Terrorist Attack on Power Grid Could Cause Broad Hardship, Report Says

Terrorist Attack on Power Grid Could Cause Broad Hardship, Report Says

www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — Terrorists could black out large segments of the United States for weeks or months by attacking the power grid and damaging hard-to-replace components that are crucial to making it work, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report released Wednesday.

(visit the link for the full news article)



Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Chinese hackers have control of US power grid

Again, I question how many of you are paying attention to these stories? The feds know how vulnerable our infrastructure is.... The private companies and co-ops who own the infrastructure know how vulnerable it is... But there is so little being done to fill the gap, especially in a timely manner.

Are you prepared?

www.nytimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Yeah I think everyone knows how vulnerable the grids are but why advertise it like that. NY Times?! I smell something fishy here...

Originally posted by FrankLY
Yeah I think everyone knows how vulnerable the grids are but why advertise it like that. NY Times?! I smell something fishy here...

Yup . . . it ain't never in the news unless there's a reason for it to be in the news. Kinda like when somebody tells you something 'off the record' . . . you have to ask yourself . . . what benefit will they derive from parlaying me this information . . .

Mark my words . . . within a year, something's going to happen to the grid.

One thing good about being a prepper is storys like this dont even phase me. Im ready for grid down events if they come. Being prepard is the best thing I've ever done and life is so much more injoyable because of it.

Originally posted by camaro68ss
One thing good about being a prepper is storys like this dont even phase me. Im ready for grid down events if they come. Being prepard is the best thing I've ever done and life is so much more injoyable because of it.

I am prepared as well so it's not really scary for me but for preppers in a touchy situation like mine (3 young kids) it's a bit concerning to realize how "Fragile" most people are without power to keep warm during the "not so long and cold now" Canadian winter nights.

Like it was mentioned earlier, if it's in the news (and I just can't trust NY Times) there must be a reason. Who advertise the fragility of something so important but really, why close to nothing is being done to protect those facilities.

so, a hand full of "terrorists" releasing helium filled mylar balloons under neath power lines that could pretty much shut the country down for days, if not weeks, would be a problem? why are they not mentioning the fact that instead of upkeeping our infrastructure , that they are sending billions and billions of our funds to other countries to build their infrastructures. I believe that is a real act of terrorism.

Really interested in this topic and this reminds me of another ATS post submitted a while ago:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Goes almost hand in hand if you ask me

not completley ready yet.


putting a wood stove in the house in the next month or so,
for added heat and cut the bill's down, as well as a
emergency heating and cooking situation.

what do you prepared ones think of this one?
www.ebay.com... .CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D76%26meid%3D3434282688868644602%26pid%3D100010%26prg%3D1049%26rk%3D2%26sd%3D230854011204%26

I know its not huge, but im not looking for totally switching over
to wood, but more as of a boost to cut the bill's down as well
as have a bit of security in case things go south.

for a hundred bucks, its hard to pass up.

Look at the troubles New Jersey has had due to Hurricane Sandy. Imagine it happening to an entire region, or worse the nation.

Whoo hoo. Turning the traffic lights off would be horrible enough, what would it look like if it all went off? Then three days later, when the cell phone towers emergency backup power dies.... my teenagers would not survive without their cell phones.

The more i think about it, the more i feel the need to protect against this kind of terrorists:

Die Hard

Pre-internet in the 80's I was an avid reader of many defence related publications where the power grid was discussed as a potential target of Spetznaz infiltrators prior to initiation of hostilities as a way to take out C3i capabilities and create chaos in the civilian sector.

The several methods detailed were quite simple and only needed good coordination, no special gear, no special weapons and nothing fancy that would compromise operational success - the targets were and are still unprotected and the results would be long lasting, if not months then years to repair.

I don't care to detail the ease because someone may actually get the idea. Suffice to say its a real threat and I'm somewhat surprised its not been attempted by terrorists, make 911 look like a bump in the road in its scope and breadth.

So the National Academy of Sciences get paid to gather up 18 experts to create a document which [presumably) scientifically looks at the possible outcomes of a terrorist attack on what they identify as the most effective targets?

The NY Times treats their readership to the notion conveyed in the report that such an attack would be "bad."

Most of us older folks know this "vulnerability" is a normal target for any enemy (we've done some damage ourselves to our enemies' power systems...)

I suppose this fear porn is supposed to justify the implementation of new policies and measures - the cost of which will - one way or another, be passed on to the tax payer.... or consumer of power.

At least it may not require one of those "we never could have imagined" productions the government has been using for decades.... we've only been aware of the delicate nature of the infrastructure for 50 or 60 years.

reply to post by CIAGypsy

It is not just the electrical system. It would be so easy for terrorists to attack us in a multitude of ways. That is the sole reason I have never believed we are under attack by terrorists. If we really were I believe a whole lot more damage would be done on a almost daily basis.

reply to post by CIAGypsy

I forget if it was the history or the discover channel once explained how to take out the entire east coast of the US of A with a couple of pounds of C4 going off in the Med. They were specific. I always thought that was irresponible and would have been banned by the Feds if we were really under threat of terrorism.

A threat like this is very real but it would be difficult for a single attack to take out a large part of the national grid as it power goes down in one part another can take over. Most power plants are well defended particularly nuclear plants so a physical attack would be difficult requiring a number of terrorists and people trained sufficiently enough to find the points at which to plant explosives or to say physically turn off a section of the grid. What is a bigger danger facing the grid is the possibility of a cyber-attack however again this could be difficult given that some utility systems work on a closed network.

There are a lot of terrorist attack scenario’s that could give us cause for concern I personally don’t see attacking the national grid as being a big one. What would cause more harm is if telecommunications systems were to be targeted such as a major internet hub was physically destroyed, and something knocked out satellite telecommunications. That is a worse case event, no phones, no GPS, no internet, we are so reliant on it these days that we would lose everything. If this where to happen in the US, you would probably see massive economic problems, planes falling out of the skies, all transport would halt, emergency services would be crippled. Basically not good.

This is a bigger threat that hitting the national grid and although still difficult it is probably relatively easier the only thing I could really see that would be worse is a biological or nuclear attack.

Interesting find nonetheless.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin

Ummm. Nope but not going into it.
Second line.

reply to post by Jerk_Idiot


Was that intended for me because I don’t really understand what you are talking about, please expand.

Thanks.

The power grid should have security at critical points.
But the best we all can do is buy a generator store some weeks fuel safely.
Have low power portable fridges/freezers (camping types)
Have cheap ice boxes stored also.
We all whine but there is so much we can do for ourselves.

An EMP attack, even on a local level, could do major damage and there is no way to protect the power grid and the computer systems from it without spending big $$$ to harden them against electromagnetic radiation.

I read an article about 4 years ago that described how to make an EMP device with off the shelf components for $400.00 that could take out anything electronic for a couple of miles. The device could also be easily scaled up by just throwing more money at it. The only difficult item to acquire for it is a small amount of high explosive like C4. But the amount of C4 needed is small enough that smuggling it in or stealing it wouldn't be too big a problem.

Another way to take out all the electric and electronic gear in a large area is with a nuke set off high in the upper atmosphere. Even with small crude nukes like Iran is most likely to develop it would only take 2 or 3 of them to send the entire country back to the iron age.

Since we are not back in the cold war era the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) scenario no longer applies. Any large terrorist group or small country, or even a big country wanting to become the dominant power, could launch such an attack from just outside our territorial waters from cargo ships and with relatively cheap SCUD missiles and we could do nothing to stop them. The problem is that even if we did have a missile shield defense system in place they are designed to take out missiles on a ballistic arc on the downward part of the curve. However, an EMP device is set off at the peak of the arc and there is no downward side to the arc. The reason for the down curve hit is that with even a small head start it is nearly impossible for a chase missile to catch up to a missile under acceleration before it reaches it's peak and starts to descend.

But we may not have to wait for a terrorist group to do it. If a solar flare of the magnitude of the Carrington Event in 1859 were to be repeated today it could wipe out the entire power grid and unhardened electronics on, at the very least, one whole half of the planet. In 1859 the solar flare known as the Carrington Event was so powerful it burned out telegraph lines and started fires in telegraph offices where the lines terminated. The same, or worse, today would completely fry all the satellites, electrical lines and transformers and electronics such as computers, phones, car electrical systems, emergency services radio communications and a whole lot more. Just one of the monstrous transformers used at power generating stations would take, under the best of conditions, 6 months to a year to manufacture. If just the whole United States and parts of Canada and Mexico were to be affected it would take several years to make enough new equipment to get the power back online. Then it wouldn't help much since most of the things that ran off of electricity would also have to be replaced or rebuilt.

Such an event would have people in large cities killing each other for a half can of rotting cat food in under two weeks.

There is so much more to it than what I just posted that to fully understand the problem with a full scale EMP attack or a massive solar flare you need to read the Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack available at the link in PDF format.