Blackout scenarios: From fiction to everyday work

Within seconds the lights go out. Then cell phone reception, internet, refrigerators and ATMs fail. 24 hours later the supermarkets close. Tank pumps fail, trucks stand still. Shortly afterwards the last water drips from the taps. After about 48 hours the first looting began.

The audio book “shaked him up,” says Markus Brandau about the apocalyptic thriller Blackout, which was published 14 years ago. In the story, a power outage caused by a cyber attack causes public order to collapse within days. Back then, such scenarios were far away, says Brandau. Today they are part of his everyday life. Hybrid attacks occur every day and the security situation has changed drastically. “But it is my job,” he says, “to ensure that such chains of events do not continue unchecked.”