Should prolonged blackouts hit the U.K., the country would likely experience increased deaths rates, rapid descent into public disorder and a flood of criminals running free, according to a secret government security assessment.
"Populations are far less resilient now than they once were," according to the report obtained by the Telegraph. "There is likely to be a very rapid descent into public disorder unless the government can maintain [the] perception of security."
Codenamed Exercise Hopkinson, the report claims the U.K.'s contingency plans for severe power outages are "based on numerous flawed or untested assumptions and need to be revised," the paper said.
The assessment evaluated likely scenarios to occur if storms took out critical energy infrastructure in southwest England and knocked out power to two million homes for two weeks.
While its purpose was to ensure that emergency power plans were "fit for purpose," the assessment instead "exposed the fact that, where contingency plans against power disruption exist, some of those plans are based on assumption rather than established fact."
Among its findings were that transportation networks would be "paralyzed" and emergency services would struggle to meet demands, fuel for backup generators may not be available, panic buying of food would threaten supplies and efforts to restore power may be futile due to "significant metal theft from 'dead' circuits."
An industry source told the Telegraph: "It seems like a lot of emergency planning is based on articles of faith. These are incredibly unlikely scenarios but you want to trust the unseen hand of the state to sort things out if the worst does happen. It looks as though the manifestations of the state aren't sure how they would respond."
The report also said mobile phone coverage would start to disappear after only two hours and landline phones would be useless as they require power. And because electronic prisoner tagging systems would stop working along with mobile phone signals, there is a "genuine risk that high risk offenders in the community would be able to 'disappear.'"
Simply switching to generators is "far more difficult to establish in reality," the report warned, because petrol stations and some fuel bunkers rely on electric pumps.
The report said it was "unknown" how long hospital back-up generators could last, and if Hinkley Point nuclear plant couldn't refuel its generators within 72 hours, it too could go down. Some sewage treatment plants could stop working after six hours and would be forced to dump sewage into water channels.
Mortality rates will increase and put "pressure on the practicalities of movement, storage and disposal of the deceased," and transportation systems would fail due to "signals failure." Street lighting and road signals will go too, further compounding congestion as people attempt to leave the area.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "The Government routinely carries out exercises like this to test response capabilities and ensure we are as prepared as possible for any very high impact emergency situation. The scenario tested here was and continues to be, unlikely to happen, but it is important we do these exercises and learn from them," according to the Telegraph.
