Washington Examiner:

Parts of the United States would be starved of electricity, water, food, internet service and transportation for a year or longer by the smallest electromagnetic pulse attack on the electric grid, according to a newly declassified report from a federal commission.

The so-called EMP Commission report said that the threat is real, jeopardizes “modern civilization,” and would set back living conditions to those last seen in the 1800s.

And as a result of the chaos, millions would likely die, according to the report titled “Assessing the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP),” from the recently re-established Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack.

“A long-term outage owing to EMP could disable most critical supply chains, leaving the U.S. population living in conditions similar to centuries past, prior to the advent of electric power,” said the July 2017 report provided Secrets.

“In the 1800s, the U.S. population was less than 60 million, and those people had many skills and assets necessary for survival without today’s infrastructure. An extended blackout today could result in the death of a large fraction of the American people through the effects of societal collapse, disease, and starvation. While national planning and preparation for such events could help mitigate the damage, few such actions are currently underway or even being contemplated,” added the executive summary.

[ … ]

In “Life Without Electricity,” he said the results would be:

• Social Order: Looting requires dusk to dawn curfew. People become refugees as they flee powerless homes. Work force becomes differently employed at scavenging for basics, including water, food, and shelter.

• Communications: No TV, radio, or phone service.

• Transportation: Gas pumps inoperable. Failure of signal lights and street lights impedes traffic, stops traffic after dark. No mass transit metro service. Airlines stopped.

• Water and Food: No running water. Stoves and refrigerators inoperable. People melt snow, boil water, and cook over open fires. Local food supplies exhausted. Most stores close due to blackout.

• Energy: Oil and natural gas flows stop.

• Emergency Medical: Hospitals operate in dark. Patients on dialysis and other life support threatened. Medications administered and babies born by flashlight.

• Death and Injury: Casualties from exposure, carbon dioxide poisoning and house fires increase.

I didn’t need the list, nor am I persuaded I need to spend any time studying the report.  I’ve pointed this out before, and it was only after I began to point out the weakness of the main step-up / step-down transformers at power plants that the FedGov or corporations began to focus on thinking about those key aspects of our critical infrastructure.

So let’s paint the picture.  Power goes out.  It won’t return for a very long time.  There is no power to run pumps to get gasoline out of tanks and into automobiles.  There is no fuel delivery truck to bring the gasoline to market because pumps don’t work, and drivers are all at home taking care of their families.

Hospitals have no power except for urgent and critical care, and what little they can get comes from diesel generators (which will stop running when the fuel runs out).  Traffic lights don’t work.  Emergency responders don’t respond.  EBT cards don’t work because food stores are empty, and there is no cash register to run the cards.  We’ve seen how that goes before in Atlanta.

Pumps to bring water to urban and suburban centers don’t run.  Every family is about 72 hours (three days) away from impending starvation.  Looters hit the streets, violence becomes a way of life.

This doesn’t just happen with an EMP event, whether solar or weaponized.  It happens on a smaller scale with terrorist attacks on the electrical grid.  I’ve discussed this at length, so you know this and have been warned, just as I know (and have failed completely to prepare for).

Prior:

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

Surviving the Apocalypse

Electrical Grid Attack

The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

See also CBS Chicago, Electrical Grid Vulnerable To Attacks, Natural Disasters

David Codrea:

The head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command admitted Thursday China can shut down the U.S. power grid, Fox News and the Associated Press reported. Admiral Michael Rogers made “the grim forecast” before the House Intelligence Committee, confirming what has been “widely known” but never officially owned up to, the report noted.

“Rogers said he believed China along with ‘one or two’ other countries had the capability to successfully launch a cyber-attack that could shut down the electric grid in parts of the United States,” the report noted.

David goes on to note the extent to which normal life would be affected by such an exigency, and then poses the following dilemma for anti-gun activists.

With that as backdrop, and understanding that the potential for such horror unfolding in the homeland has been formally taken out of the realm of dystopian fiction and now reflects real world concerns of those responsible for overseeing the nation’s first line of defense, activists who demand “common sense gun safety laws” will face a moral choice should officials’ worst fears come to pass.

David is right.  But it’s even worse than that.  I am not bragging – well, perhaps I am – but before the government told you about the vulnerability of the electrical grid to attacks, before the FERC told you, before the DHS mentioned it, I told you about it based on things I know first hand.

My attack was physical in nature, while this report focuses on cyber-attacks.  The short term affect is the same, but the long term affect is far worse in my scenario.  In my scenario the very structures, components and equipment used to deliver power (step up transformers) that are needed to manufacture the replacement step up transformers are unavailable due to the attack, so the industrial power isn’t available to make the transformers.  And without the attack on large transformers, there is no need for the manufacture of new ones.  It’s the perfect horns of a dilemma to the terrorist.

None of the formal reports I have read go much further in developing this threat matrix, except to show that there are just over half a dozen large substations that, if taken out, would leave the vast majority of America blacked out.  In this scenario, food, gasoline, the financial system, trade and traffic, traffic lights, power for hospitals, and delivery of necessary medications, would cease or be completely unavailable.

Now who doesn’t want a gun of some sort for self defense?

Read David’s entire article.

Prior:

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

Surviving the Apocalypse

Electrical Grid Attack

The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

See also CBS Chicago, Electrical Grid Vulnerable To Attacks, Natural Disasters

David Codrea:

Such an assumption is not backed by a ruling or determination that so-called “80 percent receivers,” heretofore acknowledged by ATF not to be firearms, are now considered unregistered guns.

EP Armory and Ares Armor is doing yeoman’s work in this struggle against the forces of darkness, and you have to respect them for their position.  Visit David’s article for the latest.

Kurt Hofmann:

Without manufacturing or selling anything that can be considered a firearm under the law, one must, according to the BATFE, still be licensed as a gun dealer before offering access to the tools, and providing instruction in the process of completing an 80% receiver. There is, of course, precisely nothing in any federal statute that would impose such a requirement–the BATFE is making it up from whole cloth.

This is what happens when a lawless man like Eric Holder supervises a lawless organization like the DOJ under Obama which manages yet another lawless sub-part like the ATF.  Laws are for little people.  And the judges are in the administration’s pocket.

Via Uncle, Only Guns and Money has endorsements for NRA board.  By the way, I recently renewed my NRA membership (yearly renewal), as I figure that it justifies my right to complain when they don’t do what I want them to do.

Mike Vanderboegh is out of surgery.  He thanks all those who prayed for him.  I did.

Finally, via the Professor, there is this:

“Given that there are tens of thousands of substations on the national grid, PG&E’s experience may not seem so alarming. But according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission study disclosed by the Journal, a few dozen of the substations are so important to the flow of energy that knocking out just nine of them would cause a metastasizing blackout that stretched from coast to coast. And replacement transformers for these substations can take more than a year to build, deliver and install, in part because most are made overseas.”

And of course, my readers already knew this.  And knew it some more.  And some more.  And more still.  I’m not bragging.  I’m just sayin’.