Eat, sleep, work, repeat… If you’re lucky!

How cyber attacks, bird flu, and a few power cuts have us all rethinking what ‘resilient’ really means…

In America, they’d probably call me a prepper. And I won’t lie, I’ve thought more than once about what I’d do in a zombie apocalypse. Crossbow at the ready, stockpile of beans in the cupboard, bunker on standby (AKA the Arc). But all jokes aside, last week’s wave of cyber outages has been a bit of a wake-up call.

Big names like M&S, Harrods, and Co-op have all been affected. Entire countries have been ground to a halt from power outages. Meanwhile in the UK, our own power surges raised a few eyebrows, and somewhere in the background we’ve got the ominous-sounding HN51 bird flu looming large. Ten million animals affected in the US, and yes, it’s already made the jump to humans. It might not be airborne yet… but how long before it is? So this is where my brain has been lately.

Not just wondering if I’ve got enough pasta to last the apocalypse, but seriously questioning how resilient we really are – as people, and as businesses. Because when the internet goes down, or the power goes out, what happens next? If you’re anything like Scott, the answer is… wander into town in search of the pub only to find it’s shut because the tills are down too. We’re so reliant on power and internet that any disruption feels catastrophic.

Traffic lights stop working. Shops close. Systems crash. Society as we know it comes to a standstill. At Advantage One, we’ve taken steps. We’ve got two massive UPS systems capable of powering our entire building for a day. But what use is electricity if the rest of the UK is offline and nobody can access the internet anyway?

That’s the real question: what does true business resilience look like now? And how far are we prepared to go to ensure we can keep operating? Do we start looking at satellite internet like Elon Musk’s Starlink, just to stay online when the grid goes down? Do we need off-grid energy solutions, back-up payment systems, alternative communication routes? It sounds extreme… until it doesn’t.

We are, quite literally, sleepwalking into apathy. The power goes out, and we shrug. Servers crash, and we wait. We’re so used to modern convenience that we forget how fragile it all is. So whether it’s the next cyberattack, the next outbreak, or just the next annoying power cut, maybe it’s time we asked ourselves: how ready are we really? Eat, sleep, work, repeat? No thanks. Let’s add prepare to that list.