Did Leave the World Behind come true?

1. LTWB-1

   A coordinated cyberattack takes down electricity and communications across a large region of a major country for days.

   ARRIVINGCore premiseEst. 2045 · range 2032–2075Confidence: low

   2000202520502070

   Weight 5/5 · Core premise: the blackout and the communications collapse are the disaster the whole film runs on.

   A cyberattack has already cut power to customers. In December 2015 intruders switched off three Ukrainian distribution companies within about 30 minutes of each other and wiped systems to hinder restoration, leaving roughly 225,000 customers without power. Nothing has yet hit a large region of a major country for days, and the largest recent blackout, across Spain and Portugal in 2025, was not a cyberattack. The bottleneck is the effort of compromising many separate operators at once, so we put the median well after today. 123

2. LTWB-2

   A hostile actor takes control of a fleet of connected self-driving cars at once and crashes them into motorway traffic.

   NEARSupportingEst. 2050 · range 2035–2090+Confidence: low

   2000202520502070

   Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the pile-up of Teslas blocks the family's escape, but the plot does not need that particular method.

   Remote takeover of a single car has been demonstrated: in 2015 researchers controlled a Jeep Cherokee over the mobile network, and Fiat Chrysler recalled about 1.4 million vehicles. A simultaneous takeover of a whole fleet is a different problem. Security researchers consulted after the film said it would be a hard attack that cannot be ruled out, most plausibly through a malicious software update or an insider. We assume that it eventually becomes possible, but not that it happens. 45

3. LTWB-3

   A hostile state quietly places itself inside a country's civilian infrastructure networks years before a crisis, ready to disrupt them.

   ARRIVEDSupportingArrived 2023Confidence: high

   2000202520502070

   Weight 3/5 · Supporting: G.H.'s account of the slow campaign explains the attack, though the film never names an attacker.

   US agencies state that a Chinese state-sponsored group, known as Volt Typhoon, has compromised networks in communications, energy, transport and water, and that it is seeking to pre-position for disruptive or destructive attacks in a crisis. Microsoft publicly reported the group in May 2023. We found no report of the access having been used to cause an outage. The claim is ARRIVED because the pre-positioning is documented, not because any attack followed. 67

4. LTWB-4

   Official emergency-alert channels carry a false or hijacked message that reaches the public and causes real alarm.

   ARRIVEDSupportingArrived 2013Confidence: high

   2000202520502070

   Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the corrupted alert is an early beat that starts the family's panic, not the cause of the collapse.

   In February 2013 hackers broke into the alert systems of local television stations in Montana and elsewhere and broadcast a warning that the dead were rising. In January 2018 a false ballistic-missile alert reached phones and screens across Hawaii and took 38 minutes to correct, though that was human error, not an attack. Both reached the public, at local scale. A national, sustained hijack, as the film shows, has not happened. 89

1. FOR Cyber-Attack Against Ukrainian Critical Infrastructure (IR-ALERT-H-16-056-01). CISA, 2016-02-25. Attackers remotely hit three regional power companies in December 2015, cutting power to roughly 225,000 customers and running wiper malware to hinder recovery.
2. FOR PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure (AA24-038A). CISA, NSA and FBI, 2024-02-07. US agencies say a state-sponsored group has compromised IT environments in the energy, communications, transport and water sectors.
3. AGAINST Spanish Minister rules out cyberattack as reason for April's blackout. PV Tech, 2025-05-15. The biggest recent European blackout had no evidence of a cyberattack behind it, according to Spain's minister. Real grid failures are mostly technical.
4. FOR Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It. WIRED, 2015-07-21. Two researchers took control of a moving Jeep Cherokee from miles away, which led to a recall of about 1.4 million vehicles.
5. AGAINST Hackers say the Tesla nightmare in Netflix's 'Leave the World Behind' could really happen. The Star (Malaysia), 2023-12-27. Researchers call a mass takeover difficult but not impossible, and one says it would need control of the maker's servers and its over-the-air update system.
6. FOR PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure (AA24-038A). CISA, NSA and FBI, 2024-02-07. The agencies assess the actors are seeking to pre-position on IT networks for disruptive or destructive attacks during a major crisis or conflict.
7. FOR Volt Typhoon targets US critical infrastructure with living-off-the-land techniques. Microsoft Threat Intelligence, 2023-05-24. Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that the campaign is building the capability to disrupt critical communications between the US and Asia in future crises.
8. FOR Zombie apocalypse infiltrates TV station's emergency alert system. Nextgov, 2013-02-13. Hackers broke into the alert system of a Montana TV station and broadcast a false message that the dead were rising from their graves.
9. CONTEXT FCC On Hawaii's Bogus Alert: Don't Say 'This Is Not A Drill' During Drills. NPR, 2018-04-11. A false missile alert left Hawaii residents fearing for their lives for 38 minutes. The FCC blamed human error and inadequate safeguards, not an attack.

Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method