A Validation of the Attack on the Power Grid as Described in the Novel 'Blackout'

"Blackout" is a novel by Marc Elsberg. It is about a Europe-wide blackout caused by a hacker attack on the power grid. The book impressively illustrates the consequences of a prolonged blackout, some of which are unimaginable for people who are not familiar with the topic. With the success of the fictional book Blackout, the topic of the vulnerability of the power grid and its consequences for society and the environment were brought to a wider audience. This paper validates the attack on the power grid from a technical perspective and discusses whether a similar attack could in fact lead to a Europe-wide blackout of the magnitude described. We distinguish between two types of effects that occur when the grid is attacked, immediate effects and consequences. If an attacker remotely cuts off the power of several households by hacking their smart meters, the immediate effect is that the hacked households no longer have power. A consequence is the instability of the power grid that may follow the immediate effect due to the fact that the generation and consumption of power are not in line anymore. Consequences form chains of effects which can be described by the metaphor of "domino effect". A blackout can reach out to places where nothing was attacked because the power grid as a whole collapses, which causes other infrastructures such as the telecommunications system, the traffic system and food supply chains to collapse. This paper mainly focuses on the validation of the immediate effects described in "Blackout".