The actor said that if the power system went down, COVID would seem “like a kids’ show.”
Dennis Quaid, who has played many roles in movies, just released a documentary about the chance of a power grid failure that would send the U.S. “back to the 1880s.”
Quaid went on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to talk about the documentary and the different things that could have caused it, such as attacks on power plants on the ground and a Chinese rocket carrying something that would start a fire over American land.
Jokingly saying that Quaid’s latest movie “scared the hell out of him,” host Jesse Watters played clips from the movie while making the comment.
In it, Quaid talks about how the United States’ electricity grid is both fragile and important to everyday life, but it doesn’t get the attention it needs.
Electricity is needed for everything we do, from heating and cooking to going to the grocery store. “No one likes to think about what could happen if it was suddenly taken away,” he said as he told the story.
Quaid said on “Jesse Watters Primetime” that there have been multiple attacks and plans against U.S. substations. He used a recent case in which two suspects planned a series of attacks on substations near Baltimore in an attempt to shut down Charm City.
The real “Day After Tomorrow” is tomorrow, not in 2004 like in Quaid’s movie “The Day After Tomorrow.” I think it’s possible, and I think it’s something we can fix.
In 2003, he said, tree branches that touched power lines in Ohio caused one of the biggest power outages in U.S. history. For several days, New York, several nearby states, and parts of Canada were without power.
Quaid started by saying, “That was a small event, but it was a GMT event. For all we know, a bad performer could do it through a Chinese balloon.”
“We’re talking about something like a nuclear explosion in space, and the effects could last up to 30 days.”
Quaid warned that “it would take us back to 1880, and you wouldn’t be able to get gas or food” if there was a catastrophic failure that lasted a month and was caused by an attack from the air or space.
Quaid thought that a $50 billion government budget over several years would go a long way toward protecting and upgrading the grid, even though utility companies don’t want to pay the whole cost.
He said, “If this happens, it will make COVID look like a kids’ show.”
Watters said that the government can focus on this area at home because it has given billions of dollars to Ukraine in the past year.