The idea behind NBC’s “Revolution” – what if we had no energy? – is more than a thought experiment for one-fifth of the world.
Show creator Eric Kripke and his cast came to the United Nations Thursday to discuss the plight of the truly powerless – the more than a billion people worldwide people who have no electricity. The “Revolution” crew sat down with U.N. experts who have worked in crisis zones around the world.
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They also screened the Season 2 premiere of “Revolution,” which includes a reference to a polio outbreak – the kind of illness that can spread fast in a world without power.
(Pictured above, from L-R: UN Chief of New York communications services Derk Segaar, actors Billy Burke, Tracy Spiridakos and Giancarlo Esposito, executive producer Eric Kripke, UN energy policy specialist Bahareh Seyedi, and UN Under-Secretary-General for Public Information Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal)
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At the end of the discussion, someone asked how long it would take a society to collapse without energy. The panelists batted around a few ideas, until U.N. energy policy specialist Bahareh Seyedi earned a huge round of applause for her answer.
“I would encourage you to think otherwise and think, how long would it take to construct a society that has a revolutionized energy system that we can all rely on?” she said.
Kripke told TheWrap after the panel that the global crisis he personally fears the most is disease. Hence the polio reference.
“We run a lot of scenarios on the show of what’s the most likely apocalypse,” he said. “Nuclear war is fairly unlikely. A global blackout is very unlikely. The one that really scares me is a disease outbreak that you just can’t control,” he said.
“We mention on the show polio as a comment about how in the absence of infrastructure, diseases that you long thought you’d eradicated come back. … Writers are neurotic. In the writers’ room there’s nothing but Purell.”
The event was organized by the U.N., U.N. Foundation, Warner Bros., and Good Robot, the philanthropic arm of “Revolution” executive producer J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot Productions.
“Revolution” returns Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 8/7c on NBC.