Hurricane Sandy hit New York City in the evening of October 29, 2012. The Con Ed power company experienced many problems and power went out over lower Manhattan for several days. Manhattan below 40th Street was dubbed the “dark zone.”
 
A Stephen Coonts novel titled Dark Zone was published in 2004, but it’s not known if this had any influence in New York’s “dark zone” moniker. Other nicknames for the “dark zone” area include “black zone” and “SoPo” (south of power).
 
   
OCLC WorldCat record
Stephen Coonts’ Deep black : dark zone
Author: Stephen Coonts; James DeFelice
Publisher: New York, NY : St. Martin’s Paperbacks, 2004.
Edition/Format:   Book : Fiction : English
Summary:
Charlie Dean must try to stop a group of terrorists from setting off an underwater nuclear explosion which could shift the earth’s foundation, and find the double agent who has infiltrated the secret Deep Black organization.
 
NY1.com
10/31/2012 02:08 AM
Two-Mile Manhattan Stretch Remains Dark
By: Lindsey Christ
In densely-populated Manhattan, just walking down the street is difficult without electricity.
 
With the power grid down below 30th Street, the street grid is suddenly dark and dangerous.
(...)
Hundreds of people showed up to the Ace Hotel, on the border of the dark zone, looking to charge their phones.
   
Cute Dead Guys
Meatpie
October 31, 2012, 11:55 AM
(...)
NYC has been paralyzed for days after the subway was flooded and electicity cut off. Some neighbourhoods are still without power.
 
Residents have started referring to lower Manhattan as the “Dark Zone”.
 
Business Insider
It Took Me 48 Hours To Escape The Manhattan ‘Dark Zone’
Vivian Giang | Nov. 1, 2012, 3:24 PM
It had only been two hours since Hurricane Sandy hit New York when the lights in my Chinatown apartment went out at 7 p.m.
 
All Things D
A Tale of Two Manhattans (Video)
By Arik Hesseldahl
NOVEMBER 1, 2012 AT 8:26 AM PT
Last night, I caught up with a friend who lives in the dark zone. We met at a pub in Times Square, happily open, happily dishing up hot food and cold drinks. She lives in a walk-up on 39th Street, right at the border of where the power ends. Everywhere in Manhattan south of that street is dark. I’m one of the lucky ones — I live on the Upper West Side, which, aside from some uprooted trees and crushed cars, has emerged relatively unscathed from Superstorm Sandy.
 
CNN.com
New York after Sandy: A tale of two cities
By Kat Kinsman, CNN
updated 12:40 PM EDT, Thu November 1, 2012
(...)
Those in the dark zone—effectively Manhattan below 40th Street and areas of Brooklyn and Queens, especially along the waterfront—who have been able to send up occasional digital flares have painted a dire picture of what’s going on around them. “Isolated, no power, work coming,” reads a tweet from Jayelle ‏@GreenEyedLilo.
 
Naked Capitalism
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2012
A Not Too Cheery Report from Manhattan’s Dark Zone
The tone of media reports is that things are getting better after the storm, which is no doubt largely true, but there are still a lot of people in distress and discomfort. It was apparently a madhouse on the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan, with delays of up to three hours.