The threat of a long-term electrical grid failure was addressed by me several times in the past, but 11 years after I first wrote about the threat most Americans are still not aware that they are in danger. An extended electrical grid failure in the United States would result in the death of most people living in our cities.

This is not some danger that I am pulling out of thin air. It is not a conspiracy theory. Extended grid failure is a grave danger to our nation established in scientific fact. Experts who looked into the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) threat with the resultant extended grid failure threat have warned our leaders of the dire consequences since 2004. Nevertheless, thus far our representatives in Washington have not taken any significant action to protect the lives of Americans.

We basically have 18 critical infrastructures in this country and virtually all of them are dependent on electricity. Most people in this nation receive electricity from power stations that transmit their electricity over our electrical grid infrastructure. If the grid goes down, those on it will not have power. Think about everyone trying to live without electricity for weeks or months in the city where you live. If that does not frighten you, think about the nuclear power plant meltdowns that would occur if their back up generators do not function for any reason.

I will briefly get into the most likely reasons an extended grid failure could happen. I get into more detail on three of these in my Imminent Danger Series. (This does not include all-out nuclear war with Russia and China because there is no practical defense for that other than the threat of mutually assured destruction.)

The four most likely long-term electrical grid failure threats are:

1. An earth directed coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun. The electromagnetic radiation could fry high voltage transformers.

2. One or more high altitude nuclear blasts causing an electromagnetic pulse (known as an EMP or HEMP). A HEMP could fry most electronics and destroy generating equipment and voltage transformers.

3. Cyber attacks that bring down and damage the computers and the electronic equipment that control the grid.

4. Sabotage coordinated to target critical points of our electrical grid in order to make it fail.

1. CME’s happen all the time on the sun. They usually are not strong enough to cause damage on the earth because our magnetic belts and our atmosphere block out most of the electromagnetic radiation. Nevertheless, an earth directed CME’s of such power that it would generate enough back amperage in long power lines to fry modern ultra high voltage transformers occurs about every hundred years on the average.

We have about 200 of these ultra high voltage transformers on the national grid but there are few spares. These transformers are as big as a house.  It takes a year or two to build just one transformer and they are shipped from overseas. There are known ways to protect these transformers from a solar caused electrical surge but someone has to pay the cost. Apparently pleasing special interests is more important to most in Washington than spending a billion dollars to protect millions of American lives. Doing nothing is like playing Russian Roulette with the lives of Americans.

The solar flare and CME known as the Carrington Event took place in 1859. It produced enough electricity in telegraph wires to overload them and start fires. A Carrington like event today would fry many of the high voltage transformers on our grid.

2. A nuclear weapon exploded at 10 to 300 miles above the earth will cause an electromagnetic pulse  If a nuke designed to produce an EMP was exploded 300 hundred miles in altitude above the center of the U.S., it very well could fry much of the unprotected electronic equipment within the entire nation. An EMP also could destroy many of our electrical generators and transformers. Nuclear bombs at just 50 miles altitude fired from off all three coasts would have the same impact.

Experts that have reported to Congress on this EMP threat said that between 60 and 90 percent of the people in our nation could be dead in the first year after such an attack. I wrote on this EMP imminent danger in 2006 but little has changed since.

You might get the book “One Second After”if you want all the gruesome details in novel form of what it could be like living in America after such an EMP attack.

There are four nations that are openly hostile toward America that could attempt an EMP attack.

Iran – has been working on developing nuclear weapons for over 30 years now. Other nations have developed nuclear bombs in less than a decade so we should not be naive. Iran has secret nuclear facilities that nobody has inspected. Iranians are participating in the nuclear testing in North Korea. The testing of nuclear warheads can also now be simulated on computers. Iran has medium range nuclear capable missiles that can be fired from small cargo ships. Iran is putting satellites into orbit and they are working on land based ICBM’s that can reach the United States.

American intelligence has always been blind-sighted on the nuclear bomb development in other nations. I think that will also turn out to be the case with Iran.

North Korea – they have proved that they have nukes and a long-range missile system. Apparently they now also have the H-bomb. They have put satellites in space and there are now two in orbit that takes them over the U.S. Further, two SA-2 nuclear capable missile were recently found on a ship near the Panama Canal that came from N. Korea.

Iran and N. Korea are working in cahoots on their nuclear programs so we should assume that they have similar nuclear capabilities.

China – definitely can produce EMP’s over the U.S. from their submarine forces and ICBM’s. There simply is no defense against sub launched nuclear missiles. I think they were sending us a message when a sub launched missile was fired from off of our Pacific Coast toward the open sea in 2010.

Russia –  is as advanced as any nation in the world in nuclear capabilities. They probably could pull off an EMP over the U.S. and make it look like someone else did it. Why would they do that? I have news, the Cold War is not over. Putin has delusions of grandeur and he plans to reform the Soviet Union. He would love to see the U.S. crippled and out of his way.

Any of these nations could fire off nukes and scuttle their ships and we probably would never know who did it with any degree of certainty. Not that we would be in any position to fight them anyway after a long-term grid failure.

An EMP might even be pulled off by a Islamist terrorist organization that acquired a nuclear bomb from one of the nations above or from Pakistan. Scuds are available on the black market and can be launched from cargo ships. Who do we attack then and how do we fight the resultant world war from a crippled nation?

3. All of our recent defense chiefs and homeland security chiefs have said that they think a cyber attack is the greatest threat to our electrical grid and national infrastructures. In fact, at least one said that such a cyber attack should be expected within two years. That was said well over two years ago.

A cyber attack on the grid might not be quickly restored. Cyber attacks can actually damage critical equipment. That was proved in Iran. Power is needed to even start the process of restoring the electrical gird. It could take weeks to restore the electricity to most of the nation and by that time there would be massive food riots and looting in the cities.

4. Direct sabotage could take place on key targets like substations. A few years ago there was such an attack in California. Much of the damage was caused by rifle fire shot at the substation from long-range but there also was hands on sabotage to the station as well. These people apparently knew what they were doing. The damage took out this major substation for months. It did not take down the grid because they were able to reroute the power, but this was only one substation. If several substations were taken out at the same time, our grid could not handle that. Terrorist enemies that have infiltrated America are quite aware of that. Many of these substations are very remote and they are not protected. That makes them easy targets.

“Christians” in America like to think this cannot happen to them because they think God would not allow their death. I think that is a false presumption. For one thing, most “Christians” in America have a hope of salvation not taught in the Bible. They have their own designer God and designer Christ and get saved by doing more good than bad in their own eyes. Visible Christianity in America today appears to be more of a harlot than a bride.

Another fact is that God allows Christians in nations to suffer the same fate as the nation that the Christians occupy. Christians died in all of America’s wars. God does not promise to deliver us from death of the body. All Christians that ever lived have died for one reason or another. The death of the natural bodies of God’s people is not some major issue for God because they remain spiritually alive. There is no true death for true believers, there is just a passing on to what God has prepared for us.

Some think God needs Christians in America to get out the message out to the world before the end comes. Really?? Is God dependent on American evangelism that mostly presents Christianity to the world as a false gospel of social justice, your best life now, or some form of new age signs and wonders Dominion Theology? The gospel of salvation to those bound in their sins is not being taught by most leaders of American evangelism. God can and will raise up 144,000 Israelis to get out the gospel before the end comes. He does not need America.

We should not be so smug as to believe that America will not reap what she is sowing at home and abroad just because there are Christians in America.

People ask me what can we then do to prepare? This is my article on preparing for such situations. Actually, other than getting saved through trusting in Christ, there is not much you can do to prepare for anything of this magnitude. You can be proactive and tell your representatives in Washington to start taking this grid vulnerability and EMP threat seriously. You can tell them to take action to harden our infrastructure or they could be living in their very own political dark age.

If the majority of people in this nation choose to do nothing to protect themselves from danger, they will receive the just fate of their carelessness. The people have been warned, but they choose to live like nothing can happen to them. History is full of examples of people living in false security before sudden destruction came on them.

Other than getting your representatives to take defensive action, you really only can prepare for the aftermath of a grid failure for a few weeks. Anything more, like stocking large quantities of survival supplies is likely to get you killed even sooner if it not a joint community effort. The human predators will just come and take all that you have. If you physically try to stop them, you will be dead. Sure, a remnant will survive, but your own physical preparations probably will have little to do with who it is that survives.

America has had over a decade to prepare for the grid failure threat but has done nothing. The nation is rapidly running out of time to harden its infrastructures. If you expect to see the new decade, I suggest that you tell your Washington representatives to get busy and make the survivability of our grid the top national priority. It already may be too late. Everyone is worrying about many economic and social issues and those issues are important. Nevertheless, if our electrical grid goes down for an extended period, these other affairs will become totally meaningless.

Editor note: this article was posted on my old blog on March 3, 2014 under a different title. The article has been  modified.