Jimmy Higgins

Some people are speaking about how easy it now seems we can be attacked. A simple explosion at a vunerable point in our power grid could really mess us up. People are now worried. The problem I have is that we have always been this vunerable. This isn't anything new. When I was out laying out a project in Trumbull County, Ohio, we crossed a point where an AT&T continental line was in the ground. It was clearly marked. A terrorist could easily dig it up and cut it, taking out service in the nation for a bit. My unfortunate work dealing with railroads showed me how much damage was potentially capable of by cutting the fiber optic lines that always run along side them. True story, we nearly clipped an MCI Worldcom line because they marked it improperly, ie, 100+ feet away from where it actually was. If we drilled on time, we would have been on the news, and Mr. Smith of MCi would have been fired.

Its so funny how people worry about the electricity and water supply. People fear the water supply could be contaminated. But for that to happen, hundreds of trucks would need to empty out into the reservoirs. To commit acts on the electric grid is easier said than done. Security is an issue.

Its the millions of miles of unprotected fiber optics that is the weakness of the US. Yet, you won't hear anyone talk about it. Why? Because they don't really even know its there.

Arken

It's just like how there is now this big push to get anti-missile technology for airliners when it would still be pretty easy for a parking garage truck bomb or a vial of something in a water supply to do far more damage. People only focus on the dangers after they become apparent. Beforehand, they don't care.

Ruy Lopez

If not mistaken this is the third grid blackout for the area since 1965. In the island grid of 45 million people where I live, we probably had 12 to 15 incidents since 1965. These events are basically blips without long-term effects, except for the psychological (in the US case).

Our last incident was caused by a floating mass of jellyfish that fouled up a 400mw plant's cooling system. The whole grid tripped. Power service gets restored between 6 to 10 hrs. Don't keep opening your fridge

Yes Jimmy, all industrialized technology dependent societies would be vulnerable but the thing can be fixed.

Malachi151

The simple fact is that people are idiots living in a dream world.

In our country everything is so taken care of and everything is provided and people are so insulated from the reality of how things work that technology is almost like magic. People don't know how things work, or want to know, and in all truth its too complicated to know it all anyway. The deal is though that people think all this stuff is like "special" or that if its professionally done then its somehow perfect and beyond reporach or anything.

Its really funny when you are with people and you break things down into how they really work and people see how really basic a lot of this is and how simple it is and the fact that its not anything special. For example I used to sell used cars, I had my own business.

I woudl buy used cars and then really clean then and fix them, I often took out all the seats and plastic and sometimes carpet and cleaned it, then put it back in. When friends would stop by they are kinda amazed at what a car really looks like under all the fancy stuff, its really pretty damned basic.

Its like when you peal back the fascade of life you see a whole different image and you realize that what we have is all really pretty basic stuff put together in complex ways. Yes we have all this power and electricity and whatnot, but, go cut a cable and its all gone.

People just take everything for granted and expect others to provide the modern world for them, which they believe is a modern industructable infallable world that is provided by professionals. I got news, professionala are people just like the rest of us, and our world was not designed to be an impregnable fortress.

I think its good to see the walls of American delusion come crashing down.

I wonder how many people have been going crazy because they can't watch TV, use a computer, or use the subway or phones, or even lights. People's heads start spinning when you take all that away these days, mine too, I'm no exception.

Ruy Lopez

From Malachi151; I think its good to see the walls of American delusion come crashing down.

As they say be careful of what you wish for etc etc.. These next dozen years seem to a period of weakness or vulnerability.

--We all know that Net Worth equals Total Assets less Total Liabilities. Now given all the US debt, the most monstrous in the whole world, the average US citizen is actually poorer than the average west European and South Korean. Yet the average American does not know it--he/she feels he is richer. ????

Don't listen to your media and politicians. Just read Google news on line.

Malachi, I'm concerned that you really mean what you posted about delusions. The US has many many more delusions- like it thinks that it is more powerful than it really is

ohwilleke

I am surprised how little redundency exists in our power system. Power outs are hardly unheard of. Tornados, earthquakes, fires, storms, fallen trees and more cause smaller ones all the time.

Yet, basic services like water plants in Detroit and Cleveland, many radio stations and cell phone towers apparently do not have back up power supplies which are off the grid.

Similarly, even a one hour battery backup for traffic signals as a standard feature would allow police time to set up alternative traffic controls.

A modest investment in back up power for key systems could make the next grid failure even more of a non-event.

Malachi151

What's your concern? The US is virtually all delusions IMO, but evfen I think that the US is extremely powerful militarily and economically.

Spaz

According to the CNN article (which has been revised since it was first posted, I fucking hate that) "The last big blackout in the United States took place almost exactly seven years ago, August 11, 1996, when some 4 million customers in nine Western states and parts of Mexico lost power for as long as 10 hours" Only 7 years ago, c'mon. Obviously it's just a very vulnerable system. I doubt they'll ever improve it though...

HaysooChreesto!

I get what you're saying. But why should people know about things that aren't in their field of work? Why would a housewife be better off if she were familiar with how the power grid works?

Facades? Tell me about it. We sell three different brands stucco to plastering contractors. From those three lines there's well over a hundred different colors to choose from. Yet the builders have their own color analysts who design their own special colors for any given tract. This usually creates an upcharge of anywhere from $3-$5 per sack of stucco.

It takes roughly 35 sacks of stucco to color a house so the extra cost in material is $105-$175 per unit. A company like Standard Pacific builds 10's of thousands of homes per year. So I'll go conservative and multiply $120 X 10,000 which equals $1.2 million. And you know what the home buyer says when you ask them what color their house is? "I don't know, it's kind of a light brown".

The builders have actually convinced themselves to spend literally millions of dollars per year to get a completely apathetic response.

Arken

On NPR this morning, someone described the current way the U.S. power system works as '1950s technology' which seems pretty apt right now.