The Day the Lights went Out, Book four, Evolution

Can you imagine a World, or life without electricity? Four AM on the twenty third of November, two thousand and sixteen was the day the lights went out.
The evolution of the Human Race is something that has taken millenniums to develop and until relatively recent times, it was a slow and gradual process. Was it the astronomer, the late Carl Sagan that first created the 24 hour clock to measure the evolution of life upon planet earth and mankind’s emergence as the dominant species? Using this 24 hour clock to trace mankind’s history and evolution is to say the least, sobering. Mankind, the human race, as we now know it arrived at a little more than one minute before midnight. To give that some sense of scale Dinosaurs roamed the planet at around 22:56. Using that same 24 hour clock, the origins of life of earth began at around 4:00 AM.
Mankind’s emergence from the primordial sludge began, using the 24 hour clock as a point of reference at 23:58:43. The shocking fact of human kind’s existence is that we are in every respect “The new kids on the block.
How have we performed during our short time on planet earth? To be polite, could do better could be the answer, but in truth, inaccurate in the extreme. Mankind has not only imperiled all life on earth, but the very planet itself, why?
The question of why mankind has evolved so is too vast a question to consider here, but to deny that fact is on a par with insisting that the World is flat. The history of the human race is on a universal scale, brief and his destructive nature has only become apparent within the twinkling of an eye.
There are many contradictory theories as to why Mankind has evolved as it has, but perhaps the answer is not so difficult to find. Even now, despite the seemingly irrefutable evidence, there are many that refuse to accept that man is by far the most dangerous animal on planet earth.
Whilst the mentality of man has barely changed over the millenniums, the affect of his actions have and dramatically. From the very beginning mankind has suffered a misguided sense of his own self importance, even relative to his fellow man. This state of being was for millenniums, undetectable on a universal scale, but that situation slowly changed.
From the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, to latter dictators there have been those for whom enough was an alien concept. Throughout history man has not only subjected nature and the planet to its sense of self importance, but his fellow man too.
For millenniums mans barbarity was as a dripping tap. Yes the forests slowly disappeared and as a result species of wildlife, but did anyone notice, or even care?
It was only in the latter part of the second millennium AD that mankind’s activities began to become increasingly apparent. Whilst the mentality behind the caveman’s bone and the nuclear weapon is much the same, the effects are not. Progressively the combinations of technological know how, coupled with the caveman’s fear of the unknown became ever more dangerous.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century the process began to accelerate and at ever dizzying speed. Man learnt how to harness and control electricity. When did mankind first learn of the existence of electricity, arguably thousands of years before, but harnessing it’s power was relatively recent.
Electricity presented Man with endless possibilities, both good and bad. Once again mankind’s misguided sense of its own self importance overruled all and he became even more detached from nature. Whilst mankind’s priorities had barely evolved, electricity presented him with an Aladdin’s lamp of potential. This huge and additional potential was unfortunately, disastrous. Mankind’s ability to now bend both nature and planet earth to its will took a giant leap forward...