Consider life in America without alternating current available at every spigot in the country.
The report says that in the event of a US grid collapse, it will take at least a year to get the power back up and running. Wow - talk about connecting dots in a vacuum! To get the power grid back online in a year, even two years, assumes that life in America otherwise continues without noticing the loss of electricity. It assumes so much that is not in evidence (or reality) that I have to simply dismiss the entire "Get the lights back on by Americans" concept as fantasy.
Here's when the lights will come back on: Whenever the Russians and Chinese decide to come into CONUS, kick out the rats that will infest from south of the border, execute the few remaining pockets of "Americans" who managed to survive famine, disease, violence, and every other Doomsday plotline one can imagine.
Turn off the electricity across the entire planet at the same time, and we'll have a shot.
Turn off the power only in America - and CONUS becomes the ripest, most succulent piece of low-hanging fruit the world has ever seen. And we will be devoured so completely as to erase the memory of this place from the history of the Human Record.
Nine stations and a factory...
F me.
Wirecutter has the story, here.
Kerodin
III
Its always amusing to me where the come up with their timelines...Let me put it to you simply...If the grid goes down by that cause its never coming back on ever... Get that fact thru your head...Tell me who is going to work when chaos reigns...Nobody...Also amusing is they publish the map of where the lines are and they think that no one will be able to tell where the 30 stations are...Sad really that they would put out this report telling how vulnerable we are...
ReplyDeleteIt certainly has the potential to stop us in our tracks. One thing to remember, this electrical grid was never planned and built as one continuous network.
ReplyDeleteIt was built and patched together from smaller existing networks.
Some parts of the country did not even have an electrical grid until the 1920's!
It is just one more link in our national infrastructure that our government has not had the foresight or the guts to upgrade because they are too busy doing things like renaming post offices and their funding priorities include the DHS and making war on oil producing nations.
I may be wrong here, but has a nuclear power ever been invaded? IIRC, the answer is no (Israel may be the only exception I can think of...I don't know anyone who is privy to when they got nukes.) Now there is obviously a first for everything, so I'm not saying it's beyond the realm of possibility. I would tend to think much would depend on being able to keep continuity of .gov and .mil. China still needs us to purchase their exports to keep what economy they still have chugging along. I'd see a war between them and Japan/Philippines/AUS/South Pacific before they try their luck over here. Russia steamrolls Eastern Europe and possibly NATO/EU/UK gets sucked into a ground war with them. The sheer logistics of getting across the Pacific or Atlantic would be no small feat. Hah, Canada would quickly learn how Texans feel about immigration. For many it would suck, for some around here in the Appalachian foothills, it would be little more than an inconvenience, absent fleeing retards. Methinks it would benefit many to learn how to ride horses and how to tack up said horses.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. China and Russia lack the ability to get their troops over here! China is still moving its troops across their own nation by rail so there's less than a snowball's chance in hell that they can get them over here in any significant number to actually hold the nation. The author shows poor judgement.
DeleteJJ & MD: You both missed the premise. MD seems to do that often, with deliberation. MD, for fucksake, nut-up and use your *ahem* real name.
DeleteGo back to the article and read the part about CONUS losing electricity while the rest of the world keeps it on. That is the sine qua non you missed in your first read.
JJ: You are correct that no nuclear power has ever been invaded (yet) - but we've never had a nuclear power without electricity for a year or more. When there is no electrical power for a year or more, there won't be anyone manning those nukes. There will not be any significant continuity of .gov or .mil - hell, without electricity for 72 hours Americans historically go into riots. Consider an America without electricity for 18 months or more (much more, as Lineman states, is more likely).
Our current population will die-off in the range of 80% as a minimum.
China to the west of the Mississippi, the Bear to the east. There's the Balkanization that is truly in our futures...
You may be right. I'm not aware of what procedures are in place in terms of logistics on the nuke bases, my childhood was spent on regular USAF bases. Hence my comment about things turning on our ability to keep our nuclear arsenal online as a deterrent. Playing the devil's advocate here, would it not be possible to move necessary comms, and satnav stuff to a friendly nation and retain control of whatever nukes we have aboard subs and the like? Canada would be my 1st pick, but possibly the UK as well. I don't disagree that there would be wholesale post abandonment, but you also have the single airman/private from TX who is stationed in AK or ID now. I don't see them wandering off to town in most cases. Haha, not that it's super comforting to think about. Most SAC (ACC now IIRC) bases I lived at were decently isolated, with only small towns nearby, Mountain Home being a good example. It would be possible in a town that size to keep law and order for the most part. Who knows. Maybe we won't be able to keep the damn satellites calibrated and nothing matters anymore because we can't target shit with what we do have. It's all speculation once you get to that point, and I'd much prefer to keep it that way. I'd hate to find out if either of us is right, because I means we're in a CharlieFoxtrot of historic proportions. After a year of no electricity, it wouldn't matter if it did come on. We'd have already taken a step back 100+ years. Power is merely energy, without stuff to run on it or people to use it productively...it might as well just be lightning.
DeletePlaying the devil's advocate here, would it not be possible to move necessary comms, and satnav stuff to a friendly nation and retain control of whatever nukes we have aboard subs and the like?
DeleteKeeping control is possible, to be sure - but this assumes we have Patriots in office who would actually work in our interests to keep ChinaRussia at bay. We don't have those people in office or on the batting decks in American politics today. I'm not even sure we have enough at Flag rank in .mil today, given the purge, to take control in a SHTF world and do Hard Things.
Now, if we had Concerned American as POTUS, Mullenax as SecDef, etc, when the lights go out then we'd have a shot.
I'm with you - I hope we never have to cross this particular bridge.
"...without stuff to run on it or people to use it productively...it might as well just be lightning."
DeleteGreat lline. I notice they already pulled off one of those two.
a point to consider: nowhere in Scripture is this once great land of ours mentioned directly... could that be because it is of such little significance and has but a short duration..???
ReplyDeletepray for the best while prepping for the worst
III to III
My guess is that maybe the principles didn't go with the theme. That would be ironic, since the Word is that we're created in His image, and that Free Will is a cornerstone of our existence.
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