You’ve probably seen the headlines about hackers targeting water plants or hospitals. They’re scary, sure, but they usually feel like isolated glitches. Then you read Lights Out by Ted Koppel, and suddenly that flickering desk lamp looks a lot more like a ticking clock.
Honestly, the book is a gut punch. Koppel isn't some basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist wearing a tin-foil hat. He’s the guy who anchored Nightline for 25 years. He’s got 42 Emmys. When he started poking around the security of the U.S. electrical grid, he expected to find a master plan.
Instead? He found a mess.
He discovered that the very thing making our lives so easy—the hyper-connected, automated nature of our power system—is also our biggest "Achilles' heel." Basically, we’ve built a digital door to our most vital physical infrastructure and left the key under the mat.
The "Not-So-Secret" Three Grids
Most people think there's just one giant "American Power Grid." Nope. There are actually three: the Eastern Interconnection, the West, and Texas. (Yes, Texas really does have its own).
Koppel points out that these aren't just giant batteries. They are incredibly complex webs of over 3,000 different companies. Think about that for a second. You’ve got massive, multi-billion dollar utilities with decent security budgets, but they’re plugged directly into tiny, rural co-ops that might be running their systems on software from the 90s.
It’s like having a bank vault door but leaving the windows made of paper.
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If a sophisticated actor—think Russia, China, or even a highly motivated terrorist group—decides to "pull the plug" via a cyberattack, they don't have to hit everything. They just need to hit the right spots. Koppel cites a chilling study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): if just nine critical substations are knocked out simultaneously, the entire country could go dark.
For months.
Why This Isn't Just "A Bad Blackout"
We’ve all dealt with a few hours without power. You light some candles, order pizza (if the phones work), and wait for the hum of the fridge to come back. That is not what Ted Koppel Lights Out is talking about.
He’s talking about a "black start" scenario where the damage to the hardware is so physical and so widespread that you can’t just flip a switch to fix it.
The Transformer Problem
One of the scariest details Koppel unearths is the issue of Large Power Transformers (LPTs). These things are the size of a small house. They are:
- Custom-made (often overseas).
- Incredibly expensive ($3M to $10M a pop).
- Heavy enough to require specialized rail cars for transport.
- On average, about 40 years old.
If a cyberattack causes these transformers to physically burn out or "fry," we don't have a warehouse full of spares. You’re looking at a lead time of a year or more just to get a replacement. If ten or twenty go at once? You do the math.
The Domino Effect
Without power, the rest of the stack collapses within days. No power means no pumps for running water. No water means no sewage systems. No refrigeration means the food supply in cities vanishes in 72 hours.
Koppel interviewed Craig Fugate, the former head of FEMA, who was refreshingly—and terrifyingly—honest. Fugate basically said the government is great at hurricanes. They can handle a "bad day" in one state. But a multi-state, multi-month blackout caused by a cyberattack? There is no plan for that. There's no "Plan B" for 30 million people who suddenly have no way to flush a toilet or buy a loaf of bread.
Who Is Actually Prepared?
Koppel spent a good chunk of his research looking for the people who aren't just crossing their fingers. He found two main groups: the "preppers" and the Mormons.
The section on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is fascinating. They have a culture of preparedness that is practically industrial-scale. They’ve got massive storehouses, their own dairies, and even their own trucking fleets. It’s a literal shadow infrastructure.
But as Koppel dryly notes, the Mormon plan is for Mormons. It’s not a national strategy.
Then you have the "preppers." Koppel meets people who have moved to the middle of nowhere, installed solar panels, and stocked enough freeze-dried beef to survive a nuclear winter. While it’s easy to mock the guy with the bug-out bag, Koppel’s reporting makes their "craziness" look a whole lot more like "rationality" given the lack of a government safety net.
The Critics: Is Koppel Just Spreading FUD?
Look, not everyone loves the book. Some tech experts at places like Techdirt argued Koppel relied too much on "D.C. insiders" and "bureaucrats" who benefit from fear-mongering to get bigger budgets.
They argue that:
- The grid is more resilient than Koppel lets on.
- Hackers haven't actually pulled this off yet in the U.S.
- Power companies are constantly updating their defenses.
But then you look at what happened to Ukraine’s grid in 2015, or the Colonial Pipeline hack a few years ago. The "it hasn't happened yet" argument feels a bit like saying you don't need a seatbelt because you’ve never been in a car crash.
Koppel’s point isn't that the world will end tomorrow. It’s that we are "woefully unprepared" for a threat that we know exists. He’s calling out the "fox guarding the chicken coop" mentality where the power industry is largely responsible for its own regulation.
What You Can Actually Do
So, do you need to go buy a bunker in Idaho? Probably not. But Lights Out should definitely change how you think about "normal" life. Here’s the reality-check version of what to take away from Koppel’s reporting:
- The 72-hour rule is dead. FEMA used to say have three days of food and water. After reading Koppel, aim for two weeks. That covers 90% of "normal" disasters and gives you a buffer for the big ones.
- Analog is your friend. If the grid goes down, your phone is a brick in 24 hours. Keep a physical map of your area. Have a battery-powered or hand-crank radio.
- Water is the real killer. Most people stock food but forget that you can’t survive more than a few days without water. If the pumps stop, the taps stop. Look into "WaterBOB" liners for bathtubs or high-quality filtration systems like Berkeys.
- Cash is king. If the network is down, your credit card and Apple Pay are useless. Keep some small-denomination cash tucked away in a safe place.
Ted Koppel’s Lights Out is a sobering reminder that our modern world is built on a very fragile foundation. We spend our lives worrying about the Wi-Fi signal, but we rarely think about the massive, aging, humming transformers that make that signal possible in the first place.
The book isn't meant to make you a doomsdayer. It’s meant to make you an "informed citizen." Because if the lights ever do stay out for more than a week, the people who are even slightly prepared are the ones who are going to keep their heads while everyone else is panicking.
Start by taking stock of your own "grid." If the power went out right now and didn't come back for ten days, what’s the first thing that would go wrong? Fix that first. The goal isn't to survive the apocalypse; it's to be the person who isn't a burden on the system when the system is under strain.