[Skybird]

In Switzerland, too, the authorities now have warned the population to prepare for a blackout of several days over the winter.



The Neue Zürcher Zeitung describes a possible scenario of a four-day blackout in seven federal states in northern and eastern Germany.
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Blackout in Germany: What happens when millions of people have no electricity for days? A scenario

Concerns about a blackout in Germany are growing, and more and more counties are preparing for a power shortage. But what does that mean? We outline what could happen in a worst-case scenario.

Since there has not yet been a power blackout in Germany lasting several days and affecting several federal states, we can only roughly estimate how something like this would play out. Our scenario is based, among other things, on information from the Federal Office for Disaster Relief and Civil Protection, the Berlin Senate, the police and the Charité University Hospital. At some institutions that we asked for information, the answers were decidedly thin, for example at banks. Others did not answer at all, for example mobile phone companies.

An important basis is a 2011 report by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag, entitled "Gefährdung und Verletzbarkeit moderner Gesellschaften" ("Threats and vulnerabilities of modern societies"). Almost everyone who has ever looked more closely at the subject of blackouts in Germany is familiar with the text. It describes the consequences of a prolonged power blackout as a "national catastrophe" and predicts a "collapse of the entire society."

On Thursday, January 19, 2023, at 8:30 a.m. sharp, the power will go out in the seven German states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, as well as Berlin and Brandenburg. The neighboring areas of Poland and the Czech Republic are also cut off from the European power grid. The reason is overloads in the power grid, which have led to an underfrequency.
Train passengers have to be evacuated from the tracks, children are read a story with a flashlight. Electronic devices stop working.

Day 1

The lights are out. That's the first thing you notice. From one moment to the next, no switch in the house works, no appliance responds. As if the fuse had blown, suddenly everything is silent. No running video, no whirring refrigerator, no drumming washing machine: in a blackout, the background noise is abruptly reduced.

In the center of Hamburg, a packed subway on Line 4 comes to an abrupt halt about 200 meters before Jungfernstieg station - just like everywhere else in the city and in the other six affected states. The cars are packed with people on their way to work. Their evacuation takes hours in many places. Only then do those affected learn that hundreds of thousands of passengers, including those on regional and long-distance trains, have suffered the same fate.

At the airports, arriving planes can still land, but on the instructions of the police, no more planes take off. Since the power went out at the beginning of working hours, people are stuck in elevators everywhere, and many can only be freed after hours. Lucky are those who used an elevator with a built-in battery, which still goes to the next floor even during the power outage.

Laptops and mobile devices still work, but only as long as the battery lasts. Recharging is also only possible with a power bank. Around 36,000 kilometers of power cables have been laid in Berlin alone, and 28,000 in Hamburg. Energy now only flows where there are emergency generators.

The mobile network still works for about half an hour. But after just a few minutes, it is hopelessly overloaded. Everywhere, people hurriedly tried to call their loved ones. Shortly after 9 a.m., nothing works anymore.

E-mails are no solution either. The Internet no longer works either. Messages can only be received via the car radio or battery-powered radios. The voices of the speakers call for calm. People run into the street to find out how far the power outage extends.

The world of cashless payments is convenient, but fatal in days of power outage. Most people barely have a hundred euros in cash in their wallets that morning. Queues quickly form in front of the ATMs, but they disappear just as quickly because there is no more money. The digital payment and electronic cash register systems are also no longer working. Those who still have coins and bills at home have an advantage.

In the evening, the situation in the affected regions looks ghostly. In the major cities, neon signs no longer flash. Not only landmarks like the Brandenburg Gate are completely in the dark, but the entire cities are swallowed up by night. From almost all apartments and houses, all you can see is the glimmer of candlelight and flickering flashlights. At night, temperatures drop below zero degrees.

Those who still want to fill up the car are left empty-handed. Without reception, it is difficult for the emergency services to do their job.

Day 2


The water supply becomes a problem. Without electricity, water stopped flowing through the pipes after just a few hours on the first day, neither in private households nor in public buildings. Those who do not refill empty bottles and containers in time or have a sufficient supply of drinks at home will now find themselves in a tight spot. Without pumping stations, sewage treatment plants cannot function; the escaping wastewater causes environmental damage in many places. Bathrooms are also starting to smell. Healthy people can survive for about three days without drinking water, but for the sick, the elderly and children, the situation becomes serious sooner.

On the part of the state, the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance now triggers the disaster alert. Most of the district councils and the mayors of the independent cities have already done so for their areas of responsibility. The police inform the population via loudspeakers. They recommend that people stay in their apartments and houses.

Those who do not have a full tank in their car will not get far. Gasoline or diesel is no longer coming out of the pumps (emergency generators and manual pumps are currently not part of the standard equipment of gas stations, according to Shell). There are only a few gas stations with emergency power, but these are reserved for police, firefighters and ambulances. Since many people nevertheless try to fill up their tanks here, the operators now receive police protection.

"Rescue services and emergency forces have considerable difficulties in fulfilling their tasks, such as caring for and transporting the injured or fighting fires," reads a forecast in the aforementioned report by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag.

That hits home. Chaos reigns on the roads of the German states without electricity. The lack of lighting has led to countless accidents. And because the cellular network is dead, no one can inform the emergency services. The police try to keep at least a rough overview with helicopters from the air, but in the end they can only send the ambulances to the biggest pile-ups.

In the evening, about a hundred mostly young men gather in the marketplace of the Hanseatic city of Wismar in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. They carry flashlights and thermos flasks, some also baseball bats. It is one of the first vigilante groups to form here to patrol the city in the dark and prevent break-ins. The local police, who are completely overwhelmed anyway, let them go.
People protect themselves from the cold in their own homes with a jacket. Patients from clinics without functioning emergency power have to be transported to other states.

Day 3

At least January offers one advantage: food that would have gone bad by the third day at the latest in summer can now be cooled on the balcony or in a bag hanging out of the window. Nevertheless, today, now the third day of the blackout, panic sets in for many people. Very few have enough food and, above all, drinking water on hand.

Marc Elsberg, author of the successful thriller "Blackout," says in an interview, "The preparations you should make are actually like for a simple two-week camping vacation." The Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance gets specific in its "Guidebook for Emergency Preparedness and Correct Action in Emergency Situations": among other things, every citizen should have two liters of water per day per person and a ten-day supply of food in the house, as well as candles, flashlights and the necessary medications.

The few supermarkets whose operators have ensured an emergency power supply have now been bought empty. Since the cash registers do not work, cash is needed for payment. Fresh goods that do not need to be cooked were already out of stock by the end of the first day; in the meantime, the remaining shelves are also empty, apart from cleaning agents and spices.

All hell has broken loose in the clinics. It is true that all the larger hospitals in Germany have an emergency power supply that is still working on the third day; emergency operations mainly include the emergency room, intensive care units and surgical areas. But at many smaller sites, patients can no longer be cared for; the fuel for the emergency generators is empty and supplies have not yet arrived. Ambulances from other states are transferring the critically ill to other parts of the country not affected by the blackout, with considerable difficulty.

The injured from traffic and household accidents who are able to do so are trying on their own to get to one of the major hospitals. There, however, the rush is now so great that the police have to guard the entrances and turn people away.

And the military? "A large-scale and prolonged power blackout" would pose "major challenges" for the Bundeswehr, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense last year. It turns out to be accurate. Soldiers do have emergency generators and fuel, but neither is nearly enough to power the many health care and even elder care facilities.

It is very cold in the homes between Kiel, Magdeburg and Dresden. Due to the sub-zero temperatures at night, even the last bit of warmth has now escaped from the apartments. People with fireplaces or tiled stoves and sufficient fuel are at an advantage. They can at least heat individual rooms. Everyone else helps out by wearing thick clothing and sleeping under several blankets.

Those who lack something try to barter: Cash for canned soups, ibuprofen for toilet paper, diapers for cat food.

With the closing of supermarkets, the barter economy among people begins. In hospitals, only emergencies and intensive care patients are cared for.

Day 4

A tragedy occurred overnight in a large student dormitory in Dresden. About two dozen residents had gathered in the common room that evening to provide some heat. They fired up the grill that someone had brought from home. They turned off the battery-powered smoke alarm so as not to alert the fire department. All the windows were locked. Presumably, everyone had already lost consciousness when the grill started the fire. It is not the only drama of this kind.

Accidents are piling up in apartment buildings and rented apartments. Injuries that would be harmless under normal circumstances are becoming more dangerous if left untreated. Pensioners who fall sometimes lie undetected for days and die of thirst.

Outside life has also become risky, especially in the evening and at night. While the first few days were largely peaceful, many cities are now experiencing riots and looting. The police are overburdened and, when they do arrive, they do so too late.

After almost a hundred hours of power outage, it is crucial for the human psyche whether an end is in sight or not. Provided the cause of the blackout can be clarified and the power utilities begin to ramp up the networks, the "collapse of society" warned of by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag can still be prevented.

Thriller author Elsberg is more optimistic in conversation than in his bestseller. He says, "We know from all crisis situations in civilized countries that as long as it doesn't come down to the wire, people don't bash each other's heads in, but help each other."

A good conclusion.

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