Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late is a disaster thriller book by the Austrian author Marc Elsberg, described by Penguin Books as "a 21st-century high-concept disaster thriller".^[2]

Published in German in 2012, as of 2016^[update] it had been translated into fifteen languages and sold a million copies worldwide.^[2] The English version was published in 2017.^[2]

The novel is about a European power outage due to a cyberattack. For realism the book is written on the basis of interviews with intelligence and computer security officials.^[3]

The novel starts with a collapse of electrical grids across Europe, plunging the population into darkness and disaster.^[2][3] The prolonged electricity cut causes major problems: no more petrol, no telephone, no food in supermarkets, no cash machines working, nuclear disasters, etc.^[3][4] A former computer hacker and IT professional tries to find out the root cause for this. While doing so he himself becomes a hunted person as officials find suspicious e-mails sent from his laptop and think that he is involved.

The novel is currently being adapted into a miniseries starring Moritz Bleibtreu, directed by Oliver Rihs and Lancelot von Naso and is scheduled to begin filming in fall 2020.^[5]

• Societal collapse
• Cyberwarfare
• Smart meter § Security