Rifle-Toting Terrorists Called Major Threat to U.S. Power Grid

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


Not really, because the power in those lines needs to go somewhere and the whole Grid is a balancing act. If you knock off the right transmission routes at the right time, you can collapse the whole grid very easily.

Terrorists getting a hold of a nuclear plant would be a real threat. But security for those is considerably more than a chain link fence. Especially post 9/11.

The lone agitator with a .22 or a group of agitators with .22's have been a power grid threat as long as I can remember.

Back when Reagan was POTUS I remember reading reports where such a scenario was referenced repeatedly.

The more centralized and connected everything and everyone becomes the more damage one angry person can do.

A rifle isnt even necessary. Giant lines connecting grids run in very remote areas with those massive monster poles.

Just wander out there with a chainsaw and bring a few of them down. Nobody will notice. Before you leave dump lots of glass, nails, whatever all over the place to disable the utility trucks coming in.

You could hang out there for hours felling poles before anybody even realized what was going on.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
I know they are fragile and I am not saying that it wouldn’t be a problem just that the thread is being overestimated and is not as significant as others.

Say you have a storm that knocks out 3 or 4 big transformers serving a city, eventually the power does come back right?

You use a storm as an analogy, but that is something that can be planned for, as it happens. Power can be diverted, generators dialled back and the infrastructure protected against surges. For something as random as a bunch of guys hitting the grid at any time, anywhere this can be highly dangerous, especially if at peak times when there is a lot of energy in the grid which needs to go somewhere. If it can't be sent into homes and businesses, it will go back into the grid, create a domino affect and overload transformers, blow generators, all of which can take months to replace and repair.

I don't think this thread is over estimated at all, if anything the threat has been understated for years, precisely I suspect to minimise someone getting the idea.

For example, if the terrorists actually had a brain and hit the building I am currently sat in, they could knock off the National Grid and BBC very easily and also play havoc with the rest of our telecoms network in the UK to a point it would impact the other networks, causing the whole thing to fall over. The building I am in is currently protected by a single ex-Gurkha and two swipe card doors. Any Jihadi with a gun and a little bit of knowledge could cause a right fuss....

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
While I certainly think the stockpiling of spare parts to such critical things is a good idea.....I'd have to say I got a good laugh out of the suggestion of how. All these years we've simply been told to accept Al Qaeda is out there...within our borders...somewhere...and so we have to deal with all the cost and loss of freedom to deal with it. Now it's packs of them perhaps showing up with .22 rifles from 200 yards? Where do they get these people for Government service??

There's no downplaying the results of such an attack. I saw it first proposed as Spetsnaz doctrine as a way to diminish command, control and intelligence (C3i) in CONUS ahead of surprise Soviet attack. We can get caught up in who might do this but the discussion is about vulnerability of the grid and long lasting effects of such an event. Then just as now lax border sucurity was one of the issues discussed which allowed teams to infiltrate.

First, I have to agree with the earlier post. This wouldn't create terror any more than a bad storm. A few weeks down time...as these aren't one of a kind with no replacements world wide. They just aren't likely to be in the same region or perhaps even in the U.S.. I understand some of the critical parts to our grid is European these days. There are areas you could take out that would put the U.S. down for 6-8 months, not weeks and I'd guess maybe 100 men could manage it. I didn't come up with the idea.... A well known radio host did in a book well before 9/11 when such real details could be written about fictionally.

I agree in a semantic way that the actual shooting of the transformers would not create terror. Its the U.S. populations resulting actions themselves that would be a terror. Sorry this would be nothing like a storm recovery. There is trouble enough when power is down regionally such as Hurricane events and such. Crews from other regions go in and help with repair. In this case it would be a national event and there would be little to no spares for replacement if this occurred today. Its not weeks or months but probably years to replace the transformers in question.

Rifles tho? That's one way to work the gun topic into another totally unrelated one that is about panic, fear and reasons to do stupid things to "fight" yet another threat. it's about as logical as the Congressman from Georgia talking about Guam capsizing right there on the floor of the House.

Gun control is neither the issue nor a solution to the threat nor is any infringement on our rights.

I guess I'm just tired of hearing one more threat we are supposed to care about when it's thousands of threats just like this one...endlessly....and forever coming...since 9/11. I hope we elected a President for the second term, not a fear monger. 12 years of that so far has been too much, IMO and this story is talking about a Government (executive branch) official suggesting all this.

The only terror I see is perpetrated by own own leadership right on US by news headline, every day.

I certainly understand threat fatigue! This one actually in its effects would make us nostalgic for 9/11 incidents tragic as it was it did not have scope enough to affect things nationally. This type of event would be of such scope that I'd wonder if we come back at all.

Think no food production, processing, distribution. No fuel refining, distribution or availability. No modern manufacturing, no communications, no pharma, no refrigeration, no modern medical, I can keep on and on but you get the drift.

With the ensuing civil chaos when "just in time" distribution halts I for one don't have much confidence that whole cities won't be burnt to the ground and starving hoards ravage the countryside for food like locusts.

The government official from FERC is a fool or is understating things by mention of .22 rifles or sheetmetal covers for a mere few hundreds of dollars. The only sane thing mentioned was stocking spare transformers.

There exists much in the way of ballistic protection for the isolated transformer locations and it is a matter of money or lack of it.

reply to post by stumason


Ok fair enough I can see where you are coming form and you claim to work in the industry so you probably have a better knowledge base regarding the infrastructure of the national grid. As such I am happy to accept your claims regarding the problems that could result from someone causing significant damage to the national grid and thank you for the information.

From a terrorism perspective however I still maintain that they have much more potent and damaging targets that they could hit. I do not see an attack on the national grid as the biggest threat posed by terrorists.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


Whats greater psychological impact,

1. claiming several hundred killed in direct attack.
2. claiming take down of entire country and its infrastructure for years, indirectly causing death of tens of millions.

I just dumped my post.... I'm really pissed as I put lots of effort in it. So here's the shortened version, if anyone needs more explanation I can answer it later.

So We have all seen substations right? If not this is what they look like.






These areas supply power to cities, suburbs, towns, and are usually found in the city limits or just outside of them. If you are unaware of where yours is look it up, I almost guarantee you have one with in 10 or so miles. These structures usually have a fence around them with every electrical warning sign you will ever see. They aren't really monitored that often and could be very vulnerable to an attack, and it wouldn't even need explosives or advanced knowledge for someone to cause a whole heck of a lot of trouble.

I introduce the military weapon of choice for said areas. Micro filament bomb

These bombs work by dispersing fine strands of conductive material to use the targets electricity against itself by shorting out the circuits.

Low tech solution a potato gun.. Yup we've all made, seen or know someone who has made one... The way this would work, add wadding or sabot to your potato gun, fill it with a bunch of long strands of thin wire, fire the load over the area. You could add weights to the strands of wire to increase distance as well as to have them arc for better contact with the circuits. The wires would bridge over hot lines causing a short at which point you'd want to make a hasty retreat as transformers can cause a hell of a lot of damage when they overload. I wouldn't want to be near it when Thousands of volts of electricity are shorting out. Tada.... City has no power, which today is the life blood of everything. Food, water, fuel. Look at cities that have gone more than a few days with out power and you'll understand the devastating effect this could have.

Now someone mentioned felling High voltage power lines like you would find in the woods with no more than a chainsaw. This is a neat idea except. This is what they look like.


Now I will give you this some chainsaws can cut steel, but I wouldn't want to take on that hulking tower with a chainsaw for a million dollars. They are enormous!! Not to mention that these lines usually carry 110, 000 - 400,000 + volts of electricity that will race through the ground, or your chainsaw given they make contact with the tower or ground. Not somewhere I'd want to be. As well, a whole lot of these towers have a few hundred yards of space leaving you right out in the open in the event someone were to cross by. Many of these towers are also maintained and serviced by helicopter not a truck these days. It's too risky and time consuming for the service men to drive out to them, and scale the electrified towers.



These towers are usually made of steel in areas where brush fires are prevalent, and many new ones are also made of steel. I guess some may be wood, but it's not as likely we would find wooden towers that can be eaten by bugs, blown over by wind or consumed by fire. Just saying. Neat idea, but you need something other than a chainsaw to bring em down. Again, 110-600kv depending on local, source, target and distance of travel. Not something you want to be standing near once those lines touch ground. However a potato gun with wire could mess these up pretty bad too. ha ha

NOTE: This post is entirely theoretical. I do not support, condone or suggest anyone actually do this. Any one who does is subject to legal prosecution, and retains sole responsibility for their actions.

I like how its always something along the lines of "armed terrorists" ..years ago on americas funniest home videos , they showed a wedding party releasing mylar balloons that went right into some power lines and it ended up blowing the transformers out and blacked out a huge chunk of town. the whole federal government is made up of not only paranoid delusional physcopaths, they are also complete morons. it has been known for years that the u.s infastructure is not only vunerable to "terrorist" attacks , it is also vunerable to party favors. after watching a bunch of videos about black friday , I am not troubled at all about the potential for a major calamity , in fact I think we are long overdue for a major cleansing.

reply to post by VeniVidi


What terrorists?

Who? CIA?

Exactly.

There's a reason none of this stuff has happened. It would be very easy for "terr*rists" to disrupt daily life. But I don't think that 9-11 was caused by "terr*rists". If it had been, they would not have stopped with that, they'd be taking down transformers and cell phone towers weekly, if not daily, all across the country. People would be in a panic, not knowing where or when they would strike next.

But like I said, it wasn't them. 9-11 and Oklahoma City was all "they" needed to put the boot downon the US, roll out the TSA and get us accostomed to having our rights violated. Lot of little incidents is not effeciant.

reply to post by Phoenix

So the idiots finally announced how to do it. It should not be to long now until it happens and the blame will go to terrorists. I am more worried about a false flag since they advertised it.

I knocked the power out in a pretty good size town one day, I was shooting at what I thought was a bird sitting on a high voltage power line with a 22 when I was a kid. I guess it was not a bird, it was some sort of connector. I found that it was not a good idea.

reply to post by iwilliam

Nope. Look up Wackenhut. Run by the Moonies. They are in charge of the security.

Like i said...this job could be done with a crescent wrench and a hike along a power line at night......
Pulling the base bolts of these towers on a stressed side or even just a straight line .....the towers will twist and fall when a high wind or storm developes....
Immense stresses are placed upon these towers just to stand with the wieght of the lines...
Pulling guy wires on the outside of a mile long curve of line would be tanamount to blowing them all up....
Not only that, but those lines take a lot of qwork to reinstall, and the worst places to work are the best places to topple the towers...
So we have our transmission interface, totally hanging out there in the breeze......
(so do most other countries as well......
Matter of fact it has always been so.....except perhaps Switzeland.....

I submit that the idea of ARMED terrorists is MOOT compared to the simple and safe(relatively) ways there are for crippling the nation......besides the power grid....
FAA,services disruptions could cause several major airline disasters simultaneously without a highjacker aboard....small boats could disable navigation lights simultaneously in a BUSY HARBOUR OR STRAIGHT....
Radio jamming pakages dropped at locations, and activated with cell phones or sat phones....i mean theres a TERROR SMORGASBOARD OUT THERE!

To sum up i have to say one thing .......... OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE DAMN FEW FREAKIN TERRORISTS....in fact id say practically none................................YEP NONE...
.

Originally posted by VeniVidi
reply to post by Phoenix

 

IMO taking out the power grid, though harmful, does not create terror. I suspect that terrorist want to create destruction that can be seen and heard by those that the terror is created for. Knock out the power grid and you knock out the ability to create mass panic. I would recognize that I lost power in my area, but without TV, Radio, or the Internet I would not know about any other areas.

I would have to disagree. Without electricity, there are no gas stations, refridgerators, entertainment, stoves, etc. If you can't go to work, you can't pay your bills. If you can't cook and store food, after a week or so (and without transportation) I would say would cause terror. At least, speaking for myself, I would freak out and be terrified. I think that is more nerve wrecking than the thought of a plane crashing into my building.

reply to post by Hijinx


The people who would act on that sort of thing doesn't really need to know how to do it, so stop telling them. This whole OP baffles me. Some times people just need to keep they're yap shut.

Originally posted by 1plusXisto7billion

Originally posted by VeniVidi
reply to post by Phoenix

 

IMO taking out the power grid, though harmful, does not create terror. I suspect that terrorist want to create destruction that can be seen and heard by those that the terror is created for. Knock out the power grid and you knock out the ability to create mass panic. I would recognize that I lost power in my area, but without TV, Radio, or the Internet I would not know about any other areas.

I would have to disagree. Without electricity, there are no gas stations, refridgerators, entertainment, stoves, etc. If you can't go to work, you can't pay your bills. If you can't cook and store food, after a week or so (and without transportation) I would say would cause terror. At least, speaking for myself, I would freak out and be terrified. I think that is more nerve wrecking than the thought of a plane crashing into my building.

1plus,

That was not me saying that tripe - it another posters quoted remarks - I agree with you, modern life to a halt!

What terrorists? Did the cia or fbi dismantle an alquaeda cell in the homeland? Even one?

Originally posted by Patriotsrevenge
reply to post by Hijinx

 

The people who would act on that sort of thing doesn't really need to know how to do it, so stop telling them. This whole OP baffles me. Some times people just need to keep they're yap shut.

I wouldn't worry that we're giving anything away.
I think we can be sure that terrorist groups have put much more thought into this than what we have here. They have probably enlisted the services of electrical and civil engineers.