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Grid or cyber collapse

Modern life runs on tightly coupled systems: electricity, communications, water, fuel and payments all depend on each other. A cyberattack, a solar storm or a cascading technical failure could take out several at once. The cyberattack on Ukraine's grid in December 2015 showed the first part is possible.

The tier rates the quality of the evidence, not how likely the event is.

How it could unfold

1. 1An attack, storm or failure takes down part of the grid● strong evidence
2. 2Dependent systems (telecoms, water pumping, fuel, payments) fail within hours or days◐ moderate evidence
3. 3Duration depends on how long it takes to restore physical equipment and trust in systems◐ moderate evidence

Historical anchors

• Ukraine, December 2015: attackers caused outages for about 225,000 customers at three distribution companies.

What you can do

• The same kit as for any long outage: water, food, light, radio, cash, paper contacts, and a plan for medicines that need refrigeration.

Open the preparedness checklist for this scenario →

Related scenarios

• Solar superstorm (Carrington-class)
• Kessler syndrome (orbital debris cascade)

References

1. CISA (2016). Cyber-attack against Ukrainian critical infrastructure (IR-ALERT-H-16-056-01). link ↗