In this New York Occasions bestselling investigation, Ted Koppel reveals a major cyberattack on America’s power grid isn’t just possible but likely, that it might be devastating, which america is shockingly unprepared.

Imagine a blackout enduring not times, but weeks or months. Tens of millions of people over several says are affected. For all those without usage of a generator, there is absolutely no running drinking water, no sewage, no refrigeration or light. Food and medical items are about Lighting Out: A Cyberattack, A Country Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath dwindling. Gadgets we rely on have gone dark. Banking institutions no longer function, looting is normally widespread, and laws and order are being examined as nothing you’ve seen prior.

It isn’t only a situation. A well-designed assault on just one of the nation’s three electric power grids could cripple a lot of our infrastructure-and in age cyberwarfare, a laptop computer is among the most just necessary weapon. Many countries hostile to the United States could launch this assault at any time. In fact, being a previous chief scientist from the NSA discloses, China and Russia have already penetrated the grid. And a cybersecurity consultant to Leader Obama is convinced that 3rd party actors-from “hacktivists” to terrorists-have the capability aswell. “It’s not really a issue of if,” says Centcom Commander General Lloyd Austin, “it’s a question of when.”

Yet, as Koppel makes obvious, the government, while well prepared for organic disasters, has no plan for the aftermath of an attack on the power grid. The existing Secretary of Homeland Protection suggests keeping a battery-powered radio.

In the lack of a government program, some individuals and communities took matters to their own hands. Among the nation’s estimated three million “preppers,” we match one whose doomsday retreat includes a recently excavated three-acre lake, stocked with fish, and a Wyoming homesteader so self-sufficient that he crafted the thousands of adobe bricks in his house yourself. We also start to see the unrivaled devastation preparedness of the Mormon cathedral, with its tremendous storehouses, high-tech dairies, orchards, and proprietary trucking organization – the fruits of a long tradition of anticipating the worst. But how, Koppel asks, will normal civilians survive?

With urgency and authority, one of our most renowned journalists examines a threat unique to your time and evaluates potential ways to plan a catastrophe that’s all but inevitable.