Blackout

by Marc Elsberg

“Second, you can’t really store power. Like blood, it must flow continuously. That means it must be generated if it is to be used.

“How can this happen throughout the whole of Europe? That can’t be normal.” “Unfortunately, it can, given modern interconnected power grids. For the media: the minister has for some time now devoted his utmost attention to modernizing power grids and power systems, especially at the European level.” “First responders?”

In Wickley’s vision of the future, power would be supplied by a multitude of small entities harvesting electricity from unreliable sources, like the sun or wind, or even capturing energy generated by individuals walking, thanks to micro–power plants in the soles of shoes.

Complete unreliable sources

Livasco’s features hardened. A thin smile formed on his lips. “I’m afraid this lies outside of the president’s jurisdiction. But go ahead and call your friend. Meanwhile, I’ll be contacting Europol.”

How this can be outside a country s president jurisdiction?

report Endangerment and Vulnerability of Modern Societies—as Seen in the Example of a Wide-Reaching and Long-Lasting Failure of the Power Supply that the Committee on Education, Research, and Technology Assessment presented in spring 2011.”

‘We’re four meals away from anarchy.’

Nine meals away, not four

The intention hadn’t been for Europe to become uninhabitable—on the contrary.

Worst of all, it would concede the right to control the future to a society obsessed with money and with power, with order and productivity and efficiency, with consumption, with entertainment, and with ego, and with how to take as much of everything for themselves as possible. A society in which people didn’t count, only maximizing profit. In which community was merely a cost factor, the environment a resource. Efficiency a religion, order its shrine, and the ego its God.

Mentalidade progressista

“Well, events have now shown that it costs even more to ignore it.”

Only four days, he thought, and already our nerves are raw. He closed his eyes, and for the first time since he was a child he prayed.

Hartlandt sat up. “Mr. Manzano, we’re placing you under arrest. The Central Intelligence Agency has also expressed an interest in questioning you.” At the thought of the American intelligence agency’s infamous methods, Manzano grew sick with fear.

In the the euro pussyflanders mind, the CIA is the new Gestapo...

There were at least fifty people waiting in the room. A woman was trying to calm her wailing little boy. An older man sitting on a chair was leaning against his wife, his face white as chalk, his eyelids fluttering. She whispered something to him over and over and stroked his cheek. Another woman was lying in her chair, her head tilted back, her skin waxen, one arm raised to chest height, the end of it a stump of once-white gauze drenched in blood under which there had to be a hand. Manzano looked away. He stared at the wall instead.

Study: where there s no doctor

They had procured thousands of email addresses belonging to employees at various power companies and government institutions via social media. Then, using personalized emails, they had lured them to a website with “special discount travel deals for select employees.”

No porn, but travell offers...

“Do you think the militaries of the West have been asleep these past years?” asked the NATO general. “Look, Mr. Chancellor, the one thing you’re not going to see in this conflict is a smoking gun. But if you step outside the door you’ll see that the shot has been fired. And it has seriously wounded us. Let’s start shooting back before we bleed to death.”

O classico general belicoso comandante da NATO. Personagem meio lugar comum. O autor poderia ter sido mais criativo.

“That’s something that will come out over the course of our investigations in the coming days. Among those in custody are members of both the radical left and the far right. The majority come from middle-class families. All of them appear to be well educated.”

Politicamente correto.

“Perhaps. Among terrorists, there’s one type that is prevalent, independent of the worldview: we call this the ‘righteous’ type. They firmly believe that they are in possession of the one legitimate truth and that they have the right to implement that truth through every conceivable means. For the achievement of their supposedly higher goal, they have no qualms whatsoever about sacrificing innocent people.”

Eco terroristas

The receptionist had explained to him that the hotel had priority when it came to the supply of, among other things, water, because it was frequented by diplomats and politicians. That was why the pipes were flowing here, while most of the homes in Brussels still had to do without.

The elite

“Endangerment and Vulnerability of Modern Societies—as Seen in the Example of a Wide-Reaching and Long-Lasting Failure of the Power Supply.”

Sheri Fink’s Pulitzer Prize–winning article from August 25, 2009, in the New York Times on the dramatic days in the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 provided inspiration for the hospital scenes.