Credit, Getty Images
A date marked on the United States' emergency alert calendar, an episode of The Simpsons and government recommendations for the population to assemble emergency kits and keep water and food supplies at home.
These elements, which have no proven relationship with each other, began to be presented on social media as signs that the world was about to face a blackout on November 17th — next Tuesday.
Everything indicates that the first rumors of this theory began to circulate on the internet at the end of October, after a publication by the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
On October 28, the agency published on X a reminder about a national test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS), scheduled for November 17, 2026, at around 2:20 pm Eastern Time.
The exercise involves the transmission of test messages by radio and television stations, without sending notifications to cell phones.
EAS is the system used to transmit emergency alerts to the population through radio and television stations. It allows authorities to send warnings about situations such as severe weather, natural disasters and other threats to public safety.
The test serves precisely to check whether the system is working and whether alerts can be transmitted correctly. It had already been announced in September, in a joint statement by Fema and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
But the agency's reminder was the starting point for speculation linking the American exercise to a global crisis.
End of Most read
Some publications spoke of a multi-day blackout and recommended that people stock up on food and water. Others mentioned a supposed worldwide internet shutdown for months, caused by a wave of cyber attacks.
But what contributed to fuel this theory? And what is concrete behind the elements used to support them?
The Simpsons episode and association with the date
Credit, Reproduction/X
Watch news from Brazil and the world on the BBC World Service
Download here
End of app promotion
As soon as the reminder about the US test was published, a scene from the series The Simpsons began to be used to reinforce the idea of a supposed blackout.
In the episode, aired in 2023, Lisa Simpson, now elderly, recalls a blackout that left the fictional city of Springfield in darkness for nine days. The power outages begin on November 17th and only end at the end of the month, on Thanksgiving Day.
But the episode does not mention the year 2026 or present the date as a prediction of an event in the real world.
The association with the date, however, gained strength amid the series' reputation for supposedly anticipating real-world events. One of the best-known examples is an episode shown in 2000 that shows Donald Trump as president of the USA, years before his first electoral victory, in 2016.
One of the first profiles identified by BBC News Brasil to link the scene to the blackout was the Korean HchannelX.
In a publication that referenced the warning about the American test, the account shared an image in which Lisa appears in front of a sheet with the date "17 November" (17 November) and the phrase "A STORM IS APPROACHING" (a storm is approaching, in Portuguese).
On the same day, the profile AtRealBen — which describes itself as "realist about conspiracies" — published an excerpt from the scene from The Simpsons with the question "Ready for a blackout?" (ready for a blackout?, in translation).
In the caption, the user also questioned whether the episode was a case of predictive programming — an expression used by supporters of conspiracy theories to describe the supposed anticipation of future events in films and television programs — or just a coincidence.
In Brazil, one of the first publications identified by the BBC was made by the profile Despertar Cósmico, on October 30th.
"The EBS test is scheduled for November 17th, the same day that a huge blackout was shown in an episode of The Simpsons," wrote the profile.
The account used the acronym EBS, although the exercise announced by American authorities is EAS, the Emergency Alert System.
But, until then, publications that fueled speculation on the subject had limited reach.
The narrative gained great repercussion on X on October 31, when the profile Shibo (@GodsBurnt), which has just over 135 thousand followers, published a text that accumulated more than 3 million views.
The author, who presents himself as a financial news commentator, claimed to have spoken on the phone with "the smartest person" he knew and reproduced a prediction attributed to her.
However, he did not reveal who this person was nor did he present documents, data or other evidence to support the report.
According to the message, the world would be about to face a kind of "Covid 2.0", this time caused by a wave of cyber attacks. The text said that banks could have their systems hacked and data deleted, causing thousands of accounts to display zero balances, with no possibility of recovery.
The publication also predicted that the internet would be shut down worldwide for three months so that vulnerabilities could be corrected with the help of advanced artificial intelligence systems.
The scenario, according to the report, would cause panic and chaos and would require people to stock up on food, water, gold, silver, weapons, ammunition and cash.
In the end, the profile stated that rumors were circulating that this supposed global shutdown would begin on November 17, without offering concrete elements to support the prediction — common characteristics of conspiratorial narratives, which treat catastrophic scenarios in an alarmist way without offering evidence.
Real news used to fuel theory
The rumors did not arise in a void of information. In previous weeks, governments from different countries had released recommendations for the population to be prepared for emergency situations.
In the United Kingdom, the government launched the Be Ready campaign on October 22, which advises families to prepare for up to three days of interruption to essential services.
In Japan, on November 2, authorities also reinforced recommendations for residents to keep water and food supplies at home in the face of risks such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
In Brazil, last week the National Civil Defense published guidelines on assembling emergency kits with basic items for up to 72 hours.
The repercussion led the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development (MIDR) to clarify that the recommendation was preventative in nature and was not related to any national alert or forecast of widespread interruption of public services or supply.
On social media, these events began to be brought together as if they were pieces of the same puzzle.
On Instagram, in a video that accumulated almost 3 million views, an influencer stated that "a blackout could be coming" and that 33 countries had already advised their populations to prepare. “No light, no Pix, no card, no internet”, says an excerpt from the recording.
However, the claim that 33 countries have instructed their citizens to stockpile food and water at the same time is presented out of context.
The number was taken from a survey published by the American magazine Newsweek in October, which brought together countries whose governments maintain recommendations for the population to have basic supplies at home in emergency situations.
But these guidelines are not part of a joint alert and do not indicate the possibility of a blackout. They were released at different times and consider different risks, such as natural disasters and interruptions in the functioning of essential services.
As a BBC News Brasil report showed, preparing an emergency kit in a preventive manner is recommended by experts as a way of reducing the population's vulnerability to different types of crises.
In addition to emergency guidance, news about cyber attacks and other recent incidents also became associated with the supposed blackout.
The Reuters agency reported an attack that hit the refrigeration systems of more than 500 supermarkets in France. Similar attacks have been reported in other European countries.
The financial sector was also the target of attacks; and the airline industry faced disruption after commercial flights received false alerts of a bomb threat on board, causing diversions and disruptions in different countries.
Although all of these episodes are real, there is no evidence that they are related to each other or are part of a coordinated plan to cause a global blackout.
Why blackouts are considered unlikely
A check published by G1 on the subject heard experts who explained why a simultaneous blackout of this proportion is technically very unlikely: countries' electrical systems do not work as a single integrated network, which could be turned off at once.
Nor is there any indication that they have any connection with the alert test scheduled for November 17th in the United States.
In an interview with BBC News Brasil in October, doctor in Semiotics Paolo Demuru explained that conspiracy theories — or "conspiracy fantasies", as he prefers to call them — often use true events to build narratives about something that is supposedly about to happen and is being hidden.
The search for clues is one of the characteristics that keep these narratives in circulation: each coincidence starts to be interpreted as yet another confirmation of the initial hypothesis, in a process that Demuru compares to a kind of "treasure hunt".
"When we have a doubt, we act as if we were a little investigator: we go after it, we want to know more, we want to prove it, we want to be right. People get attached to the details," he said.
Demuru also points out the role of imagination that these narratives can provoke. According to him, they offer a kind of escape from routine and everyday reality, which helps explain their power of attraction and their ability to generate collective engagement.
"Conspiracy theories or fantasies take us away from the monotony, from the reality of our daily lives. And this causes collective engagement, because it's like gossip, which only makes sense if it's shared."
Discover more
Watch
End of Watch
