I have addressed this issue several times over the years but apparently Americans are still not getting the message about the grave danger of an extended electrical grid down situation. If this should occur, most Americans probably will not survive this decade. (See the related posts at the bottom for previous articles.)<\/p>\n
This is not some danger that I am pulling out of thin air. It is no conspiracy theory. This is a grave danger to our nation that is established in scientific fact. All the experts that have looked into the grid down possibility have warned our leaders of the dire consequences. Nevertheless, after over a decade of these warnings, our representatives in Washington still refuse to take any action to protect the lives of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n
We basically have about 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.<\/p>\n
I will briefly get into the most likely reasons why a grid down situation could happen. I get into more detail on three of these in my Imminent Danger Series.<\/a> (I do not include all-out nuclear war with Russia and China in the four listed below because there is no practical defense for that other than the threat of mutually assured destruction.)<\/p>\n The four most likely grid down threats are:<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> An earth directed coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun. The electromagnetic radiation could fry high voltage transformers.<\/p>\n 2<\/strong>. One or more high altitude nuclear blasts from an enemy nation causing an electromagnetic pulse (known as an EMP or HEMP). It could fry most electronics.<\/p>\n 3<\/strong>. Cyber attacks that bring down and damage the computers and the electronic equipment that control the grid.<\/p>\n 4<\/strong>. Sabotage that is coordinated to target critical points of our electrical grid in order to make it fail.<\/p>\n 1<\/strong>. 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, every hundred years or so there is an earth directed CME’s of such power that it would generate enough back amperage in long power lines to fry modern unprotected ultra high voltage transformers.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Congress has been quite aware of this danger for a decade but any bill to do anything about protecting those transformers never gets through both houses of Congress. Pleasing special interests is more important to most in Washington than spending a billion dollars to protect millions of American lives.<\/p>\n By the way, just last week we had a X5 solar flare on the Sun but it was not pointed at the earth. The same sun spot causing many M and X class flares is now making the third trip around the sun. We had better hope that it does not fire off an X20 while facing the earth. And that sun spot is just one of many threats that come and go on the sun regularly. Doing nothing is like playing Russian Roulette because we know such an event will happen about every hundred years on the average.<\/p>\n The solar flare and CME known as the Carrington Event took place<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n