I’ve lived most of my life in developing countries, where I’ve endured many lengthy power outages. I’ve learned that crime and anarchy are opportunistic "nyctophiliacs."
Imagine the impact on 310 million Americans, if the nation’s electrical grid went down. Plunged into darkness, we’d be left without our beloved internet service, but more importantly with transportation standstills as well as rapidly dwindling food and water supplies. Does this concern sound like that of a feverish Doomsday-Prepper?
Not by a long shot – at least according to Ted Koppel, the former anchor of Nightline, who warns that vandalism of our country’s power grid is not only possible, but probable. Koppel explores the possibilities in his just-published book, …show more content…
He also quotes two State of the Union speeches in which President Obama expresses his own misgivings. The newsman concludes that neither the government nor the power companies have a credible plan in place to thwart an assault on the power grid. Koppel recalls the recent high-profile hacking of banks and government agencies. He suggests that Russia and China may have hidden “Cyber Time Bombs” on the grid. He adds that ISIS increasingly attracts sophisticated cyber-saboteurs. An even more serious threat than hacking might be a geomagnetic solar storm frying every unprotected microchip in the world through overvoltage. During the notorious solar storm of 1859, auroras were seen as far south as the Caribbean, and telegraph service was interrupted throughout much of North America. Experts calculate that a similar event today could cost trillions in damages. Yet another worrisome possibility foresees anti-American forces detonating a nuclear device in the atmosphere high above our nation. The blast wouldn’t kill, but the electromagnetic pulse could destroy all unprotected microcircuits and transformers sending us, perhaps not into a new Dark Age, but into a dramatically Dimmer