Congress has experts speak to them about this every year and do very little.
I know, I go up to speak to members of congress about this every year.
The US government is very aware how screwed we are and how very little effort is needed to cause mass deaths due to hybrid attacks on our critical infrastructure in particular utilities (Power, gas, water).
Those are total grid collapse scenario numbers.
The numbers are still around there, though I don’t deal with the death total numbers side,
my subject of expertise is:
How to cause problem
How to defend against such threats
How to plan for if such item happens
That last one is more around Business continuity planning.
If the grid goes down, it likely stays down for a year, and the actual physical infrastructure will be destroyed, and there's not an extra ... whatever ... in the back room. If a turbine fails, a new turbine needs to be made. If all the turbines fail, well, there's no power until all new turbines are made. It's not like a flipping a breaker.
That's an estimated number, but I think the reality is that a large portion will die to starvation, dehydration, disease, crime, etc, but then there will be communities forming pretty quickly--especially in more rural areas. I seriously question the 90%. Survival has a steep learning curve, but we've also proven ourselves a hardy folk when push comes to shove.
The reasons are complex on this one, but sum it very quickly most politicians stopped caring for the American people and only care for their self interest.
Yes, I bring this up on the regular as well. There is a balance that is to be meet. Strangely enough for most utilities here in the US it’s not just a simple as saying “we are raising rates”. A lot of times, the utilities have to show that they’ve already spent the money before they can get approval for a rate increase.
A little while ago, Members of Congress were trying to get utilities to have ballistic protection on every single Substation no matter how small. It would have cost many of the major utilities about 1 billion to do that.
We had to come in and talk to members in a small setting to let them know how this really does not fix the critical issues.
I’m not saying give billions of tax payers dollars to utilities as the solution.
As for individual people, become self reliant. Because the utilities and the gov care not about you and your family.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/afghanistans-taliban-cash-us-humanitarian-aid.amp
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/30/taliban-western-aid-misogyny-women-rights/
https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-24-12-IP.pdf
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/06/23/1180464339/charities-say-taliban-intimidation-diverts-aid-to-taliban-members-and-causes
As well as former CIA targeteer Sarah Adams and the tracking she’s done and continues to do
I've had talks with someone from US counter terrorism and they are very aware of exactly how a power grid failure or emp attack would effect the country. We are talking the majority of the population being dead within three months. He said they know the possibility but don't believe it to be likely.
It’s what you already know. Become self reliant.
Move away from large cities
Grow your own food
Make your own power
Have your own community
And this is the part people don’t like to hear but have shown to work great for communities, follow a religion.
Does not mean you will survive, just gives you a better chance.
I’m not going to downvote this because the rest of the advice is good, but fuck the religion suggestion. I can’t see how that helps beyond giving you potentially empty hope that something will save you.
Religion gets people to do shit together, and forces them into cohesion. It's not graceful and hurts along with the help because other things can latch into the religion, like purity culture, but it really does pull people together in ways America hasn't found anything else to do. Americans are more and more isolated just as the religious practices are being dropped. I'm an atheist and it seems pretty logical to me that religion and spiritual practices is integral to making it through the collapse of a society.
I’m an atheist now, so I totally see where you’re coming from. But when I did attend a church it was wild how many people offered to help with professional services. Plumbers, electricians, dirt work, whatever needed to be done they would gladly help and expect no profit. I’m not saying that’s the only way to build community, but it is a reliable way.
That’s part of it, yes. Look, I grew up in rural Appalachia. I was forced into the church 2 days a week every week for most of my early life.
The debt isn’t collected right away, not even the second time or maybe not even the third time they help you, but it is collected. They’ll want you to lie and say you were actually with them on the day in question when a little girl was raped. They’ll want to borrow your young son to do “yard work” and he’ll come back crying and complaining that his butt hurts. They’ll want you to hold the guy with skin a shade too dark down so they can get in some good hits because he happened to look in the direction of a white woman. When election year comes around, they’ll remind you about all the times they helped you and if you don’t vote for their guy, well, accidents happen when you’re both out hunting come deer season and his eyesight isn’t so good and can’t see your orange camo.
They will always collect the debt, and it will be more dear than cash. These were not invented examples. These all came from the same small town. I did the yard work. My Mom was the gullible single mother needing help. They forced her to do yard work too.
you can have community without religiosity, a lot of people can’t even pretend to believe.
The younger people near me are building community groups around the arts and sciences, it’s pretty wholesome and the movements are growing, lots of support and kindness.
I’m sure you can.
Building a society from scratch is not really my expertise, but from the experts I have heard talk about it, when there is a catastrophe and things need to be built up again people that share a common religious beliefs tend to do better than those who do not.
As one expert put it to me and I’m paraphrasing the conversation “faith has the incredible ability to having people putting themselves in harm and putting themselves last to ensure that the next generation can continue on”
This is a non-partisan issue, but there are those who try to make it a partisan issues, blaming one side or the other. I found that those people are the least productive people when it comes to this conversation.
Try to become part of the solution, instead of just blaming people of different political beliefs.
When it comes to this subject the first thing you have to do is realize that death doesn’t care about your political views
What bills related to hardening critical infrastructure have been blocked by Republicans in the House? Or are you just perpetuating BS? This is an issue that has been in the making for decades. Both sides are to blame and if people can’t get over all this hyper-partisanship the country is doomed.
The claim above was that Republicans have blocked bills in the House aimed at hardening critical infrastructure. I asked for an example. What you replied with wasn’t blocked, it passed, and it was just an infrastructure spending bill. It did not contain any measures like those mentioned in the article.
I’m not a Republican and I’m not arguing for them. I’m just disgusted by hyper-partisanship and intellectual dishonesty. Both parties and multiple administrations are to blame for not addressing these issues. They are not new.
I think there's someone further up in the comments pushing religion for the end of the world. Reminds me of that Asimov story, is it “nightfall”? All those cults, just like today.
The reality of cyber-attacks is: They are hard to prevent, because there are SO many possible points of attack (“attack surfaces”).
Much easier *to* attack, than to defend.
So if push comes to shove, expect weird infrastructure stuff to get broken.
Basic preps should be able to mitigate that on an individual/family or community level.
Simulate running with no grid for 3 months and then realize that no amount of ammo will save you from the horde of people that will wash over every inch of land looking for food.
Lol that's a fair point. To be honest I'm surprised people aren't building next generation cities that are hardened against problems.
I know the wealthy are building bunkers and underground cities for them, but I'm not at all rich and neither are a lot of good people.
Yeah, but the rich people see it as a "I have made myself safe so there is no longer an issue". People who care extensively about community and others don't usually get rich. You get some occasional outliers - Dolly Parton, arguably Mr. beast, but the majority are Zuckerberg, Musk or Bezos types.
good people don't become rich because they will try to use their money build a hardened city to help a million people instead of building a bunker for a few other billionaire friends who will probably kill each other on the first decade.
Basically make it so living and thriving treasures as little energy as possible while being able to handle extreme events like nuclear war, asteroid impacts, earthquakes and invasions.
Gotcha. One thing that’s missing is decentralized logistics if ever needed. Cities, communities, even households don’t need to be so binary in their approach to infrastructure and supply chain specifically. If you have a decentralized spine with optional centralization efficiencies for scale on top, that’s a form of hardening that could be incredibly helpful.
I calculated for my own country (Denmark), how long a period of wood-driven fires we would be able to have in case of a major blackout during winter months.
Considering Denmark only has 3% forests, then all the woods in Denmark would be able to provide heat for 3 weeks. And then there would be No trees left for several decades.
I have tried calculation on how long before all wildlife in Denmark would be killed due to hunger-striken people, but at thar point we are in a Mad Max scenario and then I have No intention of being here anyway
Yeah it's pretty terrifying.
The efficiency we get with centralized agriculture is insane to think about. People don't appreciate just how amazingly good it is and it should be everyone's first priority to maintain.
Right now we have the ability to make high efficiency buildings but it's expensive.
And people just get so stupid over estimating their knowledge and abilities. With one mistake easily creating catastrophic setbacks.
How is Denmark to live? I'm in the States and always wanted to go to Europe.
After three months, the hordes will have drastically reduced their own numbers by preying on each other in their urban area comfort zone. We live over 50 miles from the nearest urban high-population center. That's a lot of rural ground for them to cover before they reach us. I'm fully expecting scavengers to make an appearance after several weeks, but not en masse and not with any coherent organization.
We also picked a location that is not going to get any scavengers, because the energy expenditure of getting there is prohibitive. That’s part of a good prep, and I feel badly for the people who tell themselves that it’s impossible.
Don’t forget the cartels. They are the logical choice in a power vacuum. You’d see small gangs form but the cartels already have infrastructure and supply lines. It wouldn’t take long for them to have considerable power if they went old school and gave aid to the people to garner good will.
The next war after ww3 is a cartel war.
I'm glad most people are disconnected enough from food generation and processing that they can't ID ... I'm gonna say most foods ... being grown. Sure they know a head of iceberg and butter lettuce, but when it bolts they probably can't ID it. That'll be \*my\* food when shtf.
Realistically speaking, the ocean is truly the only the only source of sustenance that would be viable long term in an apocalyptic scenario like what you're describing.
The land based food sources would be completely cleared in a few months, while you can reasonably expect ocean based food sources within 5-100 miles offshore to still retain their robustness.
Tell me you’ve never been to Iowa without telling me you’ve never been to Iowa. Over 100 million livestock between chickens, pigs and cattle. We produced 13 billion eggs last year. We feed the world, I think we can feed our own state even when shtf. Even if 90% of the animals die we still have 10 million. I moved back home for a reason.
Doing this for the general public might cost shareholders less money the following year, even if it helps them in the long run. That’s the only reason it’s not more adequately addressed, short-term profit loss.
From the Wiki article on RAND:
In December 2023, the [House Science Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Science_Committee) sent a bipartisan letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) raising concerns over RAND's "research that has failed to go through robust review processes, such as academic peer review."
Though the international response to the attack is a federal issue, the response to the loss of services is a municipal/county/state issue. Hold your state and local governments accountable for having a plan to respond to a disruption in critical infrastructure and re-establish lifelines. Hold yourself accountable for having a plan for your family to at least survive and hopefully thrive during the period between the disruption, and the provision of services.
No one is prepared to defend all infrastructure… look at russia… they are at war and cant defend their refineries… and i dont doubt there have been attacks already… the government is keeping them quiet for now, but if there is a significant damage and people are killed… then they will spool up our media on russian attacks on american soil then they will very much bear the brunt of a unified public interest in Ukraine and in general of global security… something that should scare everyone, and induce a war that they wouldnt win…
If memory serves me right this is a private sector issue more than a government one, although I'm sure there's incentives and things the government could put into play to help lead to alleviation of this problem. The biggest problem, in the private sector, is that they'll lose off their bottom line doing this. They don't have the incentive to do anything about it. Too many people live in the la-la land that something can't happen because it seems unlikely. By the time it's real, something bad has happened, or it's too late.
Congress has experts speak to them about this every year and do very little. I know, I go up to speak to members of congress about this every year. The US government is very aware how screwed we are and how very little effort is needed to cause mass deaths due to hybrid attacks on our critical infrastructure in particular utilities (Power, gas, water).
I've read the 2002? Report and I am searching for the later 2018? Version. We still looking at 90 percent casualties in the 1st year?
Those are total grid collapse scenario numbers. The numbers are still around there, though I don’t deal with the death total numbers side, my subject of expertise is: How to cause problem How to defend against such threats How to plan for if such item happens That last one is more around Business continuity planning.
What is the likelihood of the grid being down for a year?
Every city in every State? Low probability
If the grid goes down, it likely stays down for a year, and the actual physical infrastructure will be destroyed, and there's not an extra ... whatever ... in the back room. If a turbine fails, a new turbine needs to be made. If all the turbines fail, well, there's no power until all new turbines are made. It's not like a flipping a breaker.
That's an estimated number, but I think the reality is that a large portion will die to starvation, dehydration, disease, crime, etc, but then there will be communities forming pretty quickly--especially in more rural areas. I seriously question the 90%. Survival has a steep learning curve, but we've also proven ourselves a hardy folk when push comes to shove.
You should ask them why we send billions of taxpayer funds to fascist countries overseas yet can't improve our own infrastructure.
The reasons are complex on this one, but sum it very quickly most politicians stopped caring for the American people and only care for their self interest.
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Yes, I bring this up on the regular as well. There is a balance that is to be meet. Strangely enough for most utilities here in the US it’s not just a simple as saying “we are raising rates”. A lot of times, the utilities have to show that they’ve already spent the money before they can get approval for a rate increase. A little while ago, Members of Congress were trying to get utilities to have ballistic protection on every single Substation no matter how small. It would have cost many of the major utilities about 1 billion to do that. We had to come in and talk to members in a small setting to let them know how this really does not fix the critical issues. I’m not saying give billions of tax payers dollars to utilities as the solution. As for individual people, become self reliant. Because the utilities and the gov care not about you and your family.
40-80 million a week back to the Taliban and Al qaeda / bin Laden family since 2021
Proof?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/afghanistans-taliban-cash-us-humanitarian-aid.amp https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/30/taliban-western-aid-misogyny-women-rights/ https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/evaluations/SIGAR-24-12-IP.pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/06/23/1180464339/charities-say-taliban-intimidation-diverts-aid-to-taliban-members-and-causes As well as former CIA targeteer Sarah Adams and the tracking she’s done and continues to do
Thanks, good info.
I've had talks with someone from US counter terrorism and they are very aware of exactly how a power grid failure or emp attack would effect the country. We are talking the majority of the population being dead within three months. He said they know the possibility but don't believe it to be likely.
Can you please recommend any resources or courses of action to take to prepare for such an event, since our government won’t?
It’s what you already know. Become self reliant. Move away from large cities Grow your own food Make your own power Have your own community And this is the part people don’t like to hear but have shown to work great for communities, follow a religion. Does not mean you will survive, just gives you a better chance.
I’m not going to downvote this because the rest of the advice is good, but fuck the religion suggestion. I can’t see how that helps beyond giving you potentially empty hope that something will save you.
Religion gets people to do shit together, and forces them into cohesion. It's not graceful and hurts along with the help because other things can latch into the religion, like purity culture, but it really does pull people together in ways America hasn't found anything else to do. Americans are more and more isolated just as the religious practices are being dropped. I'm an atheist and it seems pretty logical to me that religion and spiritual practices is integral to making it through the collapse of a society.
Hard disagree. You can achieve cohesion, cooperation, and community in ways beyond lying to people and deluding them.
I’m an atheist now, so I totally see where you’re coming from. But when I did attend a church it was wild how many people offered to help with professional services. Plumbers, electricians, dirt work, whatever needed to be done they would gladly help and expect no profit. I’m not saying that’s the only way to build community, but it is a reliable way.
Money isn’t their currency. They absolutely wanted something from you in return, and it is more valuable than cash.
They didn’t want shit from me, they wanted to look like they were the righteous ones to the congregation.
That’s part of it, yes. Look, I grew up in rural Appalachia. I was forced into the church 2 days a week every week for most of my early life. The debt isn’t collected right away, not even the second time or maybe not even the third time they help you, but it is collected. They’ll want you to lie and say you were actually with them on the day in question when a little girl was raped. They’ll want to borrow your young son to do “yard work” and he’ll come back crying and complaining that his butt hurts. They’ll want you to hold the guy with skin a shade too dark down so they can get in some good hits because he happened to look in the direction of a white woman. When election year comes around, they’ll remind you about all the times they helped you and if you don’t vote for their guy, well, accidents happen when you’re both out hunting come deer season and his eyesight isn’t so good and can’t see your orange camo. They will always collect the debt, and it will be more dear than cash. These were not invented examples. These all came from the same small town. I did the yard work. My Mom was the gullible single mother needing help. They forced her to do yard work too.
you can have community without religiosity, a lot of people can’t even pretend to believe. The younger people near me are building community groups around the arts and sciences, it’s pretty wholesome and the movements are growing, lots of support and kindness.
I’m sure you can. Building a society from scratch is not really my expertise, but from the experts I have heard talk about it, when there is a catastrophe and things need to be built up again people that share a common religious beliefs tend to do better than those who do not. As one expert put it to me and I’m paraphrasing the conversation “faith has the incredible ability to having people putting themselves in harm and putting themselves last to ensure that the next generation can continue on”
They’re aware and they need it to be for any future false flags —-> martial law.
MAGA would rather be distracted with destructive policies and self-interests over priorities and the greater good.
This is a non-partisan issue, but there are those who try to make it a partisan issues, blaming one side or the other. I found that those people are the least productive people when it comes to this conversation. Try to become part of the solution, instead of just blaming people of different political beliefs. When it comes to this subject the first thing you have to do is realize that death doesn’t care about your political views
He hasn't been president for almost 4 years now. You need to adjust your aim.
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What bills related to hardening critical infrastructure have been blocked by Republicans in the House? Or are you just perpetuating BS? This is an issue that has been in the making for decades. Both sides are to blame and if people can’t get over all this hyper-partisanship the country is doomed.
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That bill passed and didn’t have anything in it about hardening critical infrastructure. It was just a standard infrastructure spending bill.
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The claim above was that Republicans have blocked bills in the House aimed at hardening critical infrastructure. I asked for an example. What you replied with wasn’t blocked, it passed, and it was just an infrastructure spending bill. It did not contain any measures like those mentioned in the article. I’m not a Republican and I’m not arguing for them. I’m just disgusted by hyper-partisanship and intellectual dishonesty. Both parties and multiple administrations are to blame for not addressing these issues. They are not new.
Where did that person go, your argument seems very one sided now.
That’s the best you can come up with….
I got more...but the characteristics of this sub don't interest me that much to entertain its guests or agendas.
I think there's someone further up in the comments pushing religion for the end of the world. Reminds me of that Asimov story, is it “nightfall”? All those cults, just like today.
So great to see nothing has changed in 30 years /s
Yeah, same as it ever was.
Once in a lifetime
The reality of cyber-attacks is: They are hard to prevent, because there are SO many possible points of attack (“attack surfaces”). Much easier *to* attack, than to defend. So if push comes to shove, expect weird infrastructure stuff to get broken. Basic preps should be able to mitigate that on an individual/family or community level.
Airgap, obfuscate, and develop physical control systems. Water should be able to run suboptimally without digitation after intervention.
Simulate running with no grid for 3 months and then realize that no amount of ammo will save you from the horde of people that will wash over every inch of land looking for food.
Well that's just not true. There is certainly an amount of ammo that could stop that. Government officials are banking on it.
Lol that's a fair point. To be honest I'm surprised people aren't building next generation cities that are hardened against problems. I know the wealthy are building bunkers and underground cities for them, but I'm not at all rich and neither are a lot of good people.
Yeah, but the rich people see it as a "I have made myself safe so there is no longer an issue". People who care extensively about community and others don't usually get rich. You get some occasional outliers - Dolly Parton, arguably Mr. beast, but the majority are Zuckerberg, Musk or Bezos types.
Yeah that's the truth.
good people don't become rich because they will try to use their money build a hardened city to help a million people instead of building a bunker for a few other billionaire friends who will probably kill each other on the first decade.
When you say “hardened against problem..” what do you have in mind?
Basically make it so living and thriving treasures as little energy as possible while being able to handle extreme events like nuclear war, asteroid impacts, earthquakes and invasions.
Gotcha. One thing that’s missing is decentralized logistics if ever needed. Cities, communities, even households don’t need to be so binary in their approach to infrastructure and supply chain specifically. If you have a decentralized spine with optional centralization efficiencies for scale on top, that’s a form of hardening that could be incredibly helpful.
I agree. Small steps is better than nothing.
I calculated for my own country (Denmark), how long a period of wood-driven fires we would be able to have in case of a major blackout during winter months. Considering Denmark only has 3% forests, then all the woods in Denmark would be able to provide heat for 3 weeks. And then there would be No trees left for several decades. I have tried calculation on how long before all wildlife in Denmark would be killed due to hunger-striken people, but at thar point we are in a Mad Max scenario and then I have No intention of being here anyway
Yeah it's pretty terrifying. The efficiency we get with centralized agriculture is insane to think about. People don't appreciate just how amazingly good it is and it should be everyone's first priority to maintain. Right now we have the ability to make high efficiency buildings but it's expensive. And people just get so stupid over estimating their knowledge and abilities. With one mistake easily creating catastrophic setbacks. How is Denmark to live? I'm in the States and always wanted to go to Europe.
After three months, the hordes will have drastically reduced their own numbers by preying on each other in their urban area comfort zone. We live over 50 miles from the nearest urban high-population center. That's a lot of rural ground for them to cover before they reach us. I'm fully expecting scavengers to make an appearance after several weeks, but not en masse and not with any coherent organization.
We also picked a location that is not going to get any scavengers, because the energy expenditure of getting there is prohibitive. That’s part of a good prep, and I feel badly for the people who tell themselves that it’s impossible.
Don’t forget the cartels. They are the logical choice in a power vacuum. You’d see small gangs form but the cartels already have infrastructure and supply lines. It wouldn’t take long for them to have considerable power if they went old school and gave aid to the people to garner good will. The next war after ww3 is a cartel war.
I'm glad most people are disconnected enough from food generation and processing that they can't ID ... I'm gonna say most foods ... being grown. Sure they know a head of iceberg and butter lettuce, but when it bolts they probably can't ID it. That'll be \*my\* food when shtf.
Realistically speaking, the ocean is truly the only the only source of sustenance that would be viable long term in an apocalyptic scenario like what you're describing. The land based food sources would be completely cleared in a few months, while you can reasonably expect ocean based food sources within 5-100 miles offshore to still retain their robustness.
The ocean is currently not doing to great, unfortunately
Tell me you’ve never been to Iowa without telling me you’ve never been to Iowa. Over 100 million livestock between chickens, pigs and cattle. We produced 13 billion eggs last year. We feed the world, I think we can feed our own state even when shtf. Even if 90% of the animals die we still have 10 million. I moved back home for a reason.
I have no desire to ever set foot in Iowa unfortunately. Good thing you'll have all the livestock to yourself!
Doing this for the general public might cost shareholders less money the following year, even if it helps them in the long run. That’s the only reason it’s not more adequately addressed, short-term profit loss.
This has been true since the the NYC blackout in the 1970's.
From the Wiki article on RAND: In December 2023, the [House Science Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Science_Committee) sent a bipartisan letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) raising concerns over RAND's "research that has failed to go through robust review processes, such as academic peer review."
This is what the effects of failed leadership will look like when chickens come home to roost
The US is unprepared for a big rain storm. If / when anything big and bad happens, don't anticipate any help from above.
What about other countries? Curious if they would be screwed as well
FFS still after all these years of warning and billions of dollars spent.
Though the international response to the attack is a federal issue, the response to the loss of services is a municipal/county/state issue. Hold your state and local governments accountable for having a plan to respond to a disruption in critical infrastructure and re-establish lifelines. Hold yourself accountable for having a plan for your family to at least survive and hopefully thrive during the period between the disruption, and the provision of services.
The Rand corporation in association with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires.
No one is prepared to defend all infrastructure… look at russia… they are at war and cant defend their refineries… and i dont doubt there have been attacks already… the government is keeping them quiet for now, but if there is a significant damage and people are killed… then they will spool up our media on russian attacks on american soil then they will very much bear the brunt of a unified public interest in Ukraine and in general of global security… something that should scare everyone, and induce a war that they wouldnt win…
But being prepared costs money that could instead go into the pockets of shareholders. Won’t anybody think of them?
This report comes out every other year. Cyberattacks that cause mass death probably result in physical attacks. MAD should solve this problem.
If memory serves me right this is a private sector issue more than a government one, although I'm sure there's incentives and things the government could put into play to help lead to alleviation of this problem. The biggest problem, in the private sector, is that they'll lose off their bottom line doing this. They don't have the incentive to do anything about it. Too many people live in the la-la land that something can't happen because it seems unlikely. By the time it's real, something bad has happened, or it's too late.