The multiple award-winning writer directed and wrote the two-part pilot for Lost and remained active producer for the first half of the season. That same year he made his feature directorial debut in 2006 with Mission: Impossible III, starring Tom Cruise.
If trailer does not appear above click here to see.
Here is the series summary:
Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why? Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it? On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman’s life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously – and unbeknownst to her – had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.
Abrams is currently directing the untitled sequel to Star Trek. The film is scheduled for release in May 2013.
One Response
Our way of life does depend on electricity, nevertheless, it’s still possible to do a lot of strange and unexpected things without it. According to the American Girl’s Handibook, c.1885, if properly constructed, a “tin can and string” type telephone can carry coherent speech up to four miles (notice it was the American Girl’s Handibook, not the the American Boy’s Handibook that gives instructions on making a telephone). Diesel engines can be be made to run without electricity because they don’t depend on electricity to ignite the fuel air mixtue. They could be started with a recoil, compressed air, or huydraulic starter, and they will run on biofuels such as corn oil. They could be made to run such things as pumps for public water systems, as well as cars and trucks. Absorption cycle refrigeration does not need electricity, only, paradoxically, a source of heat, such as focused sunlight or a small flame (or maybe the exhaust from a diesel engine). In addition, compressed air, which does not require electricity to produce, despite the fact that most air compressors are electric, can be made to run refrigeration units or be adapted to small motors to take the place of electric motors. If you have a moving stream of water with some fall, you can produce compressed air with a very simple (no moving parts) device called a trompe. Besides mechanical work, compressed air can, if routed through a “demon tube” produce air cold enough to make ice. If a spring or moving stream of water is available, a very old, self powered device called a hydraulic ram can be used to pump water considerable distances. It’s even possible to run a valveless pulse jet engine without electricity. It’s simple to produce, being only a hollow welded steel tube (blacksmiths can weld steel without an arc welder), and once lit off, with flint and steel, perhaps, combustion is self sustaining and like a diesel engine doesn’t require a spark plug. Power to weight is roughly comparable to turbojets, though the pulse jet is a fuel hog. It can be run on almost anything that burns, including, in theory, at least, coal dust, powered charcoal, sawdust, and certainly alcohol.
The worst thing about the grid going down is the suddenness. Incidentally, total grid failure could be caused for real by a massive solar flare or electomagnetic pulse weapon (google “Carrington Event”)