HOW WOULD THE WORLD COPE WITH NO POWER?
No internet or electricity, no banking or water... and all because of a routine blast from the Sun. JON COATES talks to Hollywood screenwriter David Koepp about his new post-apocalyptic novel
EVERY 150 years or so throughout history a major “coronal mass ejection” from the Sun has collided directly with our atmosphere.
The last time was the Carrington Event of 1859, named after the UK astronomer who detected it.
A giant cloud of electromagnetic plasma with the total mass of Mount Everest enveloped the Earth and knocked out all electrical systems.
At the time the only electrical network was the world’s telegraph system, so the solar event that made the Northern Lights visible across the planet was viewed with excitement and awe, in much the same way as we now view eclipses.
But with the world now dependent on inter-connected power grids, studies estimate a direct hit of electromagnetic plasma from the
Sun would cause a blackout across 90 per cent of the globe lasting 12 to 18 months. This would leave most of our planet in the dark with no communications, no banking, no central heating, no fresh running water and no food distribution.
The Sun ejects electromagnetic plasma in our direction every day – and we are overdue a major hit.
This terrifying scenario is the starting point for Aurora, a scarily plausible thriller by top Hollywood screenwriter David Koepp, out now.
It tells the story of two separate American communities, one prepared for a coronal mass ejection (CME) and the other not, as they try to survive in a world without power.
The screenwriter of Hollywood blockbusters including Jurassic
Park, Carlito’s Way, Mission Impossible and War of the
Worlds, says: “I wanted to look at a global phenomenon but through a local lens, because when power and communication goes everything becomes extremely local. What matters is your neighbours and the street where you live – that’s it.”
David was thinking about the idea that became Aurora while living with his wife Melissa and their two youngest children, son Henry and daughter Grace, now 15 and 11, in London’s Kensington.
They headed back to their home in New York months before the pandemic started. He says: “I get an idea and it sits in my head for a few years to germinate before I can start.
“When I was getting ready to write it the pandemic started and I said to my publisher ‘do you still like it given it’s about a global catastrophe?’
“They said ‘yes, we still like it but I imagine your perceptions will change given the pandemic’ and they did.
“I wrote it over three or four months in the summer and fall of 2020, when we were all in the thick of it and locked in our homes.
“It didn’t change my perception of what the human reaction would be given the event, but everyone in the story had to be affected by Covid, so that is why we have a 15-year-old going ‘I can’t go through this again’.
“I think we’d all have that feeling should something cataclysmic occur.
“Our initial feeling would be ‘I can’t do this’. But that would not be the case because we all have reserves of strength we don’t know about – and we would likely have no choice.” David, 59, adds: “We spend all our time preparing for the last crisis because that is the one we can imagine. We would handle another global pandemic, should this one ever end, a bit better because we have been through it and know the drill.
“But the next crisis won’t be that, it will be something completely out of left field.” After deciding Aurora would be about a global blackout the writer says a CME was the best explanation for this, as the other option, a nuclear blast, would have to focus on geo-politics instead of the human story of the two communities.
David explains: “The Carrington Event was fascinating because of when it occurred. In 1859 the world was very different from how it is now.
“Though it seriously impacted telegraph operations, people weren’t dependent on electricity.
“If it happened now some people would respond with strength and heroism and others would not.
“I suspect your country would fare rather well because there is an attitude of we must get by, we will get by, we must all bear up.
“It really is an admirable part of the national character.
“I know part of it was living through The Blitz, but it goes back further.
“In my country, which I adore, we don’t really feel that way.
“We feel everything should work all the time and we need to speak to the manager immediately if it doesn’t.”
He adds: “In terms of real practical effect to the worldwide infrastructure it would be utterly devastating.
“Estimates are 12 to 18 months without power in 90 per cent of the world. Without power we don’t have communication, banking, heat, air-conditioning – and running water in many places because it takes fuel to run pumps. There would be significant hardship and loss of life.”
But he suspects power would be restored much quicker, based on the recent human ingenuity witnessed in finding Covid vaccines in just nine months, as opposed to years.
David is adapting Aurora with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow for a Netflix film due to start shooting next year.
And his first novel Cold Storage, about a killer fungus being unleashed on the world, is due to start shooting in autumn for Studio Canal, starring Liam Neeson.
David counts Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way and Panic Room as the favourite films he has written, along with Ghost Town, which he wrote and directed, and which starred Ricky Gervais.
He says he will always write screenplays but has enjoyed writing his two novels as “you don’t need to get someone else to give you tens of millions of dollars in order to do it”, as you do with movies.
He already has an idea for his next thriller: “The idea has a scientific base because that is what I like, but without a dystopian angle. It’d be nice to write about something that doesn’t threaten the species for once.”
Aurora by David Koepp (Harpercollins, £14.99) is out now. For free UK P&P on orders over £12.99 call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832 or visit www.expressbookshop.com.