Everything stops at once — the lights, the tills, the card machines, the extraction and the music. What the first sixty seconds decide, and the four things worth settling long before it happens.

At half past midnight the room goes dark and silent in the same instant. Two hundred people make a noise that is somewhere between a cheer and a gasp, and then they go quiet, and then they start moving.

Everything you would normally reach for has stopped as well. The tills are dark. The card machines are dead. The music is gone and so is the extraction. The only light in the room is two hundred phones coming out of two hundred pockets.

⚠️ What this page cannot tell you

⛔ What emergency lighting you are required to have, how it must be tested, what your licence says about continuing to trade without power, and when you must evacuate are legal and licensing questions. They vary by country and by premises, and some of them carry duties that are not optional.

⭕ Ask your solicitor and your licensing authority, and read your own conditions once. Everything below is the operational half — the sixty seconds, and the decisions worth taking in advance.

The first sixty seconds

Almost everything that goes badly is decided here, and it is decided by whoever happens to be nearest.

Somebody has to speak

⇒ A room in the dark waits about ten seconds for a voice. ⭕ If it gets one, it stays calm. If it does not, it starts deciding for itself, and two hundred people deciding independently is how a crush happens.

⚠️ It does not matter much what is said. It matters that it is said, loudly, quickly, by one person.

⇒ The Person Everyone Asks First

The doors are the first thing people look for

⚠️ In the dark, with no music, people move toward what they can see. ⛔ Whether your exits are visible without mains power is exactly what emergency lighting is for — and whether yours works is a question with a testable answer.

⇒ The Fire Exit Nobody Walks

The stairs are the risk, not the room

⇒ Level floors in the dark are manageable. Changes of level are not. ⚠️ Somebody should be at every step and every stair before anybody is asked to move.

And the phones are working for you

⭕ Two hundred torches is genuinely useful light. Say so — "keep your phone lights on" turns a crowd from anxious into helpful in one sentence.

What has actually stopped

Worth knowing in advance, because the list is longer than it feels.

The money

⇒ Tills, card machines, and the safe if it is electronic. ⚠️ Every open tab is now unrecoverable unless somebody writes it down in the next few minutes.

⇒ The Cash-Up That Takes An Hour

The record of the night

⚠️ Bookings, the door count, the guest list. ⭕ Anything that was on a screen and not on paper is gone for the duration.

The air

⇒ Extraction stops, and the room begins heating immediately. This is the clock you are working against more than any other.

⇒ The Room That Is Always Too Hot

The cameras

⚠️ Most recorders are not on a battery. The one night you would most want footage is the night there is none.

⇒ The Cameras Nobody Watches

And anything that needs a code

⭕ Electronic locks, shutters, the alarm panel. ⚠️ Some fail open and some fail shut, and it is worth knowing which yours does before you find out.

⇒ The Keys You Cannot Account For

The four things to settle in advance

None of these cost anything and all of them take one conversation.

One: who speaks, and what they say

⭕ One name per shift, and one sentence agreed in advance. "Everyone stay where you are, we are looking at it, keep your phone lights on."

⇒ The Run Of Show For A Busy Night

Two: where the torches are

⚠️ Not phones — actual torches, in a known place, checked. ⭕ The staff need light that does not run out and does not need a hand to hold up a screen.

Three: the decision to stop serving

⇒ ⚠️ This is the one people hesitate over, and hesitating is worse than either answer. ⭕ Decide now that service stops the moment power does, and the decision is no longer anybody's to agonise over at midnight.

Four: the paper

⇒ The Incident Log You Do Not Keep

Whether you carry on or close

This is a judgement, and it is easier if the factors are known beforehand.

It depends on the exits and the air, not the mood

⚠️ A room can feel fine and still be a room you should not keep two hundred people in. ⛔ What your licence permits without power is the first question, and it is not a question to answer at the time.

The heat decides it faster than anything else

⇒ With extraction off and a full room, comfort falls quickly. ⭕ A venue that plans to continue needs a time limit decided in advance, not a feeling.

And leaving is safer when it is organised

⇒ Getting Guests Home At Three

Refunds and unfinished tabs

⚠️ People with an open tab and no way to pay, and people who have paid for an evening that ended at midnight. ⭕ Deciding your line in advance — refund, credit, or nothing — keeps it from being decided differently at each end of the bar.

⇒ The Guest You Should Have Refused

When it comes back

The second half is the part nobody plans, and it is where the money is lost.

Nothing comes back at once

⇒ Tills reboot, card machines re-pair, the network takes minutes. ⚠️ A room that is bright again is not a room that can take payment again, and the gap between those two things is where the queue forms.

⇒ The Wi-Fi Everything Depends On

Card machines are the slowest thing

⭕ Assume they are last. Say so before the lights come back, so nobody promises a guest something they cannot do.

⇒ When the Card Machine Goes Down

Reconcile before anybody goes home

⚠️ The paper tabs, the takings, and what was and was not charged. ⭕ This is a twenty-minute job on the night and an impossible one the next morning.

And write down what happened while it is fresh

⇒ When it went, when it came back, what was decided, who was told. This is what you will need if anybody asks, and nobody remembers it correctly by Monday.

⇒ The Floor Manager Handover

The part that is worth actually testing

Emergency lighting has a test schedule

⛔ Whatever yours is, it is not optional and it has a record. ⚠️ Ask who does it and when it was last done — the answer is either a date or a finding.

The recorder and the alarm

⭕ Ask your installer what happens to each on loss of power. Two questions, one call.

⇒ The Maintenance You Only Do When It Breaks

And walk the room with the lights off, once

⚠️ Not during service. Half an hour before opening, with the team. ⭕ You will find one thing you did not know, and it will be cheap to fix in daylight.

What good looks like

The voice test

Ask who speaks if the lights go now. ⇒ A name means it is decided. A pause means the room will decide for itself.

The torch test

Ask where the torches are. ⚠️ If the answer is "our phones", that is the finding.

The restart test

Working     — everyone knows the card machines come back last
Not working — the lights return and the bar starts promising payment it cannot take

Three to hold

1  The first ten seconds decide it — a room in the dark waits for one voice
2  Extraction stops with everything else, and the heat is the real clock
3  Coming back is slower than going down; the card machines are last

Where the record has to sit

When it went, when it returned, what was decided, what was written on paper and what was recovered — with the rest of the shift record. Kept there, a claim, a complaint or a licensing question three weeks later is answered from a note. Kept nowhere, the whole night exists only as what people remember, and what people remember about a dark room is not reliable.