New York City got a proverbial punch in the mouth on July 13, 1977, when a lightning strike took out three electrical substations, resulting in a cascading blackout. After 24 hours without electricity, police arrested more than 4,500 looters and suffered 550 injuries. Property damage was estimated at $300 million. The line between civilization and chaos is thin and blue and, increasingly, it is electrified.

A tree branch in Ohio in 2013 touched an electric transmission line, causing a blackout that left more than 50 million people in North America without power for up to two weeks. In February 2021, the entire state of Texas went dark due to cold weather, resulting in the deaths of 246 Texans and $60–$180 billion in economic damages.

Mother Nature can cause widespread harm to the grid that goes beyond the already devastating effects of lightning strikes, winter storms, and tree branches. “Solar” or “space” weather events can induce extreme electrical currents into large power transformers, rendering them useless and blacking out the grid for months or even years.

Humans can devise even more devastating attack methods than those from nature. Multiple adversarial nations prioritize attacks against opponents’ electrical grids at the outset of conflict in their warfighting doctrines.