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The entire US power grid is at substantial risk for a major blackout that could last as long as eighteen months. {Advance Local 20 August}
Every facet of our lives would fundamentally change if the entire nation were to be deprived of electrical power for any extended duration. That is to say, those among us who would still remain alive to witness it: millions upon millions would perish in the interval. One would suddenly find oneself living within an entirely alien paradigm from what exists presently, and those who endured would emerge from the ordeal fundamentally transformed in every fibre of their being. The possibility of such an event no longer belongs solely to the realm of science fiction, if indeed it ever genuinely did. Our whole civilisation hath been erected upon a proverbial house of cards, and, sooner or later, the deck is going to collapse.
FTA: The United States power grid is at risk of a major blackout that could last up to 18 months, according to a new report. Concerns are heightened as one U.S. city has been without power for more than a week.
Jon Wellinghoff, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), told The New York Times Magazine that America’s aging infrastructure is badly outdated and potentially vulnerable to a coordinated attack. He first raised the alarm in 2013 after gunmen shot up 17 transformers at an electrical substation near San Jose, California
Wellinghoff said the FERC did an analysis that determined the U.S. power grid could be seriously disrupted if similar incidents targeted the 10 most important substations in the country’s three sections: Western, Eastern and Texas Interconnections. Substations are where multiple high-volate (sic) lines meet, routing electricity between power plants, transmission lines, and local neighborhoods
“We came up with some very astounding numbers,” Wellinghoff told the publication. “If you knock out nine total substations along those three grids, you can black out the entire United States.”
Wellinghoff added that it didn’t matter which nine substations were hit, as long as they were among the 10 most important in its respective region. He told the NYT Magazine that even 12-year-olds could find them with a map on the internet, and anyone with enough guns could destroy them in 20 minutes.
πͺπ #QueSeraSera π ¨ π
