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Fact check · · 904 views

Every "global blackout" date so far, and what really happened

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Updated 5 November, 01:00 UTC
  • First version.

Every few months a new date goes viral: the power will go out worldwide, the internet will stop, banks will be wiped. This page keeps the list. None of these has ever happened, and none came with a source anyone could check. When a new date appears, we add it here, with what is actually known about it.

Live, checked every 5 minutes · 16:10 UTC

No global outage right now. The internet is working normally in 249 of 250 countries and territories we monitor. See the live map

Coming up

  • 17 November 2026 Claims: a "Great Blackout" predicted by The Simpsons, and a "COVID 2.0" cyberattack that wipes bank accounts and shuts the internet for three months. Real: a one-minute test of the US Emergency Alert System on radio and TV at 19:20 UTC. It switches nothing off. Full fact check
  • 13 November 2026 Claim: "Doomsday". Real: a 1960 article in Science about population growth, which predicted no blackout and no event on that day.

Dates that have passed

  • 2 November 2026 Claim: a worldwide power outage, in a post on X seen more than 750,000 times. Real: Japan launched its Disaster Management Agency and asked people to keep supplies. Nothing else happened: the power cuts that week were local, as they are every week.
  • 12 August 2026 Claim: a "two-minute blackout". Real: the date of a total solar eclipse.
  • 18 July 2026 Claim: a "nine-day global blackout". Nothing happened.
  • March 2026 Claim: a "NASA warning" of a blackout. Nothing happened.
  • April 2025 Claim: after Spain and Portugal lost power, the start of a "three-day global blackout". The outage stayed on the Iberian Peninsula.

Why it can't happen the way the posts say

There is no world power grid. Electricity runs on separate grids, each covering a country or a group of neighbours. When one fails, the failure stays inside it. Since January 2022, no day has seen more than three countries lose power in the outages tracked by Cloudflare Radar.

There is no switch for the internet. It is tens of thousands of separately run networks, and no single flaw takes it all down. Facebook's 2021 failure, one of the largest ever, took one company offline for about six hours.

A real threat would be announced in public. The one natural event that could damage grids on several continents is a severe solar storm, and space weather centres such as NOAA's publish a warning, usually one to three days ahead.

How to check a new date yourself

  1. Look for the source. "An unverified source" or "they don't want you to know" means there isn't one.
  2. Check what else happens on that date. These rumours usually grow around something real and harmless, such as a test, an eclipse or a new agency.
  3. Look at live data. This map updates every 5 minutes, and your country's emergency service will tell you about real risks.

Blackout Map is an independent monitor, not an official source. We show what we measure and never predict outages.

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Blackout Map is a live map of internet outages and shutdowns around the world. Open the map · Security watch · RSS · Follow us on X: @Blackoutmap_net

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