[VWpilot]

FYI........Rob.

Experts warn civilian world not ready for massive EMP-caused blackout

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04 ... p=trending

[WPCatfish]

The book that guy wrote is a pretty good read.

[stephpd]

I've been prepping for a while now and I'm still not ready for an EMP. To me, an EMP is the worst case scenario because it immediately sends us back 100 years in technology without all the work animals that were around then.

Just imagine no job, no water or sewer system, no cars (no gas), no stores open and no money. And none of them coming back anytime soon. Only what you've stockpiled. And everyone that doesn't prep will be wanting what you have.

Within weeks, maybe days, there will be massive riots.
In months massive deaths, much of that from people drinking water downstream from others crapping in the water.

I looked at the situation years ago and there was already a 2 year backlog for ordered parts for the electrical grid. And I doubt it's gotten any better since then. Without these transformers on hand it's impossible to get the grid back up and running.

[najatuw4646]

prefer to be an armed survivor rather than an obedient corpse.
โหลด gclub

[2xTony]

And its not even just a nuke that could do this. At any random moment there could be a solar flare up on the sun that would hit earth in a few minutes and cause the same thing to happen.

[fdegree]

Here is something that I see as even more realistic...there was a 60 Minutes story a number of years ago, that addressed the vulnerability of our electrical system to a cyber attack:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cyber-war-s ... 6-11-2009/

[joet]

this is a long but pretty good read on the subject

http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP ... on-7MB.pdf

[Owen]

I read a little on this topic and it looks like an EMP is "worse" on longer conductors. I am not sure that everything electronic would fail as much as the larger things. Cars with their metal construction are partially shielded and have relatively shorter wires.

Solar flares are already doing this to our power grid and have done some damage in the past. Current equipment has been slowly being upgraded to be less susceptible. They had a transformer failure at a local power plant partially due to a solar flare and I can tell you it did take a long time to get new equipment. They have spares on site now.

As far as cyber attack on the grid that is an active topic for the regulators. Plans and actions are in place and being revised to deal with this. It's not done or perfect but it is definitely not ignored.

All the utility responses to the above are partially driven by the fact that you can't make money if you can't sell the electricity. Kind of like storm preparedness. In NJ they are pushing to update their infrastructure post Sandy to avoid power outages that are bad for business as well as the people of the state.

[Dugan]

As far as cyber attack on the grid that is an active topic for the regulators. Plans and actions are in place and being revised to deal with this. It's not done or perfect but it is definitely not ignored.

Firesale!

All the utility responses to the above are partially driven by the fact that you can't make money if you can't sell the electricity. Kind of like storm preparedness. In NJ they are pushing to update their infrastructure post Sandy to avoid power outages that are bad for business as well as the people of the state.

You staying at work this weekend haha, cause I might be

[stephpd]

There's a slight difference between an EMP and a CME. The former has 3 components E-1 to E-3 a CME only has the E-3. E-3 does effect long conductors and would fry far too many transformers to keep the grid going. What the EMP has is E-1 before the E-3 hits. And we're talking milliseconds before the E-3. E-1 effects small circuit boards inducing a huge voltage spike and melting the boards and integrated circuits. They don't even have to be plugged into the grid. Or even have batteries in them.

For the E-1 you really need a Faraday cage. A simple nested Faraday cage can be made at home cheaply. Just wrap the component in plastic (insulator) then aluminum foil (conductor). Do this a second time, plastic and foil, and you have a nested Faraday cage.

I do this with items like a short wave radio, walkie talkies,CB radio, ham radio, solar chargers etc. To me communication would be very lacking and you really need a force multiplier. If your neighborhood has comms you can better defend yourself. Quicker response time.