Visualising the E-Armageddon scenario : a comparative assessment of the social consequences of major power outages

Prezelj, Iztok (author), Kocjančič, Klemen (author)

As global dependence on electricity increases, alongside rising threats from natural disasters and hostile actors such as military, intelligence, criminal, and terrorist entities, the risk of large-scale, prolonged power outages is intensifying. This paper addresses a gap in the literature by (1) reviewing the main concepts of major power outages, (2) identifying numerous cases, and (3) extracting their typical societal and cross-sectoral consequences. Findings on similarities and differences from 28 analysed cases confirm that major and prolonged electric power outages are likely to cause serious, both predictable and unpredictable, societal and cross-sectoral consequences, such as human casualties, significant financial losses, and disruption, delay, or cessation of activities in the following sectors: information and telecommunications, transport, water, food, finance, health, security, public administration, industrial production, leisure activities, and many other areas (households, public lighting, electric locks, elevators, crematoria). The Achilles' heel in such scenarios is the availability and quality of electric power generators and related fuel supplies during periods of drastic demand by many critical societal actors.

• Language: English
• Keywords: electric power, blackout, critical infrastructure, risk, security, threat, damage, energy
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 11.07.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 1-11
• Numbering: Vol. 54, art. no. 100871
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-184704
• UDC: 351.78:620.9
• ISSN on article: 1874-5482
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2026.100871
• COBISS.SI-ID: 284638467
• Publication date in RUL: 14.07.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: International journal of critical infrastructure protection
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 1874-5482
• COBISS.SI-ID: 519685657

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Javna infrastruktura, Energetika

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0206-2018
• Name: Obramboslovje

• Funder: TEB - TEB
• Acronym: TEB/INV/37/2019