Day 0—Friday

Milan, Italy

Piero Manzano hit the brakes as hard as he could and braced himself against the steering wheel with both arms as his Alfa hurtled towards the light-green car ahead. His eyes frantically searched for an opening, some way to steer himself out of danger, but there was no time. In his mind he could already hear the awful sound of the two vehicles colliding. Brakes screeching, tyres skidding, the lights of the cars behind him in the rear-view mirror. Then the moment of impact.

And all the while, Manzano thought absurdly of chocolate, of the hot shower he’d been looking forward to, of the glass of wine on the sofa afterwards. Of falling into bed with Giulia or Paola over the coming weekend.

The Alfa jolted to a stop, millimetres away from the other car’s bumper. Manzano was thrown back into his seat. The street was pitch-black. The traffic signals, green a moment ago, had gone out, leaving only the trace of an afterglow on Manzano’s retinas. An ear-shattering din of honking and scraping metal enveloped him. From the left, the headlights of a delivery lorry came rushing his way. A massive jolt slammed Manzano’s head against the side window, and his car was spun around like a carousel before a second impact stopped it.

Dazed, he looked up and tried to get his bearings. One of his headlights illuminated dancing snowflakes above the black, wet asphalt. A chunk was missing from the bonnet. The lorry’s taillights flashed a few metres up ahead.

Manzano didn’t have long to think. His fingers flew to his seat belt to release it, he felt for his mobile phone and leapt out of the car.

He found the first-aid kit and triangular reflector in the boot, and inspected his car. The truck had crushed most of the front left side and grille, the front left tyre mashed deep into the mangled metal. The driver’s door of the lorry was hanging open. Manzano went around the front of the cab and froze.

The lights of the cars in the oncoming lane shimmered in the icy night air, creating an eerie glow. There had been a few scattered collisions and now all traffic was at a standstill. The light-green compact was completely caved in on the driver’s side, jammed crookedly beneath the bumper of the lorry. Steam rose from under the bonnet, or what was left of it. A short, sturdy man in a sleeveless T-shirt was tugging at the twisted driver’s door. The lorry driver, guessed Manzano. Manzano stumbled over to the car. What he saw made him stagger.

The impact had torn the driver’s seat from its housing and literally set it in the passenger’s lap. The driver hung lifeless in his seat belt, his head strangely twisted, the airbag limp in front of him. All that could be seen of the passenger was her head and one arm. Her face was covered in blood, her closed eyelids fluttered. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly.

‘Ambulanza!’ he shouted at the lorry driver. ‘Call an ambulance!’

‘No signal!’ yelled the lorry driver.

The passenger’s lips stopped moving. The small bloody bubbles that formed in the corner of her mouth were the only evidence that she was still alive.

A huge crowd of onlookers had now gathered. They stood in the falling snow and gaped.

‘Back off!’ Manzano shouted, but no one moved. And then he realized something. The street lights were off. In every respect the night was blacker than usual.

‘My God, what happened to you?’ a man in a parka asked him. He pointed to Manzano’s left temple. ‘You need a doctor.’

Only then did Manzano feel the pounding in his head. A warm trickle seeped down and pooled at his neck.

He tried to walk, but his legs wouldn’t obey. He stumbled to his knees, willing himself not to pass out. From the wreck came the sound of a car horn, ringing out into the night like a final, drawn-out cry for help.

Rome, Italy

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Valentina Condotto, still punching frantically at her keyboard, glanced up at her colleague in alarm. A system alert was bleeping incessantly, while a whole battery of lights blinked on the monitors. ‘The frequency suddenly skyrocketed, and then the automatic shutdown kicked in. The whole of Northern Italy is gone! Just like that. No warning!’

Condotto had joined the team at the Terna control centre on the outskirts of Rome as a system operator three years ago. Since then she’d spent eight hours a day monitoring the flow of electricity through Italy’s transmission grids, as well as the exchange of power with grids in neighbouring countries.

The large projection screen in front of her displayed the Italian power grid as a myriad of coloured lines and little squares against a black background. Monitors to the left and right showed current data from the networks. On Condotto’s desk were four smaller screens with still more rows of numbers, curves, and diagrams.

‘The rest of the country has gone yellow!’ Grid Operator Giuseppe Santrelli called across the room. ‘I have Milan on the phone, they’re trying to come back online but they can’t get a stable frequency from Enel. They’re asking if there’s anything we can do.’

‘Sicily’s red now, too!’

The control centre operated a traffic light system: green meant everything was in order. Yellow meant the grid was in difficulties. Red signalled a blackout. Every system operator in the centre could tell by a single glance whether there was even a hint of a problem in the power grid. Given the complete international integration of the grid, this was an absolute necessity.

For the most part, computers handled all necessary adjustments, responding in a millisecond to increase or reduce the flow of electricity. In the event of a large fluctuation, the system was set up to automatically shut down affected parts of the grid.

The illuminated red area on Condotto’s screen told her that the computer had taken almost all regions north of Latium and Abruzzo off the grid. Sicily was off as well. According to the map in front of her, only the bottom half of the boot was still being supplied with electricity. More than thirty million people were in the dark.

Condotto watched helplessly as more power surged into the rest of the grid, triggering further automatic shut-downs.

‘Ffffp! And there they go’—Santrelli shook his head in dismay—‘Calabria, Basilicata, parts of Apulia and Campania red. Remaining service areas turning yellow. And look!’ There was panic in his voice as he pointed at the screen: ‘The French and Austrians are in trouble now too!’

Ybbs-Persenbeug, Austria

Herwig Oberstätter looked up from the switch box, straining to hear a repeat of the sound that had triggered his sense of unease.

Like the vaulted ceiling of a gothic cathedral, the steel-and-concrete roof of the power plant turned the interior into a vast echo chamber, amplifying the drone of the generators. Hearing nothing untoward, he leaned over the railing of the high metal walkway that wound around the southern power plant’s interior, and peered at the three red generators below. Their casings stood in a row like gigantic barrels, each one housing magnets that weighed several tons and kilometres of wound wire cable, spinning at several hundred revolutions per minute, propelled by steel shafts as thick as tree trunks that connected them to the truck-sized Kaplan turbines through which flowed the waters of the Danube, newly released from the massive dam with its 34-kilometre reservoir, at a rate of over a thousand cubic metres per second.

The power plant, built in the 1950s and situated between Ybbs and Persenbeug in Lower Austria, was one of the largest on the Danube. After nine years in the job and extensive training in mechanical engineering, Oberstätter understood the process by which the rotating magnetic field induced voltage in the stator’s conductors, thus converting kinetic energy into electrical energy. Even so, he never ceased to marvel at the power of the three sleeping red giants under his care, miraculously generating the power that drove modern life, even in the remotest hut in the country. Aware that the instant this power dried up, the world would come to a standstill, he tended his machines like a father watching over his children, constantly monitoring their progress. And tonight his senses had picked up on some irregularity that as yet he couldn’t quite place.

It was Friday evening. Workers were returning home, looking forward to opening the front door and being warmed by central heating, a hot shower, cooked food, relaxing in front of the television. Even with Austria’s power plants running at full capacity, at this time of day it was necessary to import power to meet demand. Oberstätter moved a little further along the walkway to listen again. And as he did, the noise level in the power plant began to increase.

Instantly grasping the implications of what he was hearing, he reached for his radio to alert the switch room to the problem.

Through the static hiss and popping of the receiver, it was all he could do to make out his colleague’s response:

‘We see it too. We’ve got a sudden drop in frequency across the grid!’

The droning in the room was now punctuated by an irregular pounding. Oberstätter cast a nervous eye over the cylinders; what he was seeing was the exact reverse of a drop in frequency. The generators were clearly overburdened, not under. Who could be using so much power all of a sudden?

He shouted into the microphone: ‘The frequency’s too high—the generators are cracking up. Activate shut-down immediately.’

If the frequency in the power grid was so unstable that it was reaching his generators, this was a much scarier problem than a surge in demand caused by a small part of the grid dropping off. Had the power gone out over large areas? If so, tens of thousands of Austrians were now in the dark.

Oberstätter looked on, horrified, as the red giants began first to vibrate, then to jump. If the number of revolutions became too great, their own centrifugal force would destroy the machines. The system should automatically have shut down by this point, but the safeguards had obviously failed.

‘Cut it!’ he bellowed into the radio. ‘Shut it down now, or this whole place’ll be blown apart!’

He froze, transfixed in the face of this power. The three super-machines rose and fell unevenly. His heart pounded in his chest, anticipating the moment one of them would explode through the roof like the lid blowing off a pressure cooker.

And then the vibrations began to decrease, the giants stopped their jumping and settled down once more. The shaking could only have lasted seconds. To Oberstätter, it had seemed like an eternity.

The silence that followed was eerie. It took a while for it to sink in that the strip lights had all gone out. The power plant was illuminated only by the red glow of the emergency lights.

Brauweiler, Germany

‘Sweden, Norway and Finland to the north, Italy and Switzerland to the south—all gone,’ said the operator whose shoulder Jochen Pewalski was looking over. ‘Same with parts of Denmark, France, Austria…also some regions of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. E.ON is reporting a few outages, Vatenfall and EnBW have gone completely yellow. Same story from suppliers in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Britain.’

Jochen Pewalski looked up at the vast display board for confirmation. Sixteen metres wide and four metres high, it delivered up-to-the-minute information on energy transmission throughout Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. Around him, systems operators manned workstations loaded with state-of-the-art technology. It was a far cry from the office he’d occupied when he first joined Amprion GmbH thirty years ago. The Brauweiler building on the outskirts of Cologne had been transformed in the intervening years, thanks to the ever-increasing demand for energy. Transmission grids were no longer confined by regional or international borders; nowadays, energy flowed right across Europe, from the place where it was generated to wherever there was demand. And as Head of Grid System Management, it was Pewalski’s job to oversee and coordinate this constant give-and-take of energy, not just for Amprion’s own transmission grid and those of the other German operators, but for the entire northern sector of Europe.

Usually the board that loomed above him reflected a state of energy equilibrium that could be maintained by relatively minor adjustments to generate precisely the amount of energy needed. Tonight the display showed a network in chaos.

‘This is worse than 2006,’ groaned one of the operators.

Pewalski recalled the night in question: Saturday, 4 November 2006. A cruise ship from the Papenburg shipyard was being towed along the canals to the coast, and to allow it to pass under overhead cables, E.ON had shut off the power. Unfortunately, they had failed to give neighbouring networks prior warning. As a result, lines became immediately overburdened, triggering automatic shut-downs. Despite the efforts of Pewalski and his colleagues to balance the system, the cascading knock-on effect proved unstoppable. Fifteen million people across Europe found themselves plunged into blackout. It took an hour and a half to re-establish operations. They had come within a hair’s breadth of the complete collapse of the entire European grid.

The current situation was looking far more catastrophic.

‘The Czech Republic is totally red now, too,’ the young man reported.

Twenty minutes earlier the Italians had been first to experience problems. Then, as things were falling apart to the south, the Swedes had started having massive difficulties, followed by the rest of Scandinavia. And already reports were coming in that the cold winter weather was claiming victims all over Europe.

‘We have to secure the German grid at all costs to ensure the East–West connection isn’t interrupted,’ Pewalski urged his team.

He commanded the operators to redirect power to lines that were still clear, shut down power plants, bring others online, send any surplus energy to pumped-storage plants for as long as they still had the capacity to receive it. Where necessary, they began load-shedding—which left some factories on a mandatory break and thousands of people in the dark.

But just when their efforts seemed to be working, a number of lines on the board suddenly began flashing red.

Pewalski tried to remain calm, but his mind was racing. Provided a substantial part of the grid continued to function, they could use the power generated to reactivate downed networks relatively quickly. But if the blackout were to spread until the entire grid was taken out, it would be a very different story. Nuclear reactors and coal-fired power stations could not be brought back online within minutes.

‘Spain’s gone yellow.’

‘OK, that’s enough,’ Pewalski declared, reaching a decision. ‘We’re sealing Germany off.’ And then, more quietly: ‘If it’s still possible.’

A Few Kilometres from Lindau, Germany

‘I hope we’ve got enough petrol left,’ said Chloé Terbanten anxiously.

Her friends, Sophia Angström and Lara Bondoni, who’d been sitting in the back seat admiring the snow-covered landscape, both leaned forward to peer at the dashboard. Fleur van Kaalden, in the front passenger seat, broke off tapping her thigh in time to the music on the radio and suggested, ‘Maybe we should fill up again before we cross the border, just to make sure.’

The Austrian border couldn’t be far now. And then they’d be only an hour away from the ski cabin they had booked for the coming week. The foothills of the Alps were already visible in the moonlight, which now and again peeped out from behind the clouds. Sophia could make out the shapes of individual farmhouses, all in darkness; people in this part of the world must go to bed really, really early.

They were travelling in Chloé’s Citroën, the boot crammed with oversized suitcases, skis, and snowboards. They had already stopped for petrol once en route, spending longer than they’d intended in the service station café, drinking coffee and flirting with a couple of young Swedish guys who were on their way to Switzerland to go snowboarding.

‘Services in one kilometre,’ said Fleur, pointing to the sign as they whizzed past.

Sophia scanned the roadside for the lights of the service station, but all she could see was the moonlit landscape.

Chloé took the exit, a long, drawn-out curve.

‘It’s probably on the other side of the autobahn,’ said Lara, as a wide expanse opened up in front of them with lights dotted at intervals along the slip road.

Chloé slowed. ‘What on earth…?’

The petrol station was in darkness. The lights they’d seen turned out to belong to the cars queuing for the pumps, their headlights casting bright spots on the front of the building. Here and there, beams of light darted back and forth in the night—flashlights, probably.

Leaving the headlights on, they got out.

Immediately Sophia felt the cold penetrate her jeans and sweater. The car ahead of them had a German licence plate. She spoke the language better than the others, so she went forward and asked what was happening.

‘Power’s out,’ explained the driver through the half-open window.

She then approached a man in overalls standing by one of the pumps. He gave the same answer.

‘So we can’t get petrol here?’ she asked, beginning to panic a little.

‘The pumps are powered by electricity from the grid. Until it comes back on, we can’t get the fuel up from the underground tanks.’

‘Don’t you have backup power?’

‘Nope.’ He shrugged in apology. ‘It should be back on any moment, though.’

‘How long is it going to be?’ asked Sophia, glancing back at the long line of waiting cars and the restaurant’s packed-out car park, also in darkness. A travelling Friday before a week of winter holidays.

‘Maybe fifteen minutes.’

Not a hope, thought Sophia as she made her way back to the others. Chloé, having reached the same conclusion, pounded her hand on the roof of the car and yelled: ‘Get in, guys. Let’s go find the next service station!’