause near by light bulbs to come to life. And apparently the ham community is still running and eagerly awaiting with their own magical USB key somewhere else eagerly typing at their keyboard.
Yes it’s just a TV show, but there was so much laziness in the story telling that any promise of their being a real payoff to this story seems very low. The throw away “physics went crazy” is just a cop out to explain any of this stuff. That level of laziness means there never is going to be payoff on the actual story. And the characters are pretty flat. Having been along for the ride with Lost, and then getting the steaming pile that was the sideways universe in Season 6, I’m not giving J J Abrams the benefit of the doubt here.
For a much more interesting, and less intellectually lazy, take on what a post power fail future looks like, check out Jericho. The bonus being the pilot episodes end with basically the same scene in front of a computer.
It's always more complicated 
If you expect anything resembling reality from JJ Abrams, you should be more surprised at your expectations than the fact he delivers and over-the-top far-fetched story. I have not watched Revolution nor will I bother but I agree Jericho was a well delivered show in the genre. I do like the details in the plot from opportunists posing as marines to the day-to-day struggle for power and food. However, I will fault the show with advancing the time line far too rapidly. I don’t think you would see the rise of fiefdoms and rivalry between neighboring city-states/towns that rapidly, let alone the lard scale conflicts only a few months after the attacks. The plot seemed rushed because of that. The other thing to consider was there were only 15 or so cities devastated by nukes which while horrific would not have made the rest of U.S. feel that empty and desolate. The Road is another good example of a post apocalyptic setting.
LikeLike