Black Sky Hazards and the Human Continuity Project: We’re All Connected, We’re All Vulnerable

Paul Williams, President EIS Council

June 10, 2024

In an increasingly interconnected world, the vulnerabilities we face are more complex and far-reaching than ever before. The concept of “Black Sky” hazards, as championed by the EIS Council, brings into focus the profound risks posed by catastrophic events that could cause prolonged, widespread power outages. These events, ranging from natural disasters to cyber-attacks and coordinated physical assaults, highlight a critical truth: we are all connected, and we are all vulnerable. 

Without adequate preparation, they could be terminal.

Understanding Black Sky Hazards

Black  Sky hazards refer to extreme, widespread disruptions to critical infrastructure, especially the power grid. Unlike typical emergencies that might affect a region or a sector, Black Sky events have the potential to impact entire countries or even multiple continents, leading to severe, potentially existential societal and economic catastrophe. These hazards include:

• Natural Disasters: When taking place in infrastructure-sensitive regions, severe earthquakes, hurricanes, and extreme geomagnetic storms can cause massive damage to power grids and other critical infrastructure.
• Cyber-Attacks: As our systems become more digitized, the threat of cyber-attacks grows. Malicious actors can target the control systems of power grids, critical global finance sector assets, or other critical sectors. If sufficiently severe, this could mean cascading failure of critical infrastructures on a global scale. The impact on our civilization would be unimaginable.
• Physical Attacks: Coordinated assaults on key infrastructure components, such as substations or power plants, could lead to prolonged outages. If timed to coordinate with natural disasters, the impact could be particularly severe.
• Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attacks: High-altitude EMP attacks can disrupt electronic systems over vast areas, with the potential to shut down the full power grid. Without careful, multi-sector preparation, such shutdowns could be unrecoverable within the time scale needed to sustain the population.

In short, today we are facing a new class of existential hazards. And in our tightly interdependent and vulnerable world, severe disruption of any infrastructure sector (e.g., electricity, gas, finance, transportation, water …) could quickly cascade across all the others.

If we can’t find a way to collaborate and prepare before such events occur, our future, even our survival, is at risk. 

The Human Continuity Project

In response to these threats, the EIS Council is inaugurating the Human Continuity Project®. This initiative is designed to ensure that societies can maintain essential functions and recover swiftly from catastrophic Black Sky events. The project focuses on several key areas:

• Whole-of-Planet, Whole-of-Society Collaboration: By fostering the development of a broad, multi-national project team among industry sectors, non-government organizations, and government agencies the Project aims to create a cohesive, highly effective framework for building regionally varying plans and capabilities that our societies will need to survive the extreme disasters that await us. This collaboration ensures that resources and expertise are shared while accounting for regional needs and preparing the focused capabilities needed to respond to catastrophes.
• Infrastructure Hardening and Resilience: Upgrading and protecting critical infrastructure is key to making the impact of Black Sky events manageable while enabling recovery and restart in even the most extreme circumstances. This includes enhancing the physical, cyber, and electromagnetic security of grid elements, and communication networks while developing – and implementing – the technology enhancements and new capabilities needed to enable swift recovery, even after catastrophic events.
• Public Awareness and Education: Educating the public about Black Sky hazards and the importance of preparedness is crucial. The project promotes awareness campaigns and training programs to ensure that communities are ready to respond effectively.
• Emergency Preparedness and Response: Developing comprehensive emergency plans that can be quickly activated in the event of a Black Sky event is essential for critical facilities in all sectors and for community security and support organizations. This includes stockpiling and local staging of essential supplies, creating redundancy in critical systems, and conducting regular drills and exercises.
• Planning for Redundant Expert Labor: Of particularly critical importance: – in the highly disrupted scenarios of a Black Sky event, expert labor in critical sectors – already scarce today under normal conditions – will be vital to recovery. This may be one of the most challenging areas confronting us: developing the policies needed to make this key labor requirement a standard feature of all critical sectors.

The Interconnected Nature of Vulnerability

One of the core messages of the Human Continuity Project® is that we are all interconnected. The modern world’s reliance on interconnected infrastructures, sectors, and supply chains means that a disruption in one area can have cascading effects on others. For example, without careful multi-sector planning, a prolonged power outage would shut down water supply, healthcare services, the finance sector, data centers, the internet, transportation, communication networks, and virtually all other societal sectors. 

At the same time, restarting a blacked-out grid is only possible with near-normal operation of most of these impacted sectors. Effectively addressing these interdependencies is only possible if we begin today, long before a Black Sky catastrophe takes place, and put in place the plans and capabilities needed to survive such events. 

• Economic Impact: Without careful, focused preparation, the global economic consequences of Black Sky events could be devastating. Power outages can halt manufacturing, disrupt supply chains, and cause financial markets to plummet. Small businesses, which often lack the resources to withstand prolonged disruptions, are particularly vulnerable.
  
  Even more severe, a large-scale multi-region power outage, a shutdown of the satellite-based GPS timing signal network, or a range of other disasters could severely disrupt or halt the operation of financial exchanges, worldwide, bringing economic activity – and our civilization – to a halt.
• Health and Safety: Public health is at significant risk during Black Sky events. Hospitals and emergency services rely on electricity to function, as well as community water and wastewater, national financial systems, internet-based data access, and all other sectors. Yet given their criticality, leading hospitals today are looking for best-practice approaches to operating through Black Sky events with manageable levels of disruption.
• Social Stability: Extended disruptions can lead to social unrest. As people struggle to access basic necessities like food, water, and shelter, tensions can rise, leading to increased crime and civil disorder. Advance planning of community security organizations, working with their public and private sector partners, will be essential to keeping communities safe during a catastrophic event.
• Environmental Risks: Without adequate advanced multi-sector planning, long-duration, large-scale power outages can also lead to severe environmental hazards. For example, without power, wastewater treatment plants can fail, leading to the contamination of water supplies. Additionally, the inability to manage industrial processes can result in hazardous material releases. In severe cases, if grid restart planning and assets are inadequate, very long-duration outages could also lead to leakage from nuclear power plants – both active plants and closed facilities.

Building a Resilient Future Against Black Sky Hazards

Addressing Black Sky hazards requires a multifaceted approach that involves carefully planned, multi-sector, and multi-national technological innovation, policy development, and community engagement – the key features of the Human Continuity Project®. 

Surprisingly, the EIS Council’s research suggests that the technologies needed, and the investment required, will be quite modest by most large-scale project standards. Indeed, the primary barrier is seen as a mix of poor public awareness and a lack of a concrete, systematically-structured process to initiate an effective all-sector process and to do so across different regions, worldwide.

To address these concerns, EIS is working with partners in the public, private, and academic sectors to expand awareness of both the risks and the opportunity. To ensure the Project’s success, plans are being drawn up to structure the effort based on the same aerospace-class systems engineering planning that successfully brings us the most complex technological systems under development today, from the Webb Telescope to NASA’s Artemis program.

A Collective Responsibility

The vulnerability of our interconnected systems is a shared challenge that requires a collective response. The Human Continuity Project®, spearheaded by the EIS Council, exemplifies the collaborative efforts needed to address Black Sky hazards. By recognizing our interconnectedness and shared vulnerabilities, we can take proactive steps to build a resilient future.

In the face of potential Black Sky events, we must remember that we are all connected. Our ability to withstand and recover from these catastrophic events depends on our collective will to work together to enhance resilience, protect critical infrastructure, and prepare our communities. 

Together, we can ensure that even in the darkest of skies, our societies, and our future, remain strong, secure, and resilient. Collaboration is our strength.