What happens if all the lights go out? This is the plan for a 'Black Sky' event
This article examines the vulnerability of modern digital infrastructure by reflecting on a 2015 power outage in Lancaster, UK. It highlights how essential services failed during the crisis and notes that low-tech communication methods, such as FM radio, proved more reliable than digital systems.
Why it matters
It underscores the critical need for civil contingency planning and the potential fragility of modern societies reliant on complex digital networks during 'Black Sky' events.
Image source, Getty Images Image caption, The governments "Be Ready" campaign warns that severe weather and cyber-attacks could disrupt essential services
It was a Saturday night in early December when Roger Kemp realised something was very wrong.
"I was halfway through a Scandi crime drama when everything went off," the professor at Lancaster University told the BBC. "Streetlights were off. The sodium glow that we can see over the horizon from Morecambe was off."
"[It was] almost like a zombie movie," he said. "People trying to find phone reception, wondering where things were, and there was a huge queue at the one working telephone box."
At 22:45 on 5 December 2015, the River Lune - which flows directly through Lancaster - had flooded, and the electricity supply to 61,500 people in the city went.
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