The vulnerable grid

[Kay/NC]

Jim, I think it was partly this realization of the grid being so exposed to hacking and actual physical disruption (I didn't mention the EMP possibility). that made me get onto the wood cooking jag five years ago.  Mike thought I was nuts, then realized how much he actually enjoys food prepared that way, as well as cooking out in that back kitchen. 

We are actually paring down the pantry a lot now.  I am tired of most of what's in there, and we are trying to eat healthier.  I would say I am less prepared  for a lengthy outage or emergency than usual. 

[Husker-J]

FWIW, I sat in on a couple sessions on 'security', and one of the subjects was that of how vulnerable our electrical grid is.   Did you know, that a half dozen people, if they knew what to do, and could coordinate their efforts properly, could cut power to most or all of a small to medium sized city, and it would take 3-5 days to get everything back up and running, under near ideal conditions?  This is NOT the obvious 'saw down poles in the middle of the night' stuff, but rather something that could be done in 15-20 minutes per person.

[buckfarmer]

I totally agree with Husker. But that is far from being thrust into the nineteenth century, as was warned in the original post.
Large parts of Columbus Ohio were out for up to a week a couple summers ago. As far a I know there was no rioting, no one starved or died because of lack of medical care. And if Husker is correct 6 people to take out a city. How many to take out the entire grid. If many more than 6 were involved someone would talk and it would be stopped.

[Kay/NC]

The scenario of a half-dozen miscreants sabotagng substations would be far less of a risk than an able hacker or two.

[Husker-J]

It depends on how they do it.   Imagine Al-Queida co-ordinating a couple dozen people, in each of 100 cities, with a coordinated effort to take them down at once.   We are pretty insulated, living in a rural area, but imagine the chaos in a city, when power goes out, and word gets around, that it was happening in many cities, and it was because of a terrorist attack.  Couple that, with the destruction of certain equipment (the same thing at every location) which would make fixing it a nightmare, because of a lack of enough spare parts to get everything going.

As to a hacker, I can not say at all how the power grid is run anywhere except around here locally, but around here, they have back-up manual controls that can override the computer controls.   Power could be restored, under that kind of scenario.  However, in terms of the damage that could be done by one person, a hacker is probably the single most dangerous person.

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

If anything like this ever happened, the DHS would get involved to an unbelievable extent and would never let go.  We would have federal control of an extent beyond conception today.

[Kay/NC]

Jim, there are, and have been for decades, emergency provisions for the president to take over control, and essentially " nationalize" virtually every aspect of American society...including agriculture. When Mr. Obama renewed these acts, which has been done by several presidents since their inception, it got a lot of notice in the cyber sphere.

We have also been made mindful of DHS and several other agencies essentially being armed and provisioned like military forces. I don't buy into every random conspiracy theory or Big Brother commentary, but we know that there is essentially an active thought police, in the form of the NSA.

I hesitate to quote Orwell, but we are painfully aware now that "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

[kraft-t]

Years ago I was given a tour of the 3M facilities in minneapolis. They had a building with amassive number of computers and information storage equipment. They were served bay one power grid and access to another but all of their equipment ran on battery stored power. So there was no outages to the computer equipment and the two power grids and the company generators assured that they always had power.

BTW.. every order for product or supplies was processed in that facility for world wide consumption.