You are enjoying a night of relaxation, catching up on the Infographics Show videos you missed
during the busy work week. Suddenly, the screen goes black, the lights go out,
and the air conditioner turns off. “What’s going on?” you say into the darkness. You
stumble to the window and look outside. There are no lights coming from any of the houses
in your neighborhood. The glow of the nearby city has been extinguished. The electricity
has gone out around the world; in the next 60 minutes, there will be chaos, panic, and death.
According to a former director of the CIA, Robert James Woolsey,
90% of humans could die in the United States if the electricity were to completely go out.
This is a staggering statistic, which puts the death toll at around 297 million people
in the U.S. alone. So, what would happen in the first 60 minutes of all electricity going out
that could lead to such a terrible catastrophe? Let’s find out.
The power goes out: There are two sides to this scenario. Half the world would be in
daytime and the other half would in night when the electricity goes out. The moment
this disastrous event happens, the Earth goes silent. There is no more humming of
lightbulbs or the buzzing of radiators. No one knows that the world is about to fall apart,
while an eerily silence envelopes the planet. The world keeps spinning,
but in the next 60 minutes, every part of society will come crashing down.
1 minute after all electricity goes out: On the daytime side of the Earth, the effects
of the electricity going out are not immediately noticeable for many. People walking outside or
sitting at home with their shades open have no idea that things are about to get really crazy.
Others may be driving down the road and don’t realize that the power has gone out until they
come to a stoplight. They slam on the breaks as two cars barrel through the intersection and slam
into each other. Pedestrians crossing the street are hit by vehicles as no one knows when to go
or when to stop. Just seconds after the electricity goes out,
accidents happen worldwide, leading to countless deaths and injuries.
Although there will also be accidents on the night side of Earth, things are
slightly calmer. Anyone who is awake is using artificial light to see in the dark. Suddenly
every reading and night light on the planet goes out. People experience darkness in a way they have
never done before. Clocks stop ticking, and fans stop spinning. Those who are asleep likely won’t
wake up during the first 60 minutes of a global blackout. In fact, without electricity to make
their alarms go off, they might enjoy one of the best nights of sleep of their life.
5 minutes after all electricity goes out: All across the planet,
vehicles that are powered by electricity have rolled to a stop. This includes public
transportation like trains and electric buses. People in major metropolitan areas are stuck
deep underground if they were riding the subway at the time that the global blackout occurred.
This means hundreds of thousands of people are prying open the doors of
public transportation vehicles to escape the pitch-black depths of subway tunnels.
Since the trains run on electric tracks and the emergency lights are likely directly tied into
the grid, the people in the tunnels need to feel their way blindly out of the dark or use their
cellphones to illuminate the way. Everyone above ground starts to make their way down dark streets
and back to their homes to find out what is going on. They pass shops that have gone completely
dark. Trucks with flashing yellow lights drive by as emergency crews are sent out to figure out what
is causing the blackout. They are startled to find that there is no trace of electricity anywhere.
All phone lines are down along with cable, internet, and televisions.
Every single form of communication we rely on is powered by electricity. Even if you
had a battery-powered radio, you wouldn’t be able to pick up any signals because the radio
stations require electricity to broadcast. Maybe a few stations have backup generators,
but they are still trying to gather information about what is going on
before they start their doomsday broadcast. Five minutes after all electricity goes out,
panic starts to mount, and there are no clear answers as to what’s happening.
During this initial period of darkness, the elderly are going to struggle the most.
They will be unable to reach any help by phone or by text. If they use an elevator system in
their home to get from one floor to the other, they will be stuck on whichever
floor they are currently on. Unfortunately, if they are on the top floor of their home,
there is no hope of getting down and seeking out help. Unless a relative thinks to check on them,
the elderly will be pretty much stuck where they are for the duration of the global blackout.
People who live in high-rise buildings run into the same issue. The few unfortunate
people who are in elevators high above the lobby are now stuck there indefinitely.
As they ascended to reach their floor and the electricity went out, there was a sudden jerk,
and slight drop as the engine coiling the wire stopped spinning. Luckily most elevators are
required to have a backup braking system that engages in emergency situations. Therefore,
most elevators wouldn’t plummet to the ground when power is lost.
Unfortunately, this is not the case everywhere in the world. Elevators in cities that use
older systems or buildings that skimped on safety procedures hurtle towards the ground. Depending on
how high the elevator is when the electricity goes out, some of the metal boxes plummet
downwards and smash into the floor; everything and everyone inside is instantly crushed.
People who live in tall buildings leave their apartments and look down the hallway.
They walk to the elevator to get to street level but quickly realize that the lift
will never come without electricity. They proceed to the emergency stairwells and
begin their descent. For some, this could be tens or even a hundred stories down.
By the time they get to the bottom, the world is in chaos,
and they quickly head back through the doorway and begin the long climb up to their apartments.
While panic begins to fill the streets of cities and towns, there is a much larger problem brewing
inside of hospitals. The moment that the power went out, all of the machines keeping people in
intensive care units alive stopped working. Most hospitals have backup generators,
but they can take a while to kick in even in ideal circumstances. Since every floor of the hospital
will need power, there could be malfunctions and overloads in the emergency systems. Regardless,
the emergency generators are only designed to last for a relatively short amount of time,
but with all electricity out around the world, eventually, every hospital will go dark.
Patients on ventilators will start to suffocate unless a nurse or doctor begins manually squeezing
rubber lungs. People undergoing blood transfusions or dialysis need emergency
procedures to try and filter their blood without the aid of any machines. Heart monitors go silent,
preventative scans cease, and doctors work in the dark. Depending on the time, there could be less
staff than normal in the hospital. Night shifts tend to be understaffed; the medical professionals
in hospitals around the world quickly become overwhelmed with the patients currently
in their facility and the tidal wave of new admittance from accidents caused by the blackout.
Expecting mothers who are already scared and anxious will only receive the most basic help
or could find themselves completely alone as doctors are rushed to rooms with people
who are dying from failing life support equipment. Millions of babies will be
born in the electricity-deprived world in the first 60 minutes of the catastrophe;
their cries will echo down dark hospital hallways. Nurses will do their best to
help as many women as possible deliver newborns using nothing but the light of their cellphones.
All of this will happen in hospitals around the world within the first minutes of the electricity
going out. Smaller medical facilities may not even have backup generators.
The hardest hit by the lack of electricity will be those who are most vulnerable.
And things are about to get even worse for them and everyone else on the planet.
10 minutes after all electricity goes out: Airports try to redirect flights. The planes
themselves are unaffected by the blackout as all of their electronics run off the engines.
They can still send and receive signals, and all of their radar and instruments are still
operating. However, on the ground, control towers are running on backup generators.
They frantically call up to the aircraft in the sky to alert them as to what’s happening.
The lights on the runways have gone dark; most of the generators only have enough
juice to keep the radio tower going. They can divert power to the landing strip lights,
but it is vital that flight control alerts the planes in the sky
of the dire situation on the ground before the emergency generators run out of fuel.
One by one the aircraft are diverted to the closest airport and safely landed.
Luckily, contingency plans have been put into place for a blackout situation at most airports.
15 minutes after all electricity goes out: People on the night side of the
planet who are awake stumble out of their front door and onto the streets.
They don’t yet know that there is no electricity anywhere, but as they talk to their neighbors,
it is clear that at least everyone in their general vicinity has lost power.
Suddenly, they all go silent. They look up at the night sky. The Milky Way band stretches across the
heavens. Awe strikes the heart of everyone who is gazing upon the stars and galaxies
as it is the first time any of them have seen the night sky without some form of light pollution
dulling the view. The longer they stare at the sky, the more stars they see. The cosmos
is beautiful and endless. For a moment, everyone forgets that the world is about to change forever.
20 minutes after all electricity goes out: People start to notice a funny smell.
Without electricity, the sewer treatment plants shut down and there is a backup of waste.
Toilets still flush, but freshwater can’t be distributed throughout cities and to residences
that are connected to municipal water supplies. It only takes a short time before water reserves
are depleted, and all that comes out of faucets is sputtering air or dirty liquids.
This escalates the first wave of panic. People are already uneasy because they can’t contact
loved ones. It is obvious that the power is out, but no one knows how bad it actually is.
What they do know is that their cellphones aren’t getting a signal,
and no matter what they do, they can’t receive news or information.
They start taking inventory of the things they have and the things they need.
Many people start to go into survival mode as they begin to suspect there is something very wrong.
At this point, it is not just civilians who are panicking. The heads of governments
and militaries are beginning to realize the scope of the problem.
30 minutes after all electricity goes out: Leaders of nations across the planet scramble to try and
make sense of what is transpiring. They have been briefed that there has been a mass power outage,
but no one knows why, how, or what to do next. Governments can’t contact their allies
because every form of communication is down. Theoretically, morse code could still be used to
send messages, but the ancient language of long and short beeps has mostly become a lost art.
Government officials look in old cabinets and drawers, searching for old telegraph machines.
People have now ventured out of their homes. They drive to the nearest gas station to load
up on fuel. Cars still work; their headlights can be seen cutting through the darkness
on almost every major road. However, when the drivers finally reach the gas station,
they find that their luck has run out. Although the cars don’t require electricity to work,
the gas pumps do. Frustrated, people begin banging on the service station doors,
employees hide behind the counter as the angry mob bursts through the entrance.
Other people frantically start cutting the pumps' fuel lines, hoping that a few remaining drops
will fall out as they stick the tubes into their gas tanks. People speed off to the next station
to see if they will have better luck there. But no matter where they go, the situation
isn’t any different. Gas, water, and many other resources all need electricity to be distributed.
40 minutes after all electricity goes out: Riots begin to break out as people loot stores
and steal whatever necessities they can find. Originally, most individuals intended to go
to the store and pay for their products. But when they realized that credit card machines
were down and they couldn’t get cash out of ATMs, they took matters into their own hands.
First, it’s just basic supplies and food being ripped off of shelves. But as the chaos grows,
people start stealing things that won’t even work anymore.
Expensive computers and cell phones are carried out of the broken windows of stores.
Some people start grabbing makeshift weapons like hammers and bats to protect themselves.
The panic spreading across the planet is about to hit critical mass,
and there is nothing that law enforcement or government officials can do to stop it.
For one thing, it is almost impossible to coordinate a task force as precincts
have no way to send messages from their police stations. Officers can contact one another via
their squad car radios, but there is no central command to unify the forces and maintain peace.
Governments are starting to see the ramifications of a global blackout.
The risk to national security increases substantially with each minute that goes by.
There is no way to contact allies if help is needed, and if a not-so-nice neighboring
country can organize their military before they can, an invasion might be imminent.
The same can be said about the citizens of a country. During this time of uncertainty,
governments issue lockdowns within their borders and ask everyone to remain in their homes. But
there is no way to disseminate this message and actually have it reach the masses. Governments
mobilize as many military forces as they can and give them one simple order: keep the peace. This
will be easier said than done as people across the world are now either in full panic mode,
so scared that they’ve locked themselves inside of their homes,
or are trying to take advantage of the situation by stealing what is not theirs.
On the plus side, it is unlikely any country would be able to launch missiles or make rash decisions
during the first hour of the global blackout as most military facilities would not have power.
Interestingly, although around 90% of the population might die,
this is one doomsday scenario where we don’t have to worry about nukes being
launched across the planet. However, there is another nuclear threat looming on the horizon.
Nuclear power plants have a number of fail-safes and redundancy systems in
place to prevent meltdowns. Humans have learned from the past that a natural disaster near a
nuclear power plant can lead to catastrophe, even in the most state-of-the-art facilities.
But no one could predict that all electricity on the entire planet would go out at once.
Nuclear reactors are now quickly heating up to critical levels.
Electricity is needed to circulate water through the system to keep the
fuel elements that emit radiation cool. Without the pumps functioning properly,
the reactor can’t maintain a temperature within safe limits. Nuclear facilities across the globe
are evacuated as there is now nothing to stop the chain reaction happening in their cores.
50 minutes after all electricity goes out: People start to notice their
apartments or houses getting extremely warm or extremely cold depending on where they live.
We are so accustomed to modifying the internal temperature of our residence
that without air conditioning or heat, people start to become very uncomfortable.
People living in areas experiencing summer will quickly realize how hot things can get
without electricity. Individuals who live in the desert are just trying to stay in the shade,
so they aren’t baked by the sun. Millions of people live in warm
climates and go through everyday life without the luxury of air conditioners,
but most have some sort of fan or way to keep cool that also requires electricity.
For people who have lived their whole lives off the grid, this is just another day for them.
Although extreme heat can be unpleasant, anyone living in a region of the world where it’s winter
will have it much rougher. People start to freeze in their homes as electricity is needed to turn
on their heaters. Even if they use gas to warm their residence, electricity is still required
to kick start furnaces and adjust temperatures. The only solution is to bundle up to keep warm
or to burn things. Some will start fires in their fireplaces if they have wood readily available.
If not, they will burn anything that is flammable to keep from freezing to death.
Unfortunately, this is where things go from bad to worse. Many people who have fireplaces don’t
use them often. When this happens, flues can get dirty, and debris can build up in the chimney.
These things can catch on fire and set the entire house ablaze. Others might have never used a
fireplace before and don’t know to open the flue to keep smoke from being pushed back into their
home. There are also plenty of people who don’t have a fireplace at all. They will still need to
stay warm somehow, which means they might light their belongings on fire in the middle of a room.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, but the lack of knowledge around making and
maintaining a safe fire will lead to countless homes going up in flames.
The fires will spread to adjacent houses or apartments as there is no way for emergency
services to know when or where an inferno breaks out. Even if they did, there would
just be too many fires to extinguish in the first 60 minutes of all electricity going out.
Building after building would go up in flames. The world would be lit up not by
electricity but by wildfires started by people just trying to stay warm.
60 minutes after all electricity goes out: Money has become pretty useless
at this point. Some people might have used it to pay for basic supplies earlier on,
others may have already started burning it for warmth, but financial institutions are now in
ruin as economies and businesses have lost everything due to the lack of electricity.
In a recent power outage in California that lasted two days, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated
that $2.5 billion dollars were lost to the economy. This was just one state. After an hour
of the entire world losing power, every economy on the planet would pretty much be in shambles.
As businessmen and bankers reassess their ambitions in life, space agencies have begun to
run into problems. Without electricity, they can’t communicate with the International Space Station
or satellites orbiting the planet. This wouldn’t be a big deal if the blackout was only temporary,
but real concern starts to mount as the minutes go by. The electricity has been off for a full hour,
and without course corrections from space agencies around the world,
the orbits of satellites begin to degrade.
The Internation Space Station will be fine as there are currently astronauts on it that can
adjust accordingly. But even though the ISS could send messages to Earth, there would be no way for
space agencies to send messages back to them to inform the astronauts of what was going on. From
the space station, astronauts would observe the planet as it was before humans started
industrializing. On the night side of Earth, it would be completely dark. There would be no
cities or suburbs illuminating the continents. On the dayside of Earth, everything would look the
same. The Space Station mostly runs off of solar power, but without resupply missions or a way to
contact ground control, the astronauts will either have to live out the rest of their days in space
or risk doing their own emergency landing using the capsule currently attached to the ISS.
Days after all electricity goes out: Any food that was refrigerated before the global blackout is
beginning to rot. People make do with canned foods and whatever they can gather from nature. Humanity
has started to go back to its roots. Many, many, people would perish as a result of the electricity
going out, but there would be survivors. We have to remember that for most of human existence,
we didn’t have electricity. In fact, humans only figured out what electricity was in the 1800s.
The most crucial next step for humanity after the first 60 minutes without electricity
is to figure out what caused the blackout and if there is any way to reverse it.
If it was caused intentionally by a highly sophisticated cyberattack, it might still
be possible to reverse the damage. The only way this cyberattack scenario could be carried out
is if a group of people somehow managed to infect every electrical grid on the planet
and simultaneously cause their virus to shut everything down.
The possibility of this happening seems highly unlikely,
but there is another natural disaster that could conceivably disrupt every
power grid on the planet and plunge the human species back to the stone age.
Earth’s core is mostly made up of molten iron and nickel. This is very important
because as these melted metals swirl around in the core, they generate a magnetic field.
It is this magnetic field that protects the planet from solar storms. Every now and then,
the sun ejects high-energy particles into space. These solar flares, also known as
solar winds, can be devastating to any electronic device in its path.
When a solar flare slams into Earth’s magnetic field, geomagnetic storms can occur. This is what
causes the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis near the north and south poles, respectively.
However, if the solar storm is large enough, it can cause some serious problems for the planet,
such as a global EMP. The electromagnetic pulse would overload every circuit and
electronic device on Earth, causing all electricity around the world to go out.
This same thing could be done by humans if millions of EMP bombs were detonated at the
same time. However, the most powerful EMP devices we have are nuclear bombs,
so if we detonated enough of those to cause all electricity to go out across the planet,
it would also mean we’ve blown ourselves up, so it really wouldn’t matter.
What we need to learn from the first 60 minutes of all electricity going out scenario
is how to be prepared if it ever does happen. You should always have flashlights with full batteries
in an easily accessible location in your house. The key here is that the flashlight batteries
still need to have power because a dead flashlight will not help you if all electricity goes out.
It is also always good to have an emergency kit prepped and fully stocked that will provide you
with everything you need if a disaster ever does occur. There are even videos on The Infographics
Show channel about what you should put in such a survival kit. The basics are, water, food,
extra batteries, and a first aid kit. It is important to remember that if the power goes
out globally, you won’t have to live in the dark forever as the sun will still rise the next day.
However, you should do your best to remain calm and stay level-headed to make good decisions.
Some survival experts recommend stocking up on baby formula and keeping it in your
survival kit because it is a good source of nutrients. If all electricity goes out,
it will also be helpful to remember that waste build-up will be a problem.
Make sure you have a way to purify water and remove both human and nonhuman waste.
If all electricity goes out around the world, the first 60 minutes will be crucial for your
survival. People will panic and make rash decisions which means you need to be one
step ahead of them. Just remember to stay away from elevators, gas stations, and urban areas,
as these places will be where chaos breaks out the quickest.
Now watch “This is How the World Ends.” Or check out “What Would Happen After World War 3.”