Posted on 08/21/2013 5:41:40 AM PDT by Old Sarge
WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.
~ SNIP ~
One goal of the drill, called "GridEx II", is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities.
~ SNIP ~
Most of the participants will join the exercise from their workplaces, with NERC, in Washington, announcing successive failures. One example, organizers say, is a substation break-in that officials initially think is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB drive to upload a virus into a computer network.
The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing the electric system.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The newer top of the line model generators have excellent mufflers, and are quiet compared to the older models. My 14KW kohler sounds like an idling modern car.
As for blackout windows... keep a couple of cans of flat black spray paint!
BTW laplata... Welcome Home!
I’m with you. The grid is going down at some point but its way more likey to be a cyber attack or blackouts due to shutting down 292 coal fired power plants. If so electronics will not be destroyed. If you have an alternative electrical system such as solar you will still have power at your house. Cars will run but gas will be a problem. It will take awhile to get generators up and running at gas stations. Long term outage will be a major pain in the butt though. We are putting in solar and converting all appliances to propane.
We got along just fine with none of them when I was a kid.
Went through what? And what do those areas have in common with urban environments like NYC, DC, Baltimore, or Los Angeles. I don’t follow you.
Yep... All those city folks gotta learn sometime though!
How much noise does this generator make? Can it be heard over 50 or 100ft away?
Can your house, with the generator that makes noise, and the smells of cooking food, be seen from any road or major thoroughfare?
Since the The Old Gray Whore only whores for elite liberals... I wonder if there’s something else to this...
If you’ve ever been anywhere where there was NO electrical noise and NO running cars you wouldn’t believe how far that ‘idling car’ noise will travel...
I've been tempted to look up when the next seven year cycle is but I haven't decided if I really want to know. I'm sure plenty of people have already done the math.
A large region of the United States went through a total power outage, San Diego/Tijuana was affected, have you heard of that little metro area?
The blackout involved about 7 million people and the people did not go nuts.
How is it that preppers missed this massive blackout?
I see an opportunity.
The bad guys infiltrate the grid testing command and control. They substitute executable files containing code that actually causes certain critical grid components to fail that in turn cause more failures and in short order the whole grid and power generating infrastructure is hopelessly damaged. Other command files cause computers and servers to commit cyber hari kari.
There’s probably a book about something like that happening.
Its too vague of a term, doesn't have meaning.
You can break it out into the war on coal powered power plants like in clean coal versus dirty coal and the war on coal mining, and you have break out coal mining into thermal coal for power plants and metallurgical coal(metcoal) like making steel. Then you have to break it out for domestic used coal and export coal. And you can't really talk about coal without talking about natural gas
Before long you realize that to discuss the subject you will have to write a 500-1000 word essay on the subject.
It is much easier to go with the slogans like war on coal and drill baby drill
“Water Bob, Marcella APPROVED”
Yes, I’ve been pushing WaterBobs since I found them a few years ago. It is 100 gallons of your good water with a pump to get some out when you want. We are approaching September, the month most of our bad hurricanes happen - Ike happened in September and wiped out Houston water and other places including Cleveland, TX, about 60 miles north of downtown Houston. Water had to be trucked to Cleveland and it was a week or two (I think it was at least two) before they got water back.
If I get one this Sept., the Water Bob goes in the tub and gets filled up.
Get one at:
http://www.hurricaneprepper.com/waterbob.html
My system is a solar panel and rechargeable batteries that can be recharged over 1,000 times. My power source is totally quiet and will last me years due to the number of good chargeable batteries I have.
I figured I'd blow myself up with a regular generator and fuel, plus fuel would run out, plus it would make noise, so I went to battery power.
Thank you, JDoutrider and Welcome Home to you, Brother!
“Do you have black out curtains so no one can see your lights...”
I do have blackout shades I got cheaply at Amazon. There is a pressure rod included with each shade and only take seconds to get them in windows. These are total darkness shades. During the day, they can be folded up and there are clips to hold them up. Remove the clips and down they come. They store in small boxes.
That would be a legitimate concern if one lived in the city/urban environment when the shtf.
Out here, our "Gulch" is seventeen miles from the nearest tribal settlement, fifty from a small town, and our closest neighbor lives over a mile away... We are more worried about the damned black bears crashing our party than the two legged beasts!
On the coldest day of the year a couple years ago they decided to cut electricty for half an hour in random locations supposedly to save from a full meltdown. Problem was when they turned it back on several transformers blew so that put people out of power for hours. In other areas they simply forgot to turn it back on. If there was so much incompetence on a local area, imagine what it’d be like in a major grid failure.
:shudder:
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