Lights out

Description

Ted Koppel investigates what would happen if a cyberattack disabled large portions of the United States power grid for weeks or months, leaving tens of millions of people without electricity. He traces how quickly an outage could become a humanitarian crisis as water systems, sanitation, refrigeration, medical supplies, communications, banking, and fuel distribution fail. The danger extends beyond technical repairs: shortages could provoke looting and overwhelm law enforcement across several states. Koppel also examines the foreign governments and independent hackers capable of targeting the grid, then asks why federal disaster planning offers so little guidance for surviving the aftermath. By comparing official gaps with preparations made by individuals and communities, the book turns an infrastructure threat into a practical question of civic resilience.

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