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Leave the World Behind turns a cyberattack into a frightening vision of everyday life coming apart. Its central idea—that disruption in interconnected infrastructure can spread—is grounded in a real risk. The film’s particular chain of failures and the scale of its social breakdown, however, are speculative, not a forecast established by available government evidence.
Which Ethan Hawke film is the headline about?
It is Leave the World Behind, a 2023 Netflix drama starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke. Hawke plays Clay, who rents a house with his wife Amanda and their children. Their getaway takes a disturbing turn when G.H. and his daughter Ruth arrive seeking refuge and report a mysterious cyberattack. Netflix’s official film information describes the same premise.
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The film adapts Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel. Netflix Tudum’s film background says writer-director Sam Esmail was interested in making a disaster movie centered on a cyberattack because he felt many people lacked a concrete sense of what one could look like or how damaging it could be.
What part of the cyberattack scenario is realistic?
Interdependent infrastructure can spread disruption
The broad mechanism is plausible. Critical infrastructure systems depend on one another, so a disruption in one system can affect others. CISA’s Infrastructure Dependency Primer explains that disruptions may cascade across critical systems; energy and communications, for example, are mutually dependent in many cases. That makes it reasonable to worry about effects extending beyond an initial target.
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This general vulnerability does not establish the film’s specific sequence of failures, simultaneous reach, or social consequences. Interdependence is a reason cascading impacts are possible, not proof that every connected service would fail together.
Historical incidents and modeled possibilities are different evidence
A 2019 U.S. Government Accountability Office report said cyber incidents had not reportedly caused power outages in the United States at that time. It also noted that federal assessments suggested cyberattacks could cause widespread outages, while the possible scale remained uncertain. That is a dated account of what had been reported and assessed by 2019, not a claim about every year since. GAO’s report, GAO-19-332, is a useful distinction between documented history and potential risk.
A 2018 Department of Energy assessment modeled electricity-load disruptions ranging from 40 to 50,000 megawatts. DOE cautioned that the range was not representative of current adversary capabilities or current risk. It is a scenario range, not a prediction that an attack will produce those effects—or that the film’s events are imminent. The DOE assessment should be read with that limitation attached.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the film feels plausible without being a prediction
The fear in Leave the World Behind comes from combining a credible general weakness—connected systems can affect one another—with a dramatic, unusually broad breakdown. The cited government material supports concern about cascading infrastructure effects, but it does not establish that the film’s particular chain of events is likely or has happened in the United States. The distinction matters: a scenario can be useful for imagining consequences without functioning as a realistic forecast.
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