The Jurassic Park novel had some of the best depictions of technical failures like that, IMO. The scene where they realize they've been running on backup power

The Jurassic Park novel had some of the best depictions of technical failures like that, IMO. The scene where they realize they've been running on backup power and everything goes down is another good one. I won't call them realistic per se, but they just felt right. Andromeda Strain, another Crichton work, was also pretty good at this.