u/DaanJMHolland

Hi all! I’m Daan J. M. Holland, an indie self-published author from the Netherlands, and over the past year I’ve fallen way further down the writing/publishing rabbit hole than I ever expected.

My first novel, When the Grid Goes Down, follows ordinary people in the Netherlands after a cyberattack takes down the European power grid. I wanted the collapse to feel uncomfortably plausible rather than Hollywood-like: phones stop working, shops empty, fuel becomes scarce, the military tries to maintain order, rumours spread, and people slowly realise this might not be fixed tomorrow.

A big part of the story is the moral side of survival. When you prepared and your neighbour didn't, how much do you give away? When does helping someone endanger your own family? Do you still follow the law when the institutions enforcing it are disappearing? And what happens when otherwise decent people become desperate enough to do terrible things?

I’m now writing a prequel that shifts into more of a spy/intelligence thriller. It follows the seven days before the blackout, as an intelligence analyst starts seeing seemingly unrelated warnings fall into place while everyone around her is still going about normal life.

I’m learning all of this as I go, so tips, criticism and feedback are genuinely welcome. I’m also looking for ARC readers for the prequel if that sounds like something you’d enjoy.

Hi all! I’m Daan J. M. Holland, an indie self-published author from the Netherlands, and over the past year I’ve fallen way further down the writing/publishing rabbit hole than I ever expected.

My first novel, When the Grid Goes Down, follows ordinary people in the Netherlands after a cyberattack takes down the European power grid. I wanted the collapse to feel uncomfortably plausible rather than Hollywood-like: phones stop working, shops empty, fuel becomes scarce, the military tries to maintain order, rumours spread, and people slowly realise this might not be fixed tomorrow.

A big part of the story is the moral side of survival. When you prepared and your neighbour didn't, how much do you give away? When does helping someone endanger your own family? Do you still follow the law when the institutions enforcing it are disappearing? And what happens when otherwise decent people become desperate enough to do terrible things?

I’m now writing a prequel that shifts into more of a spy/intelligence thriller. It follows the seven days before the blackout, as an intelligence analyst starts seeing seemingly unrelated warnings fall into place while everyone around her is still going about normal life.

I’m learning all of this as I go, so tips, criticism and feedback are genuinely welcome. I’m also looking for ARC readers for the prequel if that sounds like something you’d enjoy.

Hi everyone,

Author here. I recently released When the Grid Goes Down, the first book in The Black Grid Series.

I started writing it because I love collapse and survival fiction, but I kept wondering what a modern large-scale collapse would actually look like in Western Europe.

Not zombies. Not a mysterious EMP that conveniently destroys everything overnight. Not a lone guy with a rifle suddenly becoming an action hero.

I wanted to explore what happens when several systems we take for granted begin failing at the same time.

The premise:

Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. NATO enters the war. In the chaos that follows, a coordinated cyberattack hits the European power grid.

The Netherlands goes dark.

At first, almost everyone assumes the electricity will return.

Then mobile networks begin failing.

Fuel pumps stop working.

Electronic payments disappear.

Supermarkets stop receiving deliveries.

Water and communications become increasingly unreliable.

The military appears at checkpoints.

People start queuing for food.

Rumours spread faster than reliable information.

And slowly, the question changes from "When will things return to normal?" to "What if they don't?"

The story follows a Dutch police detective and the people around him through the first weeks of the collapse, mostly around Roosendaal and the West-Brabant region of the Netherlands.

He's a prepper, so his family starts with an advantage. But I deliberately didn't want preparation to make the characters invincible.

Having food doesn't tell you whether to share it.

Owning a radio doesn't tell you which information to believe.

Being armed doesn't make shooting another human being easy.

Being a police officer becomes complicated when enforcing the law might put your own family in danger.

And having enough supplies suddenly becomes dangerous when hungry people realize that you have them.

A big part of the book is therefore about the moral side of collapse rather than just equipment and firefights.

How long do people keep obeying laws when the institutions behind those laws are disappearing?

Would you accept government relocation if soldiers promised food and safety?

What happens when military units themselves start running short of supplies?

When does barter replace money?

How quickly does propaganda become attractive when one side is promising food, electricity and an end to the war?

And at what point does protecting your family turn into doing things you would have considered unthinkable three weeks earlier?

One thing that ended up becoming almost as interesting to me as writing the novel was the research.

I went down a pretty deep rabbit hole looking at historical crises: the 1977 New York blackout, Venezuela's 2019 blackout, Hurricane Maria, Sarajevo, the Dutch Hunger Winter, large-scale infrastructure failures, shortages, riots, black markets and situations where several normally independent systems failed together.

One conclusion I kept coming back to was that there doesn't seem to be a magical "three days without food and society collapses" timeline.

Sometimes people riot within hours.

Sometimes communities organize and keep functioning under horrific conditions for months or years.

Usually the interesting part is what fails simultaneously, whether people believe help is coming, and whether they still trust the institutions telling them what to do.

That research eventually became part of the book itself. There is an appendix comparing events from the fictional collapse with historical cases that inspired them.

So although this is absolutely a thriller and a work of fiction, I wanted readers to occasionally stop and think:

"Wait... has something like this actually happened before?"

Quite often, the answer is yes.

If you enjoy books like One Second After or Going Home, military/political thrillers, realistic post-apocalyptic fiction, preparedness, or stories where ordinary people are forced into increasingly uncomfortable decisions, this may be up your alley.

And if you're European and have always wondered why so much collapse fiction seems to begin somewhere in rural America, well... this one begins in a completely ordinary Dutch city.

No mountains.

No enormous wilderness.

No conveniently isolated homestead.

Just densely populated Western Europe when the infrastructure keeping millions of people supplied suddenly stops working.

Title: When the Grid Goes Down

Author: Daan J. M. Holland

Series: The Black Grid Series - Book One

Genre: Collapse / dystopian / survival / thriller

Setting: The Netherlands

Amazon:

https://a.co/d/093FbE5X

Paperback ISBN: 978-90-837607-0-4

Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-837607-1-1

I'm also genuinely happy to answer questions about the book, the research behind it, the historical parallels, or why I chose the Netherlands as the setting.

And if anyone here reads it, criticism is welcome too. I'm particularly interested in hearing from readers of collapse fiction about what felt believable, what didn't, and what you'd want to see explored further in the series.

Daan J. M. Holland

I went down a rabbit hole researching what people actually do when normal systems start failing at the same time

First, thanks to u/BigJobsBogJobs for taking the initiative to point out that I accidentally posted the original version in Dutch instead of English. Completely my mistake, so here's the English version.

I’ve gone a bit down the rabbit hole researching how people actually behave when several of the systems we normally rely on start failing at the same time.

A few examples I found particularly interesting:

• New York blackout, 1977: looting and arson began within hours in parts of the city.

• Venezuela, 2019: the blackout didn’t just mean the lights went out. Water supply, banking, communications, refrigeration and fuel distribution were all affected.

• Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico: electricity, water, telecommunications and fuel were disrupted at the same time, leading to long lines and shortages, but also to many examples of communities organizing and helping each other.

• Sarajevo: once utilities and normal supply routes became unreliable, people increasingly relied on improvised water supplies, humanitarian aid, barter and black markets.

• Argentina, 2001: a crisis that had been building for years suddenly accelerated after restrictions were placed on bank withdrawals, followed by protests, riots and the president resigning within weeks.

What stood out to me is that there doesn't seem to be some universal "day 3 / day 7 / day 21" collapse timeline.

It seems to depend much more on which systems fail together, whether people believe help is coming, and how much trust remains in institutions.

What comparable examples are there from your country or region that people rarely talk about? I'm especially interested in firsthand accounts or good sources.

Small transparency note: I originally collected much of this while researching When the Grid Goes Down, a collapse thriller set in the Netherlands. The research eventually grew into an appendix comparing events in the fiction with real historical cases.

I'm mainly curious about which examples I've missed.

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole researching how people actually behave when several normal systems fail at the same time.

A few examples I found interesting:

- New York blackout, 1977: looting and arson started within hours in parts of the city.

- Venezuela, 2019: the blackout didn't just mean no lights. Water, banking, communications, refrigeration and fuel distribution were all affected.

- Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico: power, water, telecoms and fuel were disrupted together, with long queues and shortages, but also a lot of communities helping each other.

- Sarajevo: once utilities and normal supply routes became unreliable, people increasingly depended on improvised water, aid, barter and black markets.

- Argentina, 2001: a crisis that had been building for years suddenly accelerated after bank restrictions, with protests, riots and the president resigning within weeks.

The thing that surprised me is that there doesn't seem to be a universal "day 3/day 7/day 21" collapse timeline. It seems to depend much more on which systems fail together, whether people think help is coming, and how much trust is left in institutions.

What are some similar examples from your country or region that people rarely talk about? Especially interested in firsthand accounts or good sources.

Full disclosure: I originally collected a lot of this while researching When the Grid Goes Down, a collapse thriller set in the Netherlands. The research eventually became an appendix comparing the fiction to real historical events. I'm mainly curious what cases I've missed.