[blackdog]

I don't mean to be dismissive here, but can we please consider the fact that we are talking about electricity going out and not dirty bombs or missiles disguised as 747's?

If we get into a snit and uproar over a several hour blackout and feel it to be a national emergency, just what the eff is with us? Bunch of spoiled pampered brats we are! IMHO we should have mandatory blackout drills on a regular basis. I say we knock the power out in cities and regions on purpose just for practice and conditioning of the populace. If having our power out for 24 hours freaks the country out we deserve to be held hostage by a few third world zealots because we let them.

[adamyoshida]

If you read the article, that's the point I was making. There is no way al-Qaeda did this: there were no follow-up operations. No one died. That isn't the mark of Bin Laden.

[Darksheare]

Here's, in a nutshell, how terrorism by power outage would 'work':
You shut off power once to see how much 'damage' and inconvenience you can produce as well as to see how long it takes for the other guy to fix what you did.
You time it, and see what continues working as well.
Then, you take all that info you generated and create a plan.
What terror boys would do next is this: Shut off power again.
This time have explosives rigged into teh system so that when juice flows through again, it blows at a set time after current is restored. You set up places to attack, where people congregate. (Garbage bin bombs. NYC would have been a slaughterhouse with everyone outside like that.)
Then, you fit an ambulance you stole with explosives.
And when the First responders get to the scene, you have some suicida-kazis drive up pretending to be EMT's and det that too.
The targets would be Police, Firemen, and EMT's.
Think the ambulance is too much?
The Pali's do just that over in Israel.