Partly—but not as depicted. A real adversary could disrupt regional power, telecommunications, GPS-dependent services, logistics, emergency communications, or selected connected vehicles. But the film’s near-simultaneous collapse of the internet, aircraft, ships, cars, power systems, and public information would require a coordinated hybrid operation: cyberattacks combined with GPS interference, physical sabotage, electronic warfare, operational failures, and disinformation—not one magical hack.
Spoiler warning: This article discusses the major incidents and ending of Leave the World Behind.
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What happens in the film?
In Leave the World Behind, Amanda and Clay Sandford’s isolated weekend is interrupted by the arrival of George and Ruth Scott, who claim that a cyberattack has disrupted the country. Internet and mobile communications stop working, television stations display alarming messages, and the characters receive little reliable information.
Meanwhile, a large oil tanker runs aground, aircraft appear to behave abnormally or crash, navigation becomes unreliable, and a mass of connected vehicles blocks a roadway. A disturbing high-pitched sound affects people physically, while deer gather in unusual numbers. The film ends without identifying the attacker or explaining every event. A bunker message suggests that the crisis is larger than the characters initially understand.
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That uncertainty is deliberate. The film confirms a breakdown of connected systems, but it does not provide a complete technical account or prove that every incident was caused by the same mechanism.
How realistic is the overall scenario?
The film gets an important principle right: modern societies depend on systems that are tightly connected through communications networks, cloud services, electricity, logistics, positioning signals, and common suppliers. A failure in one layer can make another layer appear broken. A power outage can disable cell towers and payment systems; a communications outage can prevent operators from coordinating infrastructure that is still physically functioning.
What the film compresses into one mysterious attack would probably require several different operations. The most realistic interpretation is a compound campaign involving:
- Cyber intrusions into selected networks and industrial systems.
- GPS jamming or spoofing.
- Physical attacks on cables, substations, or communications facilities.
- Compromise of a common software or cloud supplier.
- Electronic warfare and disruption of radio services.
- Disinformation and psychological operations.
The distinction matters. A system being digital does not mean it can automatically be controlled from anywhere. Nor does a backup system make it invulnerable. Each event must be judged according to its architecture, connectivity, redundancy, and human fallback.
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They could disrupt important parts of it, but turning off the entire internet would be extraordinarily difficult. The internet is not one machine with a universal off switch. It is a collection of independently operated networks, data centers, cloud platforms, internet service providers, exchanges, wireless systems, satellites, terrestrial fiber routes, and local networks.
Attackers can take individual networks or providers offline through denial-of-service attacks, ransomware, compromised routers, malicious configuration changes, or attacks on DNS and routing infrastructure. The U.S. Department of Justice has documented a case involving Russian military-intelligence actors who compromised routers and altered DNS settings: DOJ account.
A large campaign could therefore produce regional outages, severe congestion, loss of access to major cloud or DNS providers, and inconsistent service. Some websites might load while others failed; one mobile carrier might work while another did not. That fragmented experience could be more confusing than a clean, universal blackout.
A simultaneous worldwide outage would be much harder. The attacker would have to overcome geographic redundancy, independent operators, backup power, alternate routes, and systems that are not connected to the public internet. The film’s communications collapse is therefore a dramatized version of a real vulnerability, not evidence that one hacker could simply switch off the global internet.
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Could undersea cables be attacked?
Yes, and this is a serious infrastructure risk—but cutting cables would not instantly silence every digital connection. Submarine telecommunications cables carry most intercontinental digital communications. They can be damaged accidentally by anchors and fishing equipment, by natural events, or deliberately. Associated landing stations and network-management systems create additional physical and digital dependencies.
The Congressional Research Service’s overview of submarine cables and its report on cable protection and vulnerabilities describe why these systems are strategically important.
Cutting one cable generally causes rerouting, reduced capacity, higher latency, or regional isolation rather than instant worldwide silence. The result depends on which cables are damaged, whether several cables share a landing region, how much spare capacity is available, and whether traffic can move through terrestrial fiber, satellites, or neighboring countries.
A coordinated campaign against multiple cables and landing stations could be extremely disruptive. It would still be a physical and logistical operation, not merely a remote cyberattack.
GPS jamming and spoofing: the most realistic part
GPS disruption is one of the film’s more technically credible ideas. Jamming overwhelms legitimate satellite signals so receivers cannot use them. Spoofing transmits counterfeit signals that cause a receiver to calculate a false position or time. An attacker can also compromise a service that depends on location data without attacking GPS satellites themselves.
U.S. policy recognizes that positioning, navigation, and timing signals support transportation, communications, financial systems, and other critical infrastructure. It warns that prolonged denial or manipulation could create economic and safety consequences: NOAA’s GPS policy memorandum. NIST also describes the importance of resilient positioning, navigation, and timing: NIST’s PNT resources.
GPS interference could cause navigation errors for ships, aircraft, vehicles, and phones. It could disrupt logistics, emergency response, and some systems that use GPS for precise timing. But GPS is not the internet. GPS satellites broadcast signals; they do not provide ordinary internet access. GPS disruption would not automatically bring down websites, disable every aircraft, or take control of every car.
Safety-critical systems may also use inertial sensors, radar, cameras, lidar, radio navigation, maps, onboard clocks, and human operators. A local jammer or spoofing transmitter would normally affect a geographic area rather than the whole planet.
Could the planes really fall from the sky?
Airports and aviation support systems could be disrupted. A mass remote takeover of commercial aircraft is highly implausible.
A cyberattack could affect airport scheduling, passenger processing, flight dispatch, weather data, air-traffic-control systems, airline communications, fuel operations, baggage handling, or navigation information. Flights could be grounded, diverted, delayed, or forced to operate under degraded procedures.
Aircraft, however, carry their own systems and are designed to continue operating when some ground-based services are unavailable. Aviation networks also use separation between flight-control functions and less-trusted systems such as passenger entertainment. Pilots have procedures for communication, navigation, and landing when normal infrastructure is unavailable.
Analyses from PLUS and Pen Test Partners distinguish realistic disruption to aviation support from the film’s simultaneous destruction of aircraft across different airlines.
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| Scenario | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Airports closing or suffering major delays | Plausible |
| Navigation or communications disruption | Plausible under specific conditions |
| A particular operator or aircraft suffering a cyber incident | Possible, though difficult |
| One attack causing aircraft across multiple airlines to crash together | Highly improbable |
Could a tanker be remotely driven onto a beach?
A ship can lose navigation capability or suffer a control-system incident, but the film’s implication of effortless remote control is misleading. Modern vessels use radar, GPS, electronic charts, bridge displays, automation, communications, engines, and steering systems. A failure or compromise in one area could create dangerous conditions, particularly if crews receive contradictory information.
Ships also have emergency generators, uninterruptible power systems, alarms, backup procedures, and human mariners. A maritime analysis from Texas A&M discusses these safeguards and the importance of crew judgment when automated systems become unreliable: Texas A&M’s assessment.
A grounding could result from GPS spoofing, a navigation-system failure, engine or steering problems, human error during degraded operations, physical sabotage, or a targeted attack on a particular vessel or company. A simultaneous worldwide takeover of commercial shipping would be far more difficult and is not demonstrated by the film.
Could connected cars create the massive pile-up?
Individual vehicles and specific fleets can have cybersecurity weaknesses. The synchronized mixed-fleet crash is one of the film’s least plausible events.
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But a mass collision would require a common vulnerability or supplier, compatible vehicle architectures, remote access to safety-critical controls, simultaneous delivery, failure of local safeguards, and drivers or automated systems failing to stop. A GPS error alone would not normally make every car drive into a visible obstacle. Vehicles may use cameras, radar, lidar, wheel-speed sensors, inertial measurements, maps, and human supervision.
Palo Alto Networks’ analysis describes the idea of a universal “master key” for a mixed fleet as a major simplification. A targeted attack against one model, telematics provider, rental fleet, or transportation operator is more credible than control of unrelated vehicles from different manufacturers.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Could cyberattacks cause a nationwide blackout?
A cyberattack could cause a local or regional power outage. A simultaneous national collapse would require extensive preparation and access.
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Electric grids combine digital controls, industrial-control networks, older equipment, newer equipment, physical protection, manual procedures, regional interconnections, and systems isolated from the public internet. Not every grid component is internet-connected, and not every compromise reaches safety-critical controls.
An attacker who reached a utility, generating facility, transmission operator, or distribution network could cause disruption. But a national event would require knowledge of multiple operators and grid regions, access to different technologies, careful timing, and the ability to defeat or work around manual recovery procedures. CISA’s critical-infrastructure materials explain how dependence on information and communications technology creates both operational benefits and cybersecurity risks.
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The film’s blackout is therefore regionally plausible, nationally difficult, and extremely unlikely to arise worldwide from cyberattack alone.
Could emergency alerts be manipulated?
Yes, under certain conditions. Emergency messages may be distributed through broadcasters, mobile carriers, public-warning platforms, and local authorities. A compromised station, provider, network, or warning system could display a forged or altered message. A legitimate message could also be delayed, incomplete, or distributed unevenly while other systems fail.
Research has identified attacks affecting some 5G-based public-warning systems, including attacks that could suppress or interfere with alerts under particular conditions: the published study. That supports the general idea that warning systems have attack surfaces, but it does not prove that the film’s exact nationwide sequence could occur.
What about the high-pitched sound and the deer?
These elements cannot be confidently attributed to cyberwarfare. The sound might represent a weapon, electronic attack, sonic device, psychological operation, or an intentionally unexplained plot device. The deer are symbolic and narratively ambiguous. The film does not establish a scientific connection between the animals’ behavior, GPS disruption, and the wider attack.
They should therefore be classified as unexplained cinematic elements, not verified consequences of a cyberattack.
Is it cyberwarfare or a hybrid attack?
The narrow label “cyberattack” is probably insufficient. A real adversary would choose different tools for different targets. Cyber intrusion is useful for quietly manipulating data or systems; physical sabotage can damage cables and substations; electronic warfare can interfere with GPS and radio signals; disinformation can make people misinterpret genuine failures.
A common supplier vulnerability could create correlated failures across organizations that appear independent. Simultaneous cyber and physical attacks could make recovery harder. Attackers could also exploit pre-existing outages, public distrust, and incomplete information.
The likely real-world version would not look like a single omnipotent hacker. It would look like a compound crisis in which some systems fail because they were attacked, some because they lost power or connectivity, and others because operators shut them down to contain the damage.
What the movie gets right
- Connected infrastructure is interdependent and can fail in cascading ways.
- GPS disruption can affect navigation, timing, transportation, and safety.
- Regional communications and power outages are credible outcomes of sophisticated attacks.
- Undersea cables and critical suppliers create important points of dependence.
- Partial service can be more confusing than total failure.
- People may struggle to distinguish a cyberattack from an accident, equipment failure, or deliberate disinformation.
- Human operators remain essential fallback mechanisms in aviation, shipping, energy, and communications.
What the movie exaggerates
- A single attack instantly disables every communications layer.
- GPS behaves like a universal control system for the internet, cars, aircraft, and ships.
- Aircraft across unrelated airlines can be remotely made to crash together.
- A mixed fleet of connected vehicles can be controlled through one universal exploit.
- Every power-grid component is equally reachable from the internet.
- The sound and deer behavior have a confirmed cyber explanation.
Final verdict
| Film element | Real-world judgment |
|---|---|
| Regional internet, mobile, or cloud outages | Plausible |
| GPS jamming or spoofing | Plausible under specific conditions |
| Undersea-cable disruption | Plausible and strategically important |
| Regional power failure | Plausible |
| Ship grounding | Possible through several attack or failure paths |
| Emergency-message manipulation | Possible under certain compromises |
| Mass aircraft crashes from one remote attack | Highly improbable |
| Universal connected-car pile-up | Highly improbable |
| High-pitched sound and deer behavior | Unsupported or unexplained |
Leave the World Behind is most convincing when it depicts uncertainty, dependence, and cascading disruption. Its individual failure modes are often possible; its simultaneous, nationwide, almost omnipotent attack is highly unlikely without a large, carefully prepared hybrid campaign involving cyber, physical, electronic, and psychological operations.
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