Will The Biggest Blackout In American History Be Eclipsed By Cyber Attack?

During a hot summer day in August 2003, the lights went out across much of the Northeast and Midwest United States and the Canadian province of Ontario. It was the biggest blackout in American history, all triggered by nothing more than an overloaded, overheated power line in Ohio which sagged down low and hit tree foliage.

A ‘software bug’ in a control room alarm system failed to warn operators to re-distribute power which resulted in a cascading massive widespread grid failure.

Not long ago, power company executives gathered in Washington to discuss the reliability of the electric power grid. The major topic of discussion: Cyber attack…

While the 2003 outage was much more widespread than the Northeast Blackout of 1965 and affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states for up to several days, power company engineers worry that a cyber-attack could bring an even bigger blackout than has ever happened before.

The following are a few excerpted quotes from a conversation between David Greene and Tom Gjelten (NPR) with Mark Weatherford (former DHS cybersecurity), Michael Assante (NBISE president, cybersecurity expert), and James Fama (Edison Electric Institute) who revealed more substantiation for the emerging threat facing of our power grid… Cyber Attack.

Weatherford:

“Now we can remotely manage devices via the Internet. So instead of putting somebody in a truck and having them drive a hundred miles to a substation in the middle of the mountains somewhere, you remotely manage that.”

“And then, really to no one’s fault at the time – we didn’t realize it – but didn’t think a lot about the security and the insecurity of doing that.”

Assante:

“If you go to engineering school, you’re not taught about cybersecurity as part of becoming a power engineer.”

Gjelten:

“The cyber threat. This is a new concern in the power industry, this idea that the electric grid could be shut down by hackers. Here’s what’s changed, two things. First, more of the equipment that makes up the electric grid – from the generators to the transformers – is now operated by computers. Mess with the computer, and you can turn the lights off.”

“When a computer is connected to the Internet, a good hacker can generally a find a way in. This is the new disaster scenario for power companies.”

“The concern now is that a really sophisticated cyberattack could cause a blackout bigger than anything we’ve ever seen.”

The loss of our electrical power grid. While most can deal with losing power for a few hours, if faced with life without electricity for several days, a week, weeks? or longer? then life as we know it will be disrupted beyond one’s wildest imagination.

We as a modern society have EXTREME dependence on the power grid. Electricity. The risk and consequences of losing electricity are so enormous, that every single one of us should consider the ramifications — even if only for a few days. If you begin to think about the consequences of a long-term blackout, you might scare yourself into taking some serious action…

Think about it…

By Ken Jorgustin

Video: The Death Of King Dollar: “This Could Happen As Soon As 2018”

Despite continued assurances about America’s economic strength and global influence, scores of nations around the world are rapidly divesting themselves from their dependency on the world’s reserve currency as a mechanism of exchange. The key players, Russia and China, are actively developing entirely new systems of trade with numerous partners that include countries from the middle east, Asia, and South America.

These major strategic moves, trade agreements, and partnerships are being marginalized by mainstream American news sources, or are simply ignored and never shared with the public. The end result for Americans’ way of life will be nothing short of disastrous as the eventual outcome leads to an implosion of our economy and the destruction of one of the most influential currencies in human history.

Watch: The Death of King Dollar (via Crush The Street)

Interest rates could easily rise high enough that the U.S. government would have to spend half of its income just to pay for the interest on previous borrowing. This is why the Fed will say and do anything to keep interest rates low.

Many large countries have been making major moves in the last five years to stop transacting in U.S. dollars.

…

King Dollar is truly dying.

In addition to this, less U.S. oil imports mean less dollars going abroad, which means more dollars are coming back inside of the United States. This will inevitably cause additional inflation that has been overdue, as America’s money supply has more than doubled in the last ten years.

Estimates put more than half of U.S. dollars as being held abroad. It will be devastating to the value and stability of U.S. currency and domestic economy when these dollars return.

The reality is the U.S. will surely lose its reserve currency status… Some economic analysts are even saying this could happen as soon as 2018. There are an infinite number of unexpected shakeups that could happen around a dollar collapse, from the U.S. backing its currency with oil to a major war breaking out.

As noted by the free report from Crush The Street:

“The world is rapidly changing and the U.S. dollar has enjoyed the benefits of being used as the world’s reserve currency, but history tells us that things will change and evidence is showing that it will likely be sooner rather than later.”

Indeed, the time to prepare for a coming global paradigm shift is now.

By Mac Slavo

www.shtfplan.com

Going Off Grid – Part I

In 2006 my life was humming along with the normal path of middle-class Americans.  Living near a major metropolitan area, mid 30’s, working for a fortune 500 company, married, kids, two cars, a house  in the suburbs, 401k, health insurance, life was good.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a toxic financial situation was brewing in our economy and the systemic effects were going to be felt far and wide as the global financial system froze almost overnight. I remember in 2008, watching Lehman Brothers collapse live on CNBC and thinking to myself that I was witnessing the fall of Rome and what a financial collapse would mean to me and my family. At that time, I would say that I was partially prepared for an event.  I had a bug out bag, a few long guns & pistols, a small amount of ammo, a remote hunting cabin, very little stored fuel, and whatever food I had in the house.  I had common sense when it came to planning for the future, stay away from debt, save money, keep some emergency cash on hand, keep warm clothes in your car, etc. but planning for a major event, like a financial collapse was far from my mind.

The Fall of Rome

Lehman Brothers changed all of that; I remember the fear on the faces of the CNBC anchors like Maria Bartiromo during the stock market plunge with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaping down by hundreds of points.

At that point, like most of Americans, I felt really unprepared.  And when you are raising a young family, the feeling of being unprepared is a scary one. I decided to make a change in my life; I was no longer going to follow the herd because that was a life of dependency.  A life dependent on others, dependent on the government, dependent on a guy on Wall Street to make the right decisions for me and my family, a life I no longer wanted to live.  It was in 2008 that I discovered the Survivalist community online.  I began to read different blogs like SurvivalCache, Survival Blog, Modern Survival Online, and Tactical Intelligence.  From there I gained a new appreciation of what I needed to do to be more secure for my family’s future.

First Step

My first step to independence was to figure a way out of the suburbs. You can’t be independent while living in a cul-de-sac that backs up to another housing development.  Sure, the convenience of the suburbs is hard to beat.  Pick up the phone and someone comes to your house to deliver a hot meal.  Local grocery stores full of your favorite corn syrup based food, restaurants ready to wait on you hand and foot, police for your false sense of safety, schools to indoctrinate your children, and the list goes on.  But what if those things go away, what if the veil of society is much thinner than you think.  I love the saying that “America is 9 meals away from anarchy” and I believe that to be about true.

Talking my wife into living a more remote lifestyle was not an easy first step but there were some upsides to having more room to stretch out and a smaller tight-knit community that she appreciated.  My wife and I are by no means your typical off the grid people, we both have college educations with advanced degrees, we both have studied abroad, and we both appreciate the typical city lifestyle.  You will not see us on a future episode of Doomsday Preppers.

With a good job that I did not want to leave, I decided that the commute to work was much less important than the overall safety of my family.

I was also able to negotiate with my boss the ability to telecommute at least one day a week if not more which made the commute a little less painful.  So our search began…

Finding a house was not as hard as we thought, we had a few requirements from my research on Survival Blogs.

• We wanted five acres or more.
• We wanted to be on our own well and septic system.
• Access to high-speed internet and cell phone coverage.
• We wanted a decent school system.
• We wanted a wood burning stove.
• We wanted to be able to plant a garden.
• We wanted multiple ways to get from my work to our new home.
• Any alternative energy sources would be a plus but not a requirement

I know this does not fit the exact model that other survivalists have laid out (stream running through your property, natural gas well, 500 acres, a stocked fish pond, etc. ) but this was the set up that worked for my family on our budget.

Remote Living

By 2009, our dream came true.  We sold our house in the suburbs and moved to a more remote setting.  The first thing you learn about living this way is to make a detailed list before you drive to any store because if you forget anything it is a painful process to go back.  The next thing you learn is that Amazon Prime is your friend and that it is sometimes easier and cheaper to just order toilet paper from the internet rather than drive 25 minutes to the closest Target or Wal-Mart. I also learned that during my commute to and from work, I would become the primary shopper for the family because I drove to countless shopping centers each day.  It did not bother me but I have a new appreciation for shopping and the frustration of having to find certain things for recipes.

Now that we made the move, it was time to work on a budget for cutting the cord to the grid.

Stay tuned for “Off the Grid – Part II – The Upgrades”

Photos by:
Thorinside
Terry Pridemore
FreakyNami
UrbanFeel

This article was first posted on www.survivalcache.com.

By Virginia Tom, a reader of SurvivalCache.com