well if this doesn't freak you out, it should a little (1 Viewer)

[Joe Summer]

*As many as two gunmen stormed the PG and E Metcalf substation in California on April 16 last year

"As many as two gunmen"? Like, it could be anywhere from zero to 2 gunmen?

 

[NCCommish]

I thought it was well known that our power grid was held together with bubble gum and twine. Probably one of the easier ways to "hit" us and I'm kinda surprised it's never happened.

The terrorist plots seen in shows like "24" are just fiction. We're much more likely to see something like what's going on over in russia right now.

Ok? Doesn't change anything I posted. It'd be relatively easy to bring large portions of our country to it's knees with a hit to a few places. This isn't new or some talking point.

Those places aren't very easy to hit.

Do you even know what places I am talking about?

Yes.

Ok....so, when you make a comment like this, what places are you talking about??

You're trying to recreate a situation like what happened in the North East in 2003. That's not as easy to replicate as that was a software failure rather than physical damage. On a much lesser scale, you had the San Diego outage 2 years ago, caused by sub station outage, which unto itself had limited effect. It was the San Onofre going off line as part of safety protocol as a result of the grid disruption that put most people without power. power was fully restored in that situation in about 12 hours. And since then, additional lines have been put in to help prevent a similar situation from happening.

You could go after substations, but, really, all you'd be doing is creating a minor inconvenience. We get longer power outages from bad weather. Going after the actual power plants is not an easy task.

Yeah, you assumed wrong. i wasn't talking about actual power plants. The technology infrastructure part of our power grid is incredibly feeble. I guess that wasn't well known.

Well it is probably not thought of more than not known. I think if most people put a few minutes of thought into it they would recognize the inherent weaknesses. We really would be much more secure with small plants running small areas(think neighborhoods) but still attached to a smart grid for emergency purposes. A distributed self healing network is much harder to bring down.

 

[The Commish]

I thought it was well known that our power grid was held together with bubble gum and twine. Probably one of the easier ways to "hit" us and I'm kinda surprised it's never happened.

The terrorist plots seen in shows like "24" are just fiction. We're much more likely to see something like what's going on over in russia right now.

Ok? Doesn't change anything I posted. It'd be relatively easy to bring large portions of our country to it's knees with a hit to a few places. This isn't new or some talking point.

Those places aren't very easy to hit.

Do you even know what places I am talking about?

Yes.

Ok....so, when you make a comment like this, what places are you talking about??

You're trying to recreate a situation like what happened in the North East in 2003. That's not as easy to replicate as that was a software failure rather than physical damage. On a much lesser scale, you had the San Diego outage 2 years ago, caused by sub station outage, which unto itself had limited effect. It was the San Onofre going off line as part of safety protocol as a result of the grid disruption that put most people without power. power was fully restored in that situation in about 12 hours. And since then, additional lines have been put in to help prevent a similar situation from happening.

You could go after substations, but, really, all you'd be doing is creating a minor inconvenience. We get longer power outages from bad weather. Going after the actual power plants is not an easy task.

Yeah, you assumed wrong. i wasn't talking about actual power plants. The technology infrastructure part of our power grid is incredibly feeble. I guess that wasn't well known.

Well it is probably not thought of more than not known. I think if most people put a few minutes of thought into it they would recognize the inherent weaknesses. We really would be much more secure with small plants running small areas(think neighborhoods) but still attached to a smart grid for emergency purposes. A distributed self healing network is much harder to bring down.

Correct. I had never thought about the technology angle of all this prior to a tour I took of a local power plant in college. It was alarming to see how many single points of failure we have in the infrastructure and it gets worse the further we zoom out. Some of the things were being addressed, and have been addressed, but it really is held together with bubble gum and twine.

 

[DrJ]

The terrorist plots seen in shows like "24" are just fiction. We're much more likely to see something like what's going on over in russia right now.

Ok? Doesn't change anything I posted. It'd be relatively easy to bring large portions of our country to it's knees with a hit to a few places. This isn't new or some talking point.

Those places aren't very easy to hit.

Do you even know what places I am talking about?

Yes.

Ok....so, when you make a comment like this, what places are you talking about??

You're trying to recreate a situation like what happened in the North East in 2003. That's not as easy to replicate as that was a software failure rather than physical damage. On a much lesser scale, you had the San Diego outage 2 years ago, caused by sub station outage, which unto itself had limited effect. It was the San Onofre going off line as part of safety protocol as a result of the grid disruption that put most people without power. power was fully restored in that situation in about 12 hours. And since then, additional lines have been put in to help prevent a similar situation from happening. You could go after substations, but, really, all you'd be doing is creating a minor inconvenience. We get longer power outages from bad weather. Going after the actual power plants is not an easy task.

Yeah, you assumed wrong. i wasn't talking about actual power plants. The technology infrastructure part of our power grid is incredibly feeble. I guess that wasn't well known.

Well it is probably not thought of more than not known. I think if most people put a few minutes of thought into it they would recognize the inherent weaknesses. We really would be much more secure with small plants running small areas(think neighborhoods) but still attached to a smart grid for emergency purposes. A distributed self healing network is much harder to bring down.

Correct. I had never thought about the technology angle of all this prior to a tour I took of a local power plant in college. It was alarming to see how many single points of failure we have in the infrastructure and it gets worse the further we zoom out. Some of the things were being addressed, and have been addressed, but it really is held together with bubble gum and twine.

This is one of my big selling points on solar for my house. If we all generated most of our own electricity, it's nearly impossible to disrupt.

 

[The Commish]

This is one of my big selling points on solar for my house. If we all generated most of our own electricity, it's nearly impossible to disrupt.

I'd probably do more solar if I got reembursed correctly but the little company that feeds us doesn't give us a rate of return that allows solar to make sense. I did have all my attic vent fans replaced this year with solar. They are 25 year warranty, 100% covered. After tax incentives they were about $5 more each than the electric ones that failed me. We have a big jacuzzi tub that I'm thinking of getting a solar water tank for as well. Lots of benefits to solar. It's coming along nicely.

 

[T Bell]

No long term damage, no injuries, if its terrorism it sounds like the worst terrorists ever

If this is organized by a terrorist or sabotage group, then this sounds more like people testing an attack method and also using this as an opportunity to observe the response rather than something that's meant as a full-blown attack.

 

[Rirruto]

The best part of this thread is Otis not thinking Foreign Policy magazine is "credible." Ouch.

 

[bagger]

This is one of my big selling points on solar for my house. If we all generated most of our own electricity, it's nearly impossible to disrupt.

until up to 2 gunmen shoot the sun.