Lights Off: How The World Could Change In 7 Days

You might be thinking, hey, I’ve got this one covered! I’ve survived lots of power outages. If that is your thought process, you could not be more wrong.

Anyone who considers, even for a moment, how interconnected and interdependent our existence has become … so full of overly-complex, over-engineered, over-automated systems driving every aspect of our increasingly fragile existence that is dependent on just-in-time inventory and shipping virtually everything we need ridiculous distances … arrives at the same inescapable conclusion: that mankind has built a house of cards.

I doubt we could have created a more fragile world if it had been our aim from the beginning. We have painted ourselves into a corner and we are going to make a mess getting out.

Few analogies are as simple and powerful as tripping an electrical breaker to disconnect a building from the grid. One moment the building is alive, bright, vibrant, buzzing. With the flip of a switch, it lays still, cold and dead.

On/off.

Alive/Dead.

It is truly that simple. One moment we have juice, the next we don’t.

The Chain Reaction

America’s need for power outstrips our investment in our capability to produce it by 400%.

Yet the legislative branch of government points fingers and the executive branch (well, what used to be the executive branch before we turned the zoo over to the chimps, so to speak) sits in its tower considering “jobs for jihadis” and throwing lavish parties to congratulateand reward itself for scamming the rest of us out of our tax dollars.

Meanwhile, our electrical infrastructure continues its rapid decay and the nation’s power grid slips and slides down a spiral water slide of demise. It appears that they could not possibly care less. Perhaps they figure somebody else will be in office to take the blame when the music stops.

But it is not just the US. The US economy affects the world economy and the world economy is feeling the pinch. You do not have to be a risk assessment genius to understand that a depressed world economy translates to more frequent power outages of increased duration and a weaker and more vulnerable power grid.

The grid is limping along on borrowed time. Through a combination of luck and the best efforts of the intelligence and military communities, we have dodged the CME/HEMP (Coronal Mass Ejection/High-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse) bullet … so far.

But while clock counts down to the next time the sun lobs an X-class solar flare in the general direction of our planet, the power industry has succeeded in using junk science generated by NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) to pull the wool over the eyes of congress and emergency management bureaucrats alike, forestalling the Shield Act, which is our only hope to harden the grid againstthe inevitable threat of EMP, be it geomagnetic or manmade.

The 2012 India Blackout affected 620 million people or 9% of the world population. India’s engineers blamed in on a number of factors that were merely symptoms of the same illness that affects the US and most other power grids.

The chronic illness underlying the symptoms was that the industrial and technological revolutions have catalyzed humanity’s explosive growth for far too long.

This has woven fragility into very fabric of world’s power grids. This has become a growth bubble of epic proportions searching for a pin. Our sun and geopolitical climate has that bubble navigating terrain akin to the Sonoran Desert. In reality, it is not so much a desert, but a forest of cactus spines, fangs, thorns and stingers, all poised to plant themselves in passersby.

I am involved in emergency management and I am very blessed to have many good, competent government emergency managers all the way up to the state level. After that, it mostly government shills who fancy themselves emergency managers.

Especially at the Federal level, the US has fallen prey to a culture of academics who pretend to know inordinately more than they actually do. Rooted firmly in the personality ethic, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” is their motto, but they never do. Afraid of their own intellectual shadow, they fear embracing and admitting their own uncertainly, which is the first step to anyone truly learning anything. So they believe what is most convenient as opposed to what is true. In this case, it very convenient to have blind faith that the electrical grid, like everything else in their lives, is maintained by people and organizations more intelligent, wiser, more benevolent and more responsible than they are. “Move along, nothing to see here!”

EMP is the stuff of Hollywood, not what our smartest scientists, the head of the CIA, and our best and brightest minds, and those of our enemies, seem to all agree is presently our single greatest known vulnerability.

Major vulnerabilities mean increased work load for emergency managers, and government shills resist having to actually provide a valuable service in trade for their salary.

Just this type of human debris, “working” for the City of Phoenix, Arizona concluded some years ago that an evacuation of Phoenix-Metro area is simply impossible.

So no such plan even exists. “Can’t win … don’t try.” They look to Homer Simpson for guidance on important issues like emergency plans that affect the lives of millions of people, including themselves and their own families.

I sincerely hope they have since remedied the situation, but I was not going to hold my breath and relocated to someplace with better prospects and better leadership.

The Countdown to Disaster

In order to understand how to prepare for a protracted power outage, you should understand the sequence of events that will unfold after the lights go out.

The electrical grid varies greatly from state to state and country to country, as do the threats to the grid, but here’s a sample of past events and future projections in form of a timeline.

It is a simple matter to put together a plan based on your family or organizational needs once you have an idea of what you’re preparing for so visualizing your mission and obstacles is sometimes more useful than the usual list of stuff you need have on hand and obligatory reminder to practice and train.

Immediately:

• Electric heating & cooling systems fail. In winter, homes will begin losing heat. In summer, many buildings dependent on air conditioning to maintain a safe temperature for occupants will be forced to evacuate.
• Many hospitals, radio stations, TV stations, telecomm systems and data centers switch over to emergency power but many lose air conditioning due to the expense of backup generators capable of supplying its heavy electrical load. Consequently, many data centers begin to heat up.
• Computers without uninterruptable power supplies or an integrated battery power lose power.
• Tall buildings reliant on most types of booster pumps lose water pressure past the bottom floors. Buildings with rooftop tanks have water until the tanks run dry.
• Entire cities lose water pressure forcing boil-water advisories into effect for any water that does make to you or that you manage to scrounge up. But without electricity, most households will be unable to boil water. The NE US Blackout of 2003 left millions of Michigan residents without any water.
• Many commuters are trapped on subways. Most electric subways and electric trains cease to function. Those that remain functioning reduce numbers of trains. In the Southern Brazil blackout of 1999, 60,000 commuters where on the subway system in Rio alone when it plunged into darkness. That blackout affected nearly 100 million people and triggered troop deployments. It was caused by neglect of the country’s grid due to a depressed economy. The event was triggered by an everyday lightning strike. Likewise, the NE US Blackout of 2003, affected all Northern states from Michigan up to NY and portions of Canada. Some 600 trains were stranded and thousands upon thousands had to be evacuated or rescued from subways and elevators.
• Most traffic lights go dark or default to 4-way stops. Traffic snarls due to failure of traffic controls. Increased numbers of traffic accidents and delayed emergency response times.
• Slowed traffic and calls to rescue thousands of people in elevators slows emergency response times.
• Most credit card terminals and point of sale terminals are inoperable, limiting commerce. Some transactions continue on a cash only basis.
• Most banks and ATMs (Automated Teller Machine) close or are inoperable, impeding most cash withdrawals.
• In large blackouts, cell service typically goes down before land lines, large due to increased call volume and lack of power to form many cell towers to transmit, but keep in mind that voice, and text messaging operate on completely different frequencies and systems. Text messaging often works when voice does not. Also keep in mind that the landline system operates independent of cell service is more robust.
• The 2012 India blackout shutdown multiple airports.
• Refilling prescription medication instantly gets a whole lot harder. Refilling controlled medications becomes next to impossible for most patients.

4 hours:

• Backup batteries on most alarm systems fail. If you own a brick and mortar small business, you either have to physically guard it or leave it vulnerable. If you own both a business and a home and commute between the two, you will have a hard time guarding them both. Many criminals are well aware of this fact and that law enforcement response times are slowing. Burglaries increase.
• Small portable generators need to be refueled. This will become a constant chore, very expensive and noisy security risk, so you are better off putting in a renewable energy source and battery bank while it is still possible or planning to only run your generator at certain times and doing all chores requiring electricity while it is running.
• Store shelves of business still in operation begin to empty.
• Price gouging, profiteering, panic buying and hording cause panic to mount, tempers to flare. Batteries, bottled water, flashlights, ice, candles and fuel are hardest hit and profiteers begin selling them in the streets.
• If cell phones or social media are still up, heavily-populated areas will see some flash mob-related crime.
• Any previously working phone circuits will likely be overloaded by now.

6 hours:

• Long lines form at gas stations still able to pump gas with battery-powered pumps or hand pumps as increasing numbers of motorists run out of fuel and many gas stations lose access to underground fuel tanks. They will only be able to accept cash.
• GMRS (General Mobile Radio Service) and FRS (Family Radio Service) radios rendered ineffective by “bubble pack” radio users and children. They will remain unusable from this point forward in most cities and suburbs. Smaller towns with redundant band plans will fare better, but will not be without major problems.
• Most folk will have had to “use the bathroom” by now. Many will discover that their toilets no longer flush. Are you prepared for this eventuality?
• By this point, if are well prepared, you will very likely have determined the scope of the outage, its probable duration and cause. You will most likely determine this via your emergency radio equipment such as AM/FM/SW emergency radios, scanners or amateur radio equipment. Depending on the scope and cause, you might have found out or figured out whether the blackout is due to grid failure, a geomagnetic event or an HEMP almost immediately. Understanding its probable scope and severity, however, may take some time and the use of your noggin, your ears and possibly asking the right people the right questions if you have ensured your ability to do ahead of time. Emergency responders and knowledgeable amateur radio enthusiasts, especially those who are part of ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) will have a huge advantage over the average citizen when it comes to collecting and correctly interpreting intelligence about the emergency. If neither of these is your cup of tea, you might consider networking with someone so inclined ahead of time or you may find yourself doubly in the dark.

8 Hours:

• Utility companies set up generators to keep coms infrastructure up.
• People realize this is not just a minor blackouts where they will light some candles and play break out a board game for the kids.
• Small scale looting begins if hasn’t already. What happened, the ability of emergency services to inform the public, what they choose to tell people or the people having to figure it out themselves, may all have a significant impact on crime.

12 Hours:

• By the end of the first business day, blackouts cost gas stations and restaurants as much as $20K a day. Grocery store? Try more like 60K per day.
• Most refrigerators are now useless under normal usage patterns so most insulin-dependent diabetics lose the means to cool insulin.

Night fall:

• CPAP and oxygen concentrator users who have not invested in an alternative power solution will wake up fatigued at best and run the risk of not waking up at all.
• Crime rate goes up when the sun goes down.

Day 2:

• State of Emergency Declared. Troop deployments likely, if available. The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006, passed in 2007 specifically prohibits government officials from confiscating firearms in the aftermath of certain emergencies and natural disasters. Anyone who lies, cheats and steals their way into power these days seems to interpret the Constitution and Bill of Rights so broadly as to not apply to them or interprets one wiretap warrant to apply to hundreds of thousands of people. One such crook, former New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass, ordered police and National Guard units to confiscate firearms in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. To prevent this from happening again, The People passed a law specifying penalties should some future tyrant try it and manage to survive long enough to stand trial. This is very probable in Eastern US or the People’s Republic of Kalifornia, but I imagine anyone who tried that in most Western states would end up at the long end of a short rope shortly after the words exited his pie hole. So, will there be firearms confiscation? Probably not unless a state of martial law is declared, and then only in areas firmly under government control. But depending on how that administration uses that power, it might precipitate a premature “leadership vacuum. “
• Fuel rationing begins. Trucks start pumping out gas stations and truck the fuel to priority skeleton infrastructure.
• Freezers begin to thaw. Many people begin cooking thawing meat to preserve it or at least prepare it before it spoils. BBQ’s use far more propane to cook than camp stoves.
• Do yourself a favor plan involves a bug out and clean out your fridge before you leave. If you come back, you will wish you had. If you come back to warm fridge after an extended absence, don’t bother opening it. Just tape it shut, haul it to the dump and buy a new one. You’ll save yourself a lot of grief.
• Casualties and fatalities due to heat or cold exposure increase.
• Casualties and fatalities due to lack of access to healthcare and medication increase.
• Stores are likely cleaned out or soon will be.
• By this time, lacking passive solar design features, alternative energy sources, wood stove, kerosene heater or the like, your home will likely be getting pretty close to the same temperature indoors as out of doors minus the wind chill. In some climates, this is no big deal. In other climates this is a death sentence. Plan accordingly. You will need a whole lot more clothing than in a climate-controlled home. If it is cold, create a micro-climate in a single room or fewer rooms. It will be way easier to keep one room warm than a whole house. If you have vaulted ceilings throughout your entire home, set up a cabin tent in the living room and line it’s walls and roof with reflective blankets.

Day 3:

• 72 Hour Kits or typical bug out bags are used up or close to it. The average “prepared” citizen (as per FEMA’s over-optimistic recommendations based on past averages minus hurricanes, tornados and any other serious event because it is impossible that anything like that will ever happen again) runs out of emergency supplies and fuel to boil water.
• As fatigue, injuries and concern for their families takes a toll on first responders, law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs (Emergency Medical Technician), nurses and doctors begin to stop showing up for shifts.
• Rise in violent crime.
• Looting picks up momentum.
• Cases of waterborne and hygiene-related illness start to mount, further straining medical resources.
• Some better-organized cities set up mobile morgues in refrigerated reefer trucks. It might sound a little morbid, but it is a whole lot better than the alternative.

Day 4:

• Exhausted first responders and emergency personnel, nursing home staff and others have to prioritize dwindling resources where they can do the most good for patients with the best chances of recovery or survival.
• Once you start using your food stores, the type or types of food you chose will have a huge impact on the amount of fuel needed to prepare it. Soaking dry packed legumes and grains prior to boiling can help reduce fuel consumption, but it takes a lot more fuel to cook from scratch than it does to prepare a freeze dried meal or heat up an MRE (Meal Ready-to-Eat).
• By this time, cash may be have substantially less purchasing power and barter, mostly in the form of food, will eventually replace it.

Day 5:

• Hospitals are forced to consolidate. Smaller hospitals and urgent care facilities are forced to shut down and must be evacuated, causing healthcare workers or volunteers to face difficult choices and patients to suffer the consequences.
• Looting starts to die down because there isn’t anything left to loot.

Day 6:

• As reality sets in, doctors do the unthinkable and begin euthanizing patients they feel have low probability of survival. As demonstrated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this is considered acceptable practice and they will face no legal recourse if the blackout ends and society recovers. Due to limited quantities of medicine, no access to computerized medical records, lack of familiarity with the patients and lack of experience performing euthanasia, many of these attempts will fail, resulting in prolonged suffering, asphyxiation and hypoxic brain injury of patients who survive the attempt(s). This is sometimes due to the fact that patients with genetic tolerance to opioids and chronic pain patients undergoing opioid pain therapy will survive dosages far greater than a typically lethal dose.
• Some elderly patients in nursing homes were simply abandoned and left to die of dehydration and exposure during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. If you have loved ones in such a facility, you might want to keep this in mind.

Day 7:

• Cholera outbreaks and other serious fecal contamination-related and waterborne illness not seen in the US for decades or centuries begin to ravage cities, especially the large, coastal cities on the East Coast located far downstream from large populations. A protracted power outage will churn out epidemics, so it is prudent to plan for the eventuality.
• Unleaded and diesel-only generator owners who can still find fuel available are feeling the pinch as gasoline is many times more expensive and less available than natural gas in the majority of outages. Propane is cheaper than gas, but usually less available unless you have large capacity tanks.
• Some people that had been getting by looting businesses decide to give homes a try. Some see that the empty homes will soon run out and decide to transition straight to home invasion of occupied homes.
• If martial law has not been declared yet, they may give it a shot, but this would depend on the scope of the outage, prospects for recovery, political motives, geography, etc.
• If the power is still out and there isn’t a firm projection of restoration, you will likely be needing body bags soon if you have not already. Bodies can become a very serious microbiological threat and need to be properly handled and disposed of.

Are you prepared to face this?

http://www.survivopedia.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-power-outage/

Is it Crazy to Worry About the Golden Horde?

 

For years, I have listened to people in prepping circles talk about “The Golden Horde”. What is that you ask? Well, the golden horde is a concept that as far as I can tell was introduced by James Wesley Rawles. I like Mr. Rawles – have several of his books in my prepper library and I have been going to his website for years. Mr. Rawles is the writer of several prepper fiction novels (Patriots, Survivors), and probably the first survival book I ever read How to Survive the End of the World As We Know it . He is also the owner of the popular survivalblog.com website. Mr. Rawles’ golden horde concept roughly says that if we have a TEOTWAKI type of event, the major population centers will soon see a mass exodus of people out of the cities and into the surrounding countryside because the cities will be unlivable. The thinking will be to head to the countryside where there is more room, less violence, more food and a safer existence than in the cities.

 The historical Golden Horde was a Mongol tribe back in the 13^th century, but for the sake of Prepping and how the modern interpretation of this concept could apply to you, I will use Mr. Rawles’ own words in describing what he meant by this concept:

Here is a mental exercise: Put yourself in the mind set of Mr. Joe Sixpack, Suburbanite. (Visualize him in or near a big city near where you live.) He is unprepared. He has less than one week’s food on hand, he has a 12 gauge pump action shotgun that he hasn’t fired in years, and just half a tank of gas in his minivan and maybe a gallon or two in a can that he keeps on hand for his lawn mower. Then TEOTWAWKI hits. The power grid is down, his job is history, the toilet doesn’t flush, and water no longer magically comes cascading from the tap. There are riots beginning in his city. The local service stations have run out of gas. The banks have closed. Now he is suddenly desperate. Where will he go? What will he do?
Odds are, Joe will think: “I’ve gotta go find a vacation cabin somewhere, up in the mountains, where some rich dude only goes a few weeks out of each year.” So vacation destinations like Lake Tahoe, Lake Arrowhead, and Squaw Valley, California; Prescott and Sedona, Arizona; Hot Springs, Arkansas; Vail and Steamboat Springs, Colorado; and the other various rural ski, spa, Great Lakes, and coastal resort areas will get swarmed. Or, he will think: “I’ve got to go to where they grow food.” So places like the Imperial Valley, the Willamette Valley, and the Red River Valley will similarly get overrun. There will be so many desperate Joe Sixpacks arriving all at once that these areas will degenerate into free-fire zones. It will be an intensely ugly situation and will not be safe for anyone. In some places the locals may be so vastly outnumbered that they won’t survive. But some of the Joe Sixpacks will survive, and then the more ruthless among them will begin to fight amongst themselves for the few remaining resources. They will form ad hoc gangs of perhaps 6 to 30 people.

Now, with that context I will try to give my perspective on this question because I have heard a few of my fellow bloggers, some with no more expertise in this topic than Mr. Rawles or anyone else for that matter, give their opinion that is it foolish to think that the cities will disgorge themselves of people in a TEOTWAWKI event. They argue that people will sit and wait and never leave major metropolitan areas for all number of reasons. They say it could be they are too used to being catered to and will just sit waiting for handouts to come from the government. Others say that the roads will be blocked so there is no way to leave. Not wanting to be left out on the fun, I’ll give my own unlearned opinion below.

What is the Event we are talking about here?

As with all things in life, the situation you are actually faced with will determine the available choices you have or more appropriately, what choices you are forced to make. To say this entire concept is without merit is foolish I think and it shows a lack of imagination to say that this could never happen. I can easily see situations that would force people to leave their homes or cities and if you only have one potential disaster in mind you aren’t seeing the big picture. Everything depends on the disaster as I have said before so while one event might not cause any disruption at all, another could change the world. People are fleeing all the time so this isn’t some bizarre concept that lives solely in the realm of prepper fantasy.



In Mr. Rawles’ mental exercise he was using a power outage. What caused this power outage? We don’t know but it has been long enough that for Joe, “his job is history, the toilet doesn’t flush, and water no longer magically comes cascading from the tap.” We have to assume the power has been out for a long time or the outage was extremely severe and the Just In Time inventory has been depleted. Utilities are out so a major city would get ugly fast. Have you ever seen a sanitation strike in New York? He goes on to say “there are riots beginning in his city. The local service stations have run out of gas. The banks have closed.”. Now, imagine this Joe Sixpack is living in a major city when this happens like New York or Los Angeles.

Do you really think there won’t be people leaving if these things were happening? Do you honestly believe in a city of over 8 million people that nobody is going to leave that type of disaster? Even if we are only talking about 10% of the entire population that decides based upon the information they have (maybe we were attacked by terrorists with an EMP) that they need to get out of the city no matter what, you are still talking about 800,000 people. That’s only 10% of one city!

Let’s go ahead and continue with the theory that this is New York. We have to assume from Mr. Rawles’ mental exercise that since he said that this is TEOTWAWKI, that the same thing has happened across the country. This isn’t a small power outage caused by a storm that brings the power back in a few days. Now take the 10% from all the towns around New York and New Jersey and add those together. Can you begin to see how an event like this could trigger a “horde” of people moving into the countryside to escape the riots and lawlessness?

Where you live matters

In real estate, you know the phrase… Location, location, location. Where you live matters just as much as the event that causes the crisis or the crisis itself. If you live in the backwoods of Tennessee, you probably don’t have to worry about hundreds of thousands of people making their way out of the city, but what if Memphis and Knoxville were looking for a place to go?
Back in 2013, the Business Insider showed a map of the most populated counties in the United States. They used the census data to determine that over 50% of the population of our country lives in just 146 of the over 3000 nationwide counties. Do you live near one of these?

Half Of The United States Lives In These Counties

It is my belief that with the right disaster, the Golden Horde concept is very likely. I can easily see having to worry about people fleeing major cities if you live near some big metropolis. Now if you are out in the middle of East Jesus, then you probably don’t have to worry about it as much, if at all. However, that doesn’t mean it is crazy for anyone to worry about the golden horde. It might be crazier to think you know everything and everyone else is wrong. It is wise to research it though and find out for yourself if maybe there is something you need to plan for. Where do you live? Is there a big blue spot near your home?

http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2014/08/28/crazy-worry-golden-horde/ 

Congressman Warns: “Those Who Can, Should Move Their Families Out Of the City” (video)

There are a whole host of events that can bring the world as we know it today to its knees. From a hyperinflationary economic collapse to an electro magnetic pulse originating from the sun or a nuclear weapon , there exists a real and present danger that our system may, in the near future, experience unrecoverable shocks to the power grid and clean water infrastructure, a halt to just-in-time agricultural transportation systems and a collapse of the currency exchange mechanisms that make the economy function.



US Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), lived through the great depression, so he’s seen how bad things can get. In a new documentary, Mr. Bartlett and others discuss the dangers posed to those living in cities and ways that your family can survive if the worst were to ever happen.

Roscoe Bartlett:
We could have events in the future where the power grid will go down and it’s not, in any reasonable time, coming back up. For instance, if when the power grid went down some of our large transformers were destroyed, damaged beyond use, we don’t make any of those in this country. They’re made overseas and you order one and 18 months to two years later they will deliver it. Our power grid is very vulnerable. It’s very much on edge. Our military knows that.

…
There are a number of events that could create a situation in the cities where civil unrest would be a very high probability. And, I think that those who can, and those who understand, need to take advantage of the opportunity when these winds of strife are not blowing to move their families out of the city.

We realize that for most people this may be decried as fear-mongering and crazy survival talk. We can’t help but point out, however, that it’s not just Representative Roscoe Bartlett, economist Marc Faber, and trend forecaster Gerald Celente that are recommending you prepare and head for rural areas. The US Pentagon and Military are very much aware of these possibilities and they’re preparing for exactly the scenarios described in this documentary.

The threat is out there, and just because it hasn’t happened in our modern-day society up until now doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future. In fact, it has happened through history – strife, poverty, depression, economic collapse, war. You name it and somebody in history has lived it. The government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on emergency preparedness, disaster planning, continuity of government and war gaming these scenarios. There’s a reason for that. We recommend our readers take a queue from them and others who are warning of these outlier possibilities.

http://www.bioprepper.com/2014/08/25/congressman-warns-those-who-can-should-move-their-families-out-of-the-cityvideo/

Are We Next Victim of the Yemen-style Blackout?

 

by Bill White

 

 In case you haven’t heard, Al-Queda is back on the rise. The ISIS (Islamic State of Iran and Syria) which has recently renamed itself the “Islamic State” (IS), is actually a splinter group of Al-Queda. So, not only are they on the rise, but they are taking back territory which the United States won and which our president has decided to abandon.

Now, I realize that President Obama has declared on several occasions that Al-Queda is on the run and all but destroyed. However, we all know that what Obama says and the truth aren’t even distant cousins, let alone being related to each other. He merely says things to keep the low information voters in line, if he has to lie to do that, no problem.

In case you don’t know about Yemen, Al-Queda recently attacked their electric power grid and took it down. Yemen has been working right alongside the United States in the War on Terror, making them a likely target for Al-Queda to use for a test attack on the grid. Using mortars and grenade launchers, Al-Queda took down the entire country’s grid, plunging its 25 million citizens into darkness.

What It Takes to Takes Us Down
Now I realize that a country with a population of 24 million isn’t going to have as sophisticated a grid as one of over 300 million, but as I’ve already mentioned, our grid is old and vulnerable to attack. The only real level of sophistication you can find in the U.S. power grid is its size.
Let’s take a look at a few facts that bear upon this case:

• On April 16^th of this year, a substation in San Jose, California was attacked by unknown gunmen. Within a short span of time, over 100 rounds were fired into the stations transformers, rendering them useless. The substation was destroyed by a few men with rifles.
• This isn’t the only substation which has been attacked either, just the first to be taken totally down by small arms fire. Officials from the power company see this as a rehearsal, in preparation for future attacks.
• If just nine of the country’s 55,000 substations were taken out at the same time, the cascading effects would collapse the entire U.S. power grid.
• It was recently discovered that over 1,000 power plants worldwide were hacked into. Test runs have been run by overseas hackers (possibly connected to terrorist organizations) on American power plants, including nuclear power plants, to see if they could be taken over and/or taken down by remote control.
• The recent influx of illegal aliens crossing our southern border is providing camouflage to both drug traffickers and terrorists. There are 300 which are known to have succeeded in crossing from the Somoli Al-Queda group Al-Shabaab, not counting others that we don’t know about. The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of these 300. This makes it clear that there are known terrorists within our borders.

Looking at those facts, it’s clear that a Yemen-style attack on our power grid is much more than merely possible. While it is possible that Al-Queda is working on other plans, they have shown the sophistication necessary to orchestrate complicated attacks.

Yemen could have been nothing more than a rehearsal for them. Taking down the power grid would probably be the most effective attack that any terrorist group could do to the United States.
It seems like such a low-key attack for a terrorist organization to make, but it could have a much greater impact than 9-11 did. Instead of killing a few thousand people, elimination of the grid could easily bring the body count up into the millions, as people struggled for survival.

While a terrorist attack against nine substations wouldn’t have as great an effect as an EMP, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has stated that even a simple terror attack on the grid could take it down for as much as 18 months. This would require combining the attack on the substations with other elements, such as destroying a few power plants and taking out a transformer manufacturer, and we’ve got a serious problem.

It seems hard to imagine that taking out as few as nine substations could shut down the grid, but the people who are making these declarations are the experts who have designed and maintain the system. They are the ones with the knowledge and expertise to know.

There is no evidence that Al-Queda has someone like that on their payroll, they don’t have to; they could accomplish the same thing by attacking a larger number of sub-stations, increasing their chances of hitting the critical ones which will start the domino effect. This may not be all that hard to do.

Part of the design of the grid is a “self-healing” function. It is designed to shuttle power through alternate routes, if the primary ones go down. That helps ensure that the overall system keeps working.

However, if enough sub-stations are taking down, it will cause other sub-stations to overload, as they try to keep the system functioning. Eventually, that will reach a point where it will have the desired effect.



There’s no question that we’re vulnerable. The only questions are: why haven’t they attacked and when will the attack come. They could be waiting for a certain event or date, there’s no real way of knowing.

All we really know is that when it comes, it will be spectacular, but we won’t enjoy the show.
This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia.

Grid Down, 4 Months, 250 million dead

 

The following is comment and opinion from a reader, ‘TripodXL’, regarding the dire scenario of a long term wide spread power outage. This scenario is one of the few that I respect the most when it comes to ‘real’.



Given that modern society is entirely dependent upon electricity to the point of not having ‘manual’ backup systems, and given that there are a number of events that could eliminate that electricity – potentially for a substantial period of time, and given that supply chains of all sorts are of very short duration and extremely interdependent, this should inspire the thinking person to stock up and think this one through…

In a true SHTF that involves loss of the grid even for say 2-3 months, the death toll would be staggering.

The fact that Just In Time delivery of all inventory at EVERY store in the nation guarantees millions will die. The average grocery store has 3 days of inventory, max. The average home has 3-7 days supply of food. All reorders in national and regional grocery chains is all done by computers over phone lines. There isn’t even a mechanism in place to do manual ordering, it doesn’t exist!!!

I live not too far from two large box grocery store distribution centers and one regional distribution center. I would just about bet the county commission and the sheriff’s dept will lock them down. All orders to food producers will not be made. Most of the food in the modern part of the world will ROT.

So with the numbers quoted above most everyone in the city will be out of food in 10-14 days and water before that. Say a CME hit the earth and there isn’t 2% of the world’s lights on and those only on generators that need fuel, ordered by computers. If you live in the metro area post 2 weeks TSHTF and you do not have an impregnable concrete bunker or are well hidden in some odd magical place that won’t be found and you have food, guess what? Hope you don’t have any daughters and your wife is really ugly. You, you’re gonna be a slave or dead and your son will be somebody’s little puppy or a slave.

If this came to pass it isn’t just wait till they get the lights back on. The lights wouldn’t be on for years in the cities and decades outside the cities. My conservative estimate is that 80-100 million people will die in the U.S. by the end of 60 days having starved or dehydrated to death or was murdered.

The thing about it is that people will wait until it is too late to bug out cuz the gubment is gonna fix it. Until they come to the oh shite moment that they realize that the cavalry isn’t coming. When they do try to bug out it will probably be too late. They will be half starved to death, subject to now rampant disease and fetid rotting bodies and hordes of gangs in as bad shape as they are except they are going to kill them and take what little they might have. That’s also why I think that roving bands from the cities will be scarce outside of metro areas.

By the end of 3-4 months I think 150 to 250 million people could be dead and that’s just here. Those that manage to feed themselves and survive and come out to the country to look for easy pickens will not live too long. If we wind up with 60-80 million left, which would be the population level of 1880-1910, we would have a lot of room to grow, a new point of view and perhaps we could get it right this time. Who knows?

As an idealist and a romantic patriot I would like to think that the U.S.A. would survive. Unless there is some dynamic true leadership at the helm and lot of luck, I’m not sure how it will turn out. My grandaddy told me one time some gubment man came around Flora, Mississippi in the late 30s and asked how much better things were getting from the depression years and grandaddy said “what depression”? There will be areas even in our country like that, some continents, Africa, a lot of the South American interior, Siberia, rural China. India will suck as they are actually a modern country. Hopefully we will not repeat the early and mid 20th centuries in the coming decades.

Source: modernsurvivalblog.com