How Long Could the U.S. Go Without Electricity?

Yes, we are that stupid

• Ted Koppel's new book details the end of civilization as the power grid melts down from terrorism, solar flare, cyber attack or an EMP blast.
• Dig your End of the World Cave deeper.

(Reason.com)  -  The power is still out, and things are getting scary.

The house is so cold you can see your own breath. Some of the food in the refrigerator is good, but there's no way to cook it. The water is still running, barely, but it smells bad and tastes worse. The grocery store is open, but it's only taking cash—which you can't get, because the banks are closed. But it doesn't really matter since the shelves have been picked clean anyway.

You went to work on Monday, but after a couple of hours the boss sent everyone home. Come back when the power comes back on, she said.

That was nine days ago.

The family has been warming up in the car for short stints, and you've been charging your cell phone, but the gas gauge is now sitting on Empty. The gas station closed because there's no power to run the pumps.

The emergency numbers you've called are busy or not answering. Nothing on the radio but static. No wi-fi. Your neighbors are just as clueless as you are.

Somebody better get the power back on soon, or you and your family are going to be up the creek.

But suppose they don't. Then what?

George Noory: 

America Vulnerable To EMP Attack

This cheery scenario is the subject of a recent book by Ted Koppel, Lights Out, which discusses the possibility of a major blow to the nation's power grid—either through a cyberattack or an EMP. An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse caused by a high-altitude (as in 30 or 40 miles) detonation of a nuclear warhead. A sufficient blast over Ohio could fry circuits on the Eastern Seaboard down to Florida and as far west as Omaha, Nebraska. A cyberattack would have less far-reaching effects—unless it were either a coordinated, distributed assault or hit nerve centers hard enough to cause a cascading power failure.

Koppel explores the likelihood of such an event. The experts he interviewed, including former heads of Homeland Security,  rate the chances everywhere from minute to almost inevitable. He asks how effective such an attack might be. The answer to that is: It depends. He also asks how well prepared the country is to cope with a long-term, widespread power failure. The answer to that is: Not one little bit.

Experts in the utility industry contend that fears of a nationwide blackout are overblown. Dominion, Virginia's chief supplier of power, will be spending $500 million to harden its critical infrastructure.

The industry spends billions on cybersecurity. There's no way for an outsider to hack into the control systems, they say. Cyber-security experts seem rather less sanguine. Hackers always find a way—just ask Target, or Sony Pictures, or the Office of Personnel Management or countless other major institutions that have the resources to guard against cyber-infiltration, but couldn't stop it. A terrorist or foreign power that hacks into a power company's network might be able to wreck its hardware, just like the Stuxtnet virus developed by the U.S. and Israel wrecked Iran's uranium centrifuges.

An EMP attack, which would affect not just power companies but electronic circuits everywhere, is equally feasible—so feasible that more than a decade ago, Congress established a commission to examine the issue. Its findings are not exactly reassuring. They point out, for instance, that a successful EMP attack does not require an intercontinental ballistic missile. As one commission member testified to the House Armed Services Committee in 2008, "such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile... Iran... has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea."

Read More . . . .

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