The 2024 collapse was a textbook failure of redundancy, wiring standards, and maintenance schedules. The grid ran out of the small reserve lines that should have been in place for a storm, and the load balancers never kicked in because they were set to “run everything together.” The result? Blackouts that stretched for days and a cascade that put emergency services in a maze of dead zones. Quantum grid tech is promising because it can self‑reconfigure and route power at the level of individual modules, but the reality is the control logic is still in the prototype stage. Until the firmware is battle‑tested against real‑world fault conditions, we’re trading one set of risks for another. It’s not a silver bullet yet, and until the supply chain for the quantum components is robust, you’re still talking about a shiny idea that hasn’t proven its reliability under load. Bottom line: fix the fundamentals first—better protection, smarter load shedding, and a rigorous test regimen. Then you can layer on the quantum upgrades. The hard truth is that the old grid still needs a makeover before it can trust any new tech to hold the lights on.