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

Forbes, via Matt Bracken.

More than 10,000 people in Arkansas were dumped into a blackout Sunday following an attack on that state’s electric grid, the FBI said today, the third such attack in recent weeks. In August, a major transmission line in the region, around Cabot, Ark., was deliberately cut.

The FBI said that two power poles had been intentionally cut in Lonoke County on Sunday, resulting in the outage.

“Though we remain confident that we will identify the person or persons responsible for these incidents,” the FBI said in a press release, “we are enlisting the public’s help to be our eyes and ears. We take threats to our power grid very seriously.”

The FBI said it would pay a $25,000 reward for information about the attacks.

And for good reason. The FBI suspects these attacks are linked with a third incident in September.

According to the FBI:

In the early morning hours of September 29, 2013, officials with Entergy Arkansas reported a fire at its Keo substation located on Arkansas Highway 165 between Scott and England in Lonoke County. Fortunately, there were no injuries and no reported power outages. Investigation has determined that the fire, which consumed the control house at the substation, was intentionally set. The person or persons responsible for this incident inscribed a message on a metal control panel outside the substation which reads, ‘YOU SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED U.S.’

In August, a person or group of people attached a cable to the framework of a 100-foot electric transmission tower and placed the cable across the railroad track in an apparent attempt to use a moving train to pull down the tower.

While the electric power industry has expressed concerns about cybersecurity, the recent spate of attacks in Arkansas suggests that the electric power grid is equally if not more vulnerable to physical acts of sabotage.

Folks, I don’t want to belabor the point because we’ve discussed this in painful detail before.  But do you understand the vulnerability of everything around you – the fake Keynesian money scheme layered on top of a massive entitlement state, the markets, the mobility, television, cell phones and connectivity, and the electrical grid?  Do you understand that it could all disappear tomorrow and not return for a very long time?

Prior:

Survival Preparations: The Electrical Grid Is Still Vulnerable

Electrical Grid Attack

Surviving The Apocalypse: Thinking Strategically Rather Than Tactically

A Terrorist Attack That America Cannot Absorb

If you’re ready for some serious reading and study, read the following, in order:

Herschel Smith, A Terrorist Attach That America Cannot Absorb

Bob Owens, Shock The System

Herschel Smith, Surviving The Apocalypse: Thinking Strategically Rather Than Tactically

Now you’re ready for your assigned reading today.

Bob Owens, Shock The System? Electrical Grid, Comms Attacked Near San Jose

There’s not much for me to add, except that this will tie up law enforcement and utility workers for some time to come, and this was a small scale attack.  Was this proof of principle?