How bad could the November 1965 Northeast Blackout get?

The Northeastern power outage starting November 9 1965 was one of biggest power outages in US history. So, as it says on the tin, how bad could it get? Could the system failure cascade as far as, say, Chicago?
 
Read here & there that even today the US power grid is too fragmented or compartmentalized to cascade outside each regional grid. One magazine article described 46 discrete regional grids in the lower 48 states. Some large & multistate some small & covering isolated areas. Perhaps there is a expert at hand that can provide more detail on this?
 
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Read here & there that even today the US power grid is too fragmented or compartmentalized to cascade outside each regional grid. One magazine article described 46 discrete regional grids in the lower 48 states. Some large & multistate some small & covering isolated areas. Perhaps there dis a expert at hand that can provide more detail on this?
Thanks, that put me on the right trail for what I was looking for. If I'm reading things right, it went about as far as it could. The area effected was on the the Canada-United States Eastern interconnector and Chicago was on Interconnected Systems Group. Unless we get someone who knows more, and can say if I'm right or if it were possible for the failure in CANUSE to cascade over to ISG, I'll assume it's not possible to blackout Chicago as well.
 
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