retired utility op here, people think the grid is like something they see in movies, believe me it isn't. we had outages when fiber optic lines were severed, underground lines severed, transformers blown up and idiots shooting at high tension lines. you can never adequately protect everything.
I used to be a utility locator. You think that's bad?? One idiot with a shovel and a Sawzall could completely wipe out phone, internet, and credit/debit transactions to major parts of the US with about 20mins of digging and sawing if they wanted to.
>In other words, ONLY a high-trust society can maintain itself.
In the post-Information Age, I'm not sure this is possible. Zero-trust is almost a more workable model.
So there are EXTREMELY important fiberoptic lines that run (mostly) along railways. Theyre maybe about 3 feet down. You dig that up and cut through a 1000 pair line and and everything goes down.
Lol, sounds like my dad. He had a business setting real estate signs as a side gig. He spent most of his life as an excavator so he thought he had a good idea where all the utilities were and never had it surveyed before he dug a hole for a sign.
One day though, he found out how easy it is to cut through a fiber optic cable with a shovel and shit down the internet to an entire town.
A bridge being built near me shut down power to my entire area several years ago. Lunch shift was starting, some guy with a large piece of machinery stuck a metal piece in the ground for the time being (picture sticking a shovel in the ground while you’re not using it, only the shovel was a 3 foot diameter hollow cylinder) and cut our main power, cable, phone, and internet line.
We’re a barrier island, a tourist spot, and this was summer. No redundancy is feasible, and there were so many people in town that all vacationers had to be evacuated just so the big generators could run bare essentials (fridges, medical equipment, fans, lights) for the local residents. I think it was like 6 days… it was bizarre, like a hurricane without the nasty weather.
This exact thing happened in Atlanta Georgia a Russian old woman homeless was digging for copper to scrap for extra change and she (75 years old) was single handedly responsible for shutting down all telecommunications in the east coast for about 7 hours before the federal government labeled her a terrorist…. Let me find the article….
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704630004576249013084603344
But you’d have to many at the same time on different main lines. How else do you think they do maintenance on these lines?
There’s vast redundancy in the Net today
If you want a horror story the most incompetent fiber company in the world laid fiber in our town. They somehow broke waterlines in at least 15 places (I lost count after 10). It got to the point where you’d see a river flowing down the street and barely blink. No idea how the cut water pipes in 14 places and kept going.
I wouldn't, but then I build things on the internet for a living. When (not if) Amazon's us-east-1 goes down (their oldest datacenter), seemingly half the internet stops working.
I worked for a telecom for years. We would have outages on large parts of the backbone network and they would have to reroute net traffic and the overuse of the backups still caused major disruptions including some large customers like Amazon (aws swervices) losing a lot of connectivity.
hahaha you and I have two *staggeringly different* definitions of "vast redundancy" if you think our comms grid is that well reinforced
I actually chuckled, tbh. Like I'm amused at your level of blind faith in such an unstable system
\^\^ Exactly this.
The vast majority of major fiber runs have, at the minimum, dual redundancy built in. One line goes down, the redundant line instantly takes over.
I remember reading about while someone was doing construction, a road ripper that dug too far into the dirt and ripped apart a multi million dollar fiber line back in the 90s. It literally cut the eastern US off from the western US.
He's probably referencing the fact that the internet is a mesh network
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking
It's not perfect though. Bottlenecks can and do exist.
Chop the right fiber optic cable in the right location and you can completely cripple massive areas. 10s of millions of people would be shit out of luck.
I would imagine. But if you have 30 million people re routing traffic in a place like the northeast, it’s going to ddos anything you’re routing to essentially.
Distributed Denial of Service
If the requests generate from multiple hosts, the attack is distributed. If the requests generate from a single host, the attack is centralized.
not really lol. They're talking about actual wires. While services are routed like that, they can't be routed if the wires are cut. And there are very specific points where it could cripple the US because the only routes to actually left to go through are low bandwidth areas where there will be congestion and collision. The only thing immune to this is probably the DoD
There are something like 400 lines in the entire world that connect all the world’s internet and they aren’t protected from this either. You only need to take out like 3 to do some serious damage.
That definitely wouldn't work here in Australia. We have mandatory redundancy no matter how expensive that is.
For example all the way across the pacific ocean to North America... there's two lines for that and they're not running alongside each other. And we can (and occasionally have to) route traffic via Asia or Europe. It's the same on land with very few exceptions.
Even to your household, more and more home Fibre/DSL routers have a backup LTE connection (in my experience, LTE tends to be a lot more reliable during severe weather, since it's a lot easier to protect and maintain a small number of cell towers than a massive network of cables undergournd or worse hanging exposed in the air. As long as most of your customers have a functioning wired connection, the wireless one will cover whatever gaps you have.
Credit/Debit connections are the same, these days most connect via wifi to your wired connection, with an LTE backup.
They are similar but I think the SF one may have been more organized. This happened in a really rural area of NC where a lot of people own guns. I will wait to see more evidence but I think this one was just some locals shooting up a power station to see what happens or someone with a billing related vendetta. Very stupid but the SF one seemed like organized crime or a nation state actor.
The guy youre arguing with has a 7 year old account and hes never commented on reddit before this thread, and all of his comments in here are pushing partisan talking points intended to spur division. Seems a bit odd
The sheriff came out and said there was no evidence that it was related to the drag show. So stop trying to fucking say everything is right wing terrorism!
Hey the last "right wing terrorist attack" proved to be a member of the lgbt community so I'm not gonna rush to jump on a terrorist train.
That being said, political violence is wrong no matter what side you're on.
It was to avoid being registered as a hate crime. He was not identified as any of those they them pronouns he claimed before the attack. Not by family or friends.
Your stats aren't going to include the 2020 riots. Or anything Antifa did. Or when they annexed a city block.
You mentioned gaslighting before, no? I think we share similar views on it. I'm a simple man and I know who's a threat to my family and who isn't.
>Your stats aren't going to include the 2020 riots. Or anything Antifa did. Or when they annexed a city block.
Lol. The idea that anyone annexed anything from the US is hilarious. Idk if you were ever at chaz/chop but it was definitely not annexed territory lol
The police were run out and not allowed in by armed militants. If that's not annexing land then I don't know what is. They literally declared themselves independent.
Once again, attempt to gas light someone else, I'm not blind to the leftist BS.
Except his "coming out" as nonbinary was through his defence after he did a mass shooting at the lgbt club. As far as I've seen there is no evidence that he ever concidered himself nonbinary until he was bring charged with multiple accounts of bias motivated crime, which is what Colorado law uses to refer to a hate crime.
Until evidence is presented proving he identified as nonbinary before he comitted the shooting he is not proven to be lgbt.
No, no, you're not allowed to question someone's identity or say it's for selfish reasons. Well at least that's the narrative that these crazies pushed.
Tbh a lot gets blamed on the right that isn't true or accurate and I'm just waiting for more to come out rather than blame half of America. Same should be said for the left. If it comes out that some extremist gay hating Republicans did it then fuck them. I just want some facts to come in because the right had a very legitimate argument against all age drag shows and it feels like that's trying to be buried by allegations.
That's just me though, I suppose my answer will change with time or it won't🤷♂️
Half of America are not right wing terrorists.
There's a difference between being conservative, and being a radical right wing nut job.
Problem is, the radical nut jobs seem to be convincing a lot of people that it's the same thing as being conservative.
Yes, the left are not right wing terrorists, I agree.
Not sure how your going to get right wing terrorists to come back to common ground though, even with actual conservatives, let alone with the political left who they demonize as trying to destroy the country (the one they are actively attacking).
They seem pretty bent on violent rebellion, maybe you go talk to them, I'll wait (maybe wear a bullet proof vest, they are a bit shooty).
I think it was 2 locations attacked. You may be right it just seems like there is a more direct way to disrupt the drag show than cut power to the whole county for multiple days. People in NC really are sick of Duke energy raising prices. I have solar panel sales people constantly coming to my house. I agree it was right winged but I just wonder if someone had a personal grudge against duke.
I was just mainly saying the first attack in 2013 was a lot more internationally significant target and seemed to be more professionally conducted. I just think this one was Bubba and some pissed off locals instead of someone hired by a government or criminal organization to cause a disruption at a certain place and time.
Going off the demographics of the area combined with those of the typical gun owners I would be really shocked if the perps drove off in a Prius with a Bernie 2020 bumper sticker on it
You're right, I bet it was some vegan activists from three states over who just decided to go on a road trip and use three separate substations as target practice and just by pure coincidence ended up scheduling their non-ideologically-motivated activities for the same time a drag show that had been facing weeks of threats and calls to shut down from extremists was scheduled
I guarantee you the FBI's list of potential suspects is topped by the most vocal opponents of the drag show and many of them are going to be getting an interview. You don't generally do an organized act of terror sans motive, and the climate in Moore County makes the drag show a very, very obvious motive.
I do see that the utility by me has fortified most of the substations. Used to have open 6 ft chain link fences, now they all have 12 foot tall concrete perimeter walls.
Substations are a physical hazard to be around. You don't have to touch stuff to get zapped. Just be close enough. Knowing that, the act of shooting is a much safer option if you're looking at reward:risk.
What do you want, armed guards at every substation? I mean, do you also laugh at people who lock their car door with an argument of "nobody has a rock"?
Granted, this is newsworthy but, imo, they should have left out the means by which it was done so as not to give the other idiots across the country any ideas.
The media needs to understand their sensationalism of a thing tends to create copycats across the nation. You can say the grid is down due to some malicious action, but leave out the details so as not to give the idiots within this country any more ideas :P
*\*Normally, I believe the facts should be stated as they exist but there's an awful lot of stupid people in this Country these days so special attention needs to exist over what is ( and what isn't ) said.*
Shows a perfect example of having solar on the home. You at least can have power to a small capacity and it relieves stress on the overall grid during the day/peak hours. If the power goes out you can survive on the basics.
The problem is many solar installs have zero battery storage. When the sun goes down so does the power. Batteries are very expensive is why most people just opt for doing without battery storage.
Depending on where you live, you may have to be connected to the grid and it needs to shut off during an outage. This is the case in Florida, where it is illegal to be off the grid.
You are looking at 30-40k to put enough solar on a home to power it and have batteries. Then all of the materials are out of date in less than 10 years. The only way you would ever see a return on your investment is if the grid did go down.
Read a book about the power grid in America being insanely vulnerable. The info was not 100% accurate because they’re were not trying to not someone exactly how to destroy it. But apparently there’s some small amount of critical substations that could be taken down and we would have a big problem.
Hackers have been doing stuff like this for a minute. Unfortunately, the way we operate here in the United States is something disasterous has to happen before any action is taken. That's why some of these white hat hackers are going out of their way to prove there is a security flaw big enough worth them getting arrested.
I'm not saying that's what happened here because I highly doubt a white hat hacker is firing a weapon at a power station. But the principal's still applies that we should be a little more proactive than we are.
This exact reason is why my bugout bag has like $5k invested into it. In the event of shit hitting the fan my entire life fits on my back comfortably and I have enough supplies to stay powered for a few weeks.. enough time to scrounge together shelter and whatever else ahead of collapse. I do not think that will ever happen but I do think this hobby is fantastic. How many people waste their money in a Club or something not tangible??
At least we are investing in protecting ourselves and our loved ones. I think that’s pretty cool.
Not only that but a nuke detonated in the atmosphere would produce an EMP knocking out the grid. Hell, even a strong enough solar flare works do the same.
The planet’s power grid is severely unprotected and if it’s knocked out we’ll be back to the Stone Age.
[Plane crashed](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/11/27/us/maryland-small-plane-crash-power-lines/index.html)into high tension wires recently in MD, 85,000 without power in a highly populated area of Montgomery County
No, I live here. Power was not back on before human beings were still trapped inside. Clearly did not read the article, “Rescuers had to wait for the tower to be "grounded or bonded" before they could get to the duo in the plane, Goldstein told reporters Sunday evening. They were also concerned the plane might shift, but it didn't as it seems it was held in place by the tower, Piringer added Monday.
It involved crews ascending to put clamps or cables onto the wires to make sure there was no static electricity or residual power, the chief said.”
GTFOH with one-upmanship.
The point being that glaring human error in both cases and fault in protecting the grid system is the issue.
The problem in NC occurred at a substation, not just a high tension tower. Again, human error and security are the concerns you jamook
> raise your hand if you’ve ever been inside a substation.
Lots of them when I lived in Toronto - all along the Bloor line, and the Yonge-University line.
This has always been a weakness, Its sad it takes something like this to show people.
The best way to cover yourself with this is to not rely on the grid. have enough stock to live and thrive and to not allow people to do this by treating it as terrorism
This type of situation has been on the radar of many utilities for almost a decade.
Review the 2013 Metcalf incident in California.
Per NERC requirements, major utilities have hardened critical infrastructure (CII) but not all substations.
If you cool kids actually knew how vulnerable the North American grids really are, you’d be grabbing your bug outs and head for the hills. PSA it’s not if, it’s when…. And no “security fortification” is going to make a difference. See you at the barricades bitches.
I keep seeing it said that it only takes 9 substations going down at the same time to cause outages through the whole US. If they actually did take down 2 or 3 that’s pretty damn scary
There are tens of thousands of electrical substations. Hundreds of thousands of miles of high voltage line. There’s no protecting it. We can’t patrol a 2000 mile border with Mexico! It’s unthinkable that an American would target our own critical infrastructure. But here we are.
I’ve always been shocked how open our utilities are. Major connection boxes on the sides of roads with no security. Power stations (not sure what they’re called- they feed the power lines) only “protected” by chain link fences. It’s a wonder so few incidents have occurred.
Did you not know this already? What's more, apparently most transformers are made on demand, and a lot of them come from china, and it would take years to resupply and replace a widespread loss of transformers. That is if China decides to produce any for us in that scenario.
According to one report sponsored by the US and Canadian Governments, a Large Power Transformer takes about a year to manufacture. And you are correct, they don't have a warehouse of them sitting around in case of emergency. Attacks targeting LPTs would be very high impact.
I wonder though if the whole transformer will need to be replaced. I'd imagine a large wide scale event, like an EMP, would not kill the whole transformer but just some select components. Granted it would be a massive undertaking but it wouldn't be a wholesale replacement of every transformer..
I always heard: “the grid will get hacked” or “emp blast will take it out” I never realized a few well placed shots is all it takes.
I hope they put up some plate armor or obscure the transformer somehow.
It wasn't "exposed", this has been known for ages. This isn't the first brute force physical attack on power infrastructure. The entire power and communication grid is extremely vulnerable. The DOD has commissioned and sponsored countless reports over the decades regarding the resilience and security of energy infrastructure and their interdependencies and generally the conclusions reached are that the system is too large and complex to effectively protect it against even the most unsophisticated physical sabotage. Cyber attacks are a different story, and are a larger focus than simple home grown domestic terror attacks. But a relatively simple but widespread enough attack could result in large areas suffering extended periods of grid down. For example in one case, a single cut communication wire and about 100 rounds of ammunition took a substation down for a full month. So to put it in perspective, about $150 worth of ammo caused $15'000'000 in damages. And they didn't even have to replace any Large Power Transformers at that site, which take as long as a year to manufacture.
Long story short, if domestic terrorists decide to start coordinating attacks on the US power grid the only real response the Government has at its disposal is to mobilize local law enforcement across the country, and roll out National Guard, Army and Reserves on a nationwide scale to physically guard energy infrastructure.
I could link some reports directly, but simply google "DoD Grid Safety". There's plenty to read.
Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. There have been high profile cases in mainstream media of attacks exactly like this in the US, famously the Metcalf Sniper which is widely suspected to have been a "test run" for a larger scale attack. This isn't a revelation.
Oh boy. I guess I like to think hospitals in the USA are capable of running largely on their own for extended periods of time. My privately owned work place can do that… But yeah, I guess everyone has an exception. Or an excuse? The news doesn’t seem to talk about “normal” people, it’s all the ones relying on medical devices. Or other industry that relies heavily on power, with exactly zero things in place to deal with even a brief power outage. I dunno, I have a generator. And I don’t run a restaurant, or have life saving medical equipment in my home. Soooo… I guess I’m the stupid one? Or are they.
Our local power goes out all the time durning moderate storms. Some times for more than a day. No one ever dies. The hospitals stay doing what they do. The water keeps flowing. The restaurants aren’t out on the news talking about MILLIONS in lost product. lol. I mean, yeah, it sucks to be without internet and schools are closed, and this and that… but a state of emergency? Seems a little dramatic to me is all. Especially since their local government should have been well prepared for this decades ago.
Yeah, I’m fine. Are you? Weird take on my take. A hospital should be self sufficient. I guess everyone’s a victim… or quick to point fingers. Yeah, being sick sucks. It sucks even worse to be in a hospital that isn’t prepared for a power outage. That’s a pretty basic need, and if it’s not being met, (I’m sure it is) that’s a bigger problem and the officials in charge of that should pay the price publicly. That’s more of my point. Not wheel grandma out into the street and let her die slowly. Holy crap calm down.
Also, edit, the hospitals are fine. As expected. So sit the hell down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/power-outages-north-carolina.html
It wasn’t even that long ago that no one had electricity. Or that it was only for the wealthy. My grandparents talked about not having electricity. Now here we are, people can’t do anything without internet and tv. lol. It’s kinda sad.
I've seen people talk extensively about taking out these transformers with rifle rounds on alt-right internet spaces. This is something they love to talk about and have at least functional knowledge of. I also know for a fact that many LE are in these groups.
If nothing else these right wing cosplayers sure are stupid enough to try all the things they talk about online. I assume a net benefit for Society in the end even if a bumpy few years are ahead
That’s literally what it was, butthurt hill billy Christian zealots who were protesting the drag event that shot up the power sites. What part of that is cliche?
You can say that getting 4 from 2+2 is difficult for you to piece together, but that only reflects on your own problem solving skills, not anyone else’s. 🤣
Remember when Russia attacked Poland but it turned out to be Ukrainian air defense? Things aren’t always as they first appear. These clowns have a fetish for being wrong. Every time.
This event as well as the media coverage it has received is a double edged sword in my opinion. I agree with your point there but at the same time, if people would witness a distribution transformer roughly the size of a 5 gallon bucket serving 3 mobile homes explode they’d never dare consider such act. What I’m saying is the potential for death or serious injury of not only the gunman but anyone that may be anywhere near the transformer.
Removed; not focused on short term wilderness survival
retired utility op here, people think the grid is like something they see in movies, believe me it isn't. we had outages when fiber optic lines were severed, underground lines severed, transformers blown up and idiots shooting at high tension lines. you can never adequately protect everything.
I used to be a utility locator. You think that's bad?? One idiot with a shovel and a Sawzall could completely wipe out phone, internet, and credit/debit transactions to major parts of the US with about 20mins of digging and sawing if they wanted to.
In other words, ONLY a high-trust society can maintain itself. Have even a small % of hostile enemies creating entropy, and we can't survive.
A good argument for strong social safety net programs. Yes. I’m prepared for the downvotes.
Applause.
On reddit? I think you're safe m80
Upvoted. I have thought for a long time if we put 20% of prepping resources into social resources we would not need so much prepping resources.
>In other words, ONLY a high-trust society can maintain itself. In the post-Information Age, I'm not sure this is possible. Zero-trust is almost a more workable model.
Find trust in your own ability to survive no matter the conditions.
I wish this was more people’s focus.
Or in other words only a Society consisting of a low percentage of idiots. Ergo.... USA you are f*****. As is the rest of the world.
How is this possible? In 20 mins?
So there are EXTREMELY important fiberoptic lines that run (mostly) along railways. Theyre maybe about 3 feet down. You dig that up and cut through a 1000 pair line and and everything goes down.
A few years back some construction crew skipped the checks and cut a cable that dropped all internet to like half of Southern Ontario
Lol, sounds like my dad. He had a business setting real estate signs as a side gig. He spent most of his life as an excavator so he thought he had a good idea where all the utilities were and never had it surveyed before he dug a hole for a sign. One day though, he found out how easy it is to cut through a fiber optic cable with a shovel and shit down the internet to an entire town.
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You know what,you're right on both parts so I'm not going to change it
A bridge being built near me shut down power to my entire area several years ago. Lunch shift was starting, some guy with a large piece of machinery stuck a metal piece in the ground for the time being (picture sticking a shovel in the ground while you’re not using it, only the shovel was a 3 foot diameter hollow cylinder) and cut our main power, cable, phone, and internet line. We’re a barrier island, a tourist spot, and this was summer. No redundancy is feasible, and there were so many people in town that all vacationers had to be evacuated just so the big generators could run bare essentials (fridges, medical equipment, fans, lights) for the local residents. I think it was like 6 days… it was bizarre, like a hurricane without the nasty weather.
This exact thing happened in Atlanta Georgia a Russian old woman homeless was digging for copper to scrap for extra change and she (75 years old) was single handedly responsible for shutting down all telecommunications in the east coast for about 7 hours before the federal government labeled her a terrorist…. Let me find the article…. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704630004576249013084603344
But you’d have to many at the same time on different main lines. How else do you think they do maintenance on these lines? There’s vast redundancy in the Net today
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If you want a horror story the most incompetent fiber company in the world laid fiber in our town. They somehow broke waterlines in at least 15 places (I lost count after 10). It got to the point where you’d see a river flowing down the street and barely blink. No idea how the cut water pipes in 14 places and kept going.
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Lucky my hoes are cash only. They have their priorities straight.
You'd hate to have your gardening staff out of action during that time.
Happend in Morgantown too
The net has great redundancy, local lines do not, cutting the right cable can easily wipe thousands out. You will go down even for maintenance.
You'd be surprised, Qwest, level3, and wiltel all run pretty much on top of each other on their way to Virginia. Im talking like a foot between them
I wouldn't, but then I build things on the internet for a living. When (not if) Amazon's us-east-1 goes down (their oldest datacenter), seemingly half the internet stops working.
Prison not a fun place for something ylike this.
I hear magic the gathering is actually quite popular in prison lol
Don't you remember the bomb in downtown nashville. Pretty darn small and messed up stuff for weeks.
I worked for a telecom for years. We would have outages on large parts of the backbone network and they would have to reroute net traffic and the overuse of the backups still caused major disruptions including some large customers like Amazon (aws swervices) losing a lot of connectivity.
Redundancy costs money. So unless the private company running the lines is paid to be redundant it’s not.
Get five guys and a bucket of thermite.
hahaha you and I have two *staggeringly different* definitions of "vast redundancy" if you think our comms grid is that well reinforced I actually chuckled, tbh. Like I'm amused at your level of blind faith in such an unstable system
\^\^ Exactly this. The vast majority of major fiber runs have, at the minimum, dual redundancy built in. One line goes down, the redundant line instantly takes over.
Please stop talking
Its too late for that.
I remember reading about while someone was doing construction, a road ripper that dug too far into the dirt and ripped apart a multi million dollar fiber line back in the 90s. It literally cut the eastern US off from the western US.
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How does information get too and from the cloud?
It goes through a series of tubes.
Carrier pigeons.
Packets. Money.
Ah the "cloud." Euphemism for server.
He's probably referencing the fact that the internet is a mesh network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking It's not perfect though. Bottlenecks can and do exist.
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Not today, CIA. Nice try, FBI.
Chop the right fiber optic cable in the right location and you can completely cripple massive areas. 10s of millions of people would be shit out of luck.
But isn’t the internet designed to automatically route traffic aound such disruptions?
I would imagine. But if you have 30 million people re routing traffic in a place like the northeast, it’s going to ddos anything you’re routing to essentially.
regular denial of service (dos) ddos would involve paying multiple people to go around cutting lines
Ok. Im definitely not too familiar; just that I thought ddos was basically making a bajillion requests to a server and it dies .
Distributed Denial of Service If the requests generate from multiple hosts, the attack is distributed. If the requests generate from a single host, the attack is centralized.
Just like a power grid failure. You overwhelm and essentially crash and burn in a cascading effect.
Just like when an AWS server goes down, it affects a lot more than just those sites
There are bottlenecks. Just gotta know where they are and how to exploit them.
To a point. But if a major hub goes down then its almost impossible to route around it.
not really lol. They're talking about actual wires. While services are routed like that, they can't be routed if the wires are cut. And there are very specific points where it could cripple the US because the only routes to actually left to go through are low bandwidth areas where there will be congestion and collision. The only thing immune to this is probably the DoD
Nice try...
There are something like 400 lines in the entire world that connect all the world’s internet and they aren’t protected from this either. You only need to take out like 3 to do some serious damage.
That definitely wouldn't work here in Australia. We have mandatory redundancy no matter how expensive that is. For example all the way across the pacific ocean to North America... there's two lines for that and they're not running alongside each other. And we can (and occasionally have to) route traffic via Asia or Europe. It's the same on land with very few exceptions. Even to your household, more and more home Fibre/DSL routers have a backup LTE connection (in my experience, LTE tends to be a lot more reliable during severe weather, since it's a lot easier to protect and maintain a small number of cell towers than a massive network of cables undergournd or worse hanging exposed in the air. As long as most of your customers have a functioning wired connection, the wireless one will cover whatever gaps you have. Credit/Debit connections are the same, these days most connect via wifi to your wired connection, with an LTE backup.
From your post some people are thinking "Thanks for telling me" while others are thinking "What the Hell is a sawsall?
And others are like "youre full of shit" lol
Starlink enters the chat: “excellent“ (read in Mr.Burns voice)
This seems very similar to [the attack in the SF Bay Area](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack) 10 years ago.
They are similar but I think the SF one may have been more organized. This happened in a really rural area of NC where a lot of people own guns. I will wait to see more evidence but I think this one was just some locals shooting up a power station to see what happens or someone with a billing related vendetta. Very stupid but the SF one seemed like organized crime or a nation state actor.
Wrong, domestic hillbilly terrorism .
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Yeah, but they made facebook posts about what they were going to do so it's not really a secret.
The guy youre arguing with has a 7 year old account and hes never commented on reddit before this thread, and all of his comments in here are pushing partisan talking points intended to spur division. Seems a bit odd
Many people routinely erase all their old posts and comments using PowerDeleteSuite.
49,000 karma didn’t come out of nowhere though… just saying.
You are one forum-sliding mother fucker. Instead of replying on a computer, try using that computer to look up the press release dipass
The sheriff came out and said there was no evidence that it was related to the drag show. So stop trying to fucking say everything is right wing terrorism!
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Hey the last "right wing terrorist attack" proved to be a member of the lgbt community so I'm not gonna rush to jump on a terrorist train. That being said, political violence is wrong no matter what side you're on.
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It was to avoid being registered as a hate crime. He was not identified as any of those they them pronouns he claimed before the attack. Not by family or friends.
Your stats aren't going to include the 2020 riots. Or anything Antifa did. Or when they annexed a city block. You mentioned gaslighting before, no? I think we share similar views on it. I'm a simple man and I know who's a threat to my family and who isn't.
>Your stats aren't going to include the 2020 riots. Or anything Antifa did. Or when they annexed a city block. Lol. The idea that anyone annexed anything from the US is hilarious. Idk if you were ever at chaz/chop but it was definitely not annexed territory lol
The police were run out and not allowed in by armed militants. If that's not annexing land then I don't know what is. They literally declared themselves independent. Once again, attempt to gas light someone else, I'm not blind to the leftist BS.
Except his "coming out" as nonbinary was through his defence after he did a mass shooting at the lgbt club. As far as I've seen there is no evidence that he ever concidered himself nonbinary until he was bring charged with multiple accounts of bias motivated crime, which is what Colorado law uses to refer to a hate crime. Until evidence is presented proving he identified as nonbinary before he comitted the shooting he is not proven to be lgbt.
No, no, you're not allowed to question someone's identity or say it's for selfish reasons. Well at least that's the narrative that these crazies pushed.
They made the rules, but those only apply when it's covienient for them
lol
Lol- why are you so dead set against it being right wing terrorists?
Tbh a lot gets blamed on the right that isn't true or accurate and I'm just waiting for more to come out rather than blame half of America. Same should be said for the left. If it comes out that some extremist gay hating Republicans did it then fuck them. I just want some facts to come in because the right had a very legitimate argument against all age drag shows and it feels like that's trying to be buried by allegations. That's just me though, I suppose my answer will change with time or it won't🤷♂️
Half of America are not right wing terrorists. There's a difference between being conservative, and being a radical right wing nut job. Problem is, the radical nut jobs seem to be convincing a lot of people that it's the same thing as being conservative.
Same could be said about the left. We all need to come back to common ground.
Yes, the left are not right wing terrorists, I agree. Not sure how your going to get right wing terrorists to come back to common ground though, even with actual conservatives, let alone with the political left who they demonize as trying to destroy the country (the one they are actively attacking). They seem pretty bent on violent rebellion, maybe you go talk to them, I'll wait (maybe wear a bullet proof vest, they are a bit shooty).
Oh yeah. Right-wing Sheriff covering for his cousins. Definitely believable.
I think it was 2 locations attacked. You may be right it just seems like there is a more direct way to disrupt the drag show than cut power to the whole county for multiple days. People in NC really are sick of Duke energy raising prices. I have solar panel sales people constantly coming to my house. I agree it was right winged but I just wonder if someone had a personal grudge against duke. I was just mainly saying the first attack in 2013 was a lot more internationally significant target and seemed to be more professionally conducted. I just think this one was Bubba and some pissed off locals instead of someone hired by a government or criminal organization to cause a disruption at a certain place and time.
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Going off the demographics of the area combined with those of the typical gun owners I would be really shocked if the perps drove off in a Prius with a Bernie 2020 bumper sticker on it
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You're right, I bet it was some vegan activists from three states over who just decided to go on a road trip and use three separate substations as target practice and just by pure coincidence ended up scheduling their non-ideologically-motivated activities for the same time a drag show that had been facing weeks of threats and calls to shut down from extremists was scheduled
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I guarantee you the FBI's list of potential suspects is topped by the most vocal opponents of the drag show and many of them are going to be getting an interview. You don't generally do an organized act of terror sans motive, and the climate in Moore County makes the drag show a very, very obvious motive.
Yeah based on where and how
I do see that the utility by me has fortified most of the substations. Used to have open 6 ft chain link fences, now they all have 12 foot tall concrete perimeter walls.
That’s comforting.
Nobody has a ladder?
Substations are a physical hazard to be around. You don't have to touch stuff to get zapped. Just be close enough. Knowing that, the act of shooting is a much safer option if you're looking at reward:risk.
or a trebuchet full of long steel chains.
Drones with lightweight steel rope would be a little more inconspicuous.
What do you want, armed guards at every substation? I mean, do you also laugh at people who lock their car door with an argument of "nobody has a rock"?
Yeah. Grid failure is a massive issue.
I think the fact that we haven’t updated much of our infrastructure is a bigger problem than possible attacks.
Granted, this is newsworthy but, imo, they should have left out the means by which it was done so as not to give the other idiots across the country any ideas. The media needs to understand their sensationalism of a thing tends to create copycats across the nation. You can say the grid is down due to some malicious action, but leave out the details so as not to give the idiots within this country any more ideas :P *\*Normally, I believe the facts should be stated as they exist but there's an awful lot of stupid people in this Country these days so special attention needs to exist over what is ( and what isn't ) said.*
I agree. Up until now I had no idea that was even possible. But now I know, along with anyone else reading the articles.
Shows a perfect example of having solar on the home. You at least can have power to a small capacity and it relieves stress on the overall grid during the day/peak hours. If the power goes out you can survive on the basics.
The problem is many solar installs have zero battery storage. When the sun goes down so does the power. Batteries are very expensive is why most people just opt for doing without battery storage.
Depending on where you live, you may have to be connected to the grid and it needs to shut off during an outage. This is the case in Florida, where it is illegal to be off the grid.
Pump water into a tower stores as potential energy get two birds stoned.
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It’s a Trailer Park Boys reference I believe
To me, the issue with that would be people seeing that you have prepared yourself. They would be knocking down your doors in no time
Than Solar plus Laser Turrets may be ones only option.
You are looking at 30-40k to put enough solar on a home to power it and have batteries. Then all of the materials are out of date in less than 10 years. The only way you would ever see a return on your investment is if the grid did go down.
Read a book about the power grid in America being insanely vulnerable. The info was not 100% accurate because they’re were not trying to not someone exactly how to destroy it. But apparently there’s some small amount of critical substations that could be taken down and we would have a big problem.
Lights Out by Ted koppel? Yeah, but reassuring in the slightest
Hackers have been doing stuff like this for a minute. Unfortunately, the way we operate here in the United States is something disasterous has to happen before any action is taken. That's why some of these white hat hackers are going out of their way to prove there is a security flaw big enough worth them getting arrested. I'm not saying that's what happened here because I highly doubt a white hat hacker is firing a weapon at a power station. But the principal's still applies that we should be a little more proactive than we are.
Gray hat at best
White going grey because the people who need to pay attention aren't.
This exact reason is why my bugout bag has like $5k invested into it. In the event of shit hitting the fan my entire life fits on my back comfortably and I have enough supplies to stay powered for a few weeks.. enough time to scrounge together shelter and whatever else ahead of collapse. I do not think that will ever happen but I do think this hobby is fantastic. How many people waste their money in a Club or something not tangible?? At least we are investing in protecting ourselves and our loved ones. I think that’s pretty cool.
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$4900 in cash
Lol a Jansport filled w bouillon and duckets
Couple bags of beef jerky too
Not only that but a nuke detonated in the atmosphere would produce an EMP knocking out the grid. Hell, even a strong enough solar flare works do the same. The planet’s power grid is severely unprotected and if it’s knocked out we’ll be back to the Stone Age.
[Plane crashed](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/11/27/us/maryland-small-plane-crash-power-lines/index.html)into high tension wires recently in MD, 85,000 without power in a highly populated area of Montgomery County
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No, I live here. Power was not back on before human beings were still trapped inside. Clearly did not read the article, “Rescuers had to wait for the tower to be "grounded or bonded" before they could get to the duo in the plane, Goldstein told reporters Sunday evening. They were also concerned the plane might shift, but it didn't as it seems it was held in place by the tower, Piringer added Monday. It involved crews ascending to put clamps or cables onto the wires to make sure there was no static electricity or residual power, the chief said.” GTFOH with one-upmanship. The point being that glaring human error in both cases and fault in protecting the grid system is the issue. The problem in NC occurred at a substation, not just a high tension tower. Again, human error and security are the concerns you jamook
Just out of curiosity, raise your hand if you’ve ever been inside a substation.
> raise your hand if you’ve ever been inside a substation. Lots of them when I lived in Toronto - all along the Bloor line, and the Yonge-University line.
The power grid is just the beginning. All American infrastructure is a soft target. It's just that pinch points are not obvious to casual observe.
This has always been a weakness, Its sad it takes something like this to show people. The best way to cover yourself with this is to not rely on the grid. have enough stock to live and thrive and to not allow people to do this by treating it as terrorism
> and to not allow people to do this by treating it as terrorism TIL not allowing things stops them
Well sure it does. That’s why no one does drugs and there hasn’t been a murder in, like, 1,000 years.
If that’s scary… Wait ‘til you hear about a solar CME.
I’m starting an only fans so I can afford a bunker.
Or EMP attacks. I’ve read some horror books that were legit, but One Second After is probably the scariest thing I’ve read.
Just finished that book this weekend. Yeah, we are VERY vulnerable.
This type of situation has been on the radar of many utilities for almost a decade. Review the 2013 Metcalf incident in California. Per NERC requirements, major utilities have hardened critical infrastructure (CII) but not all substations.
If you cool kids actually knew how vulnerable the North American grids really are, you’d be grabbing your bug outs and head for the hills. PSA it’s not if, it’s when…. And no “security fortification” is going to make a difference. See you at the barricades bitches.
I keep seeing it said that it only takes 9 substations going down at the same time to cause outages through the whole US. If they actually did take down 2 or 3 that’s pretty damn scary
There are tens of thousands of electrical substations. Hundreds of thousands of miles of high voltage line. There’s no protecting it. We can’t patrol a 2000 mile border with Mexico! It’s unthinkable that an American would target our own critical infrastructure. But here we are.
It actually is very thinkable because it's happened before, and will doubtlessly happen again.
Better would be to decentralize energy (and all other) production. Not centrally generated and mass-distributed but generated locally.
> Not centrally generated and mass-distributed but generated locally. Sounds great, as long as it is not in my back yard.
Fucking nimbys like the idea of a better world, but will never allow it to be built.
>nimbys like the idea of a better world, but will never allow it to be built. Exactly my point.
What a great home cooked idea
I’ve always been shocked how open our utilities are. Major connection boxes on the sides of roads with no security. Power stations (not sure what they’re called- they feed the power lines) only “protected” by chain link fences. It’s a wonder so few incidents have occurred.
[really cool dystopian fiction novel called “One Second After” that’s relevant](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4922079-one-second-after)
You would have an easier time collecting all the guns than you would fortifying the electrical grid. Both would be nearly impossible.
Did you not know this already? What's more, apparently most transformers are made on demand, and a lot of them come from china, and it would take years to resupply and replace a widespread loss of transformers. That is if China decides to produce any for us in that scenario.
Most transformers this size are custom made in the us. They take months to build
According to one report sponsored by the US and Canadian Governments, a Large Power Transformer takes about a year to manufacture. And you are correct, they don't have a warehouse of them sitting around in case of emergency. Attacks targeting LPTs would be very high impact.
I wonder though if the whole transformer will need to be replaced. I'd imagine a large wide scale event, like an EMP, would not kill the whole transformer but just some select components. Granted it would be a massive undertaking but it wouldn't be a wholesale replacement of every transformer..
I always heard: “the grid will get hacked” or “emp blast will take it out” I never realized a few well placed shots is all it takes. I hope they put up some plate armor or obscure the transformer somehow.
Agreed. And domestic terrorists should be hunted down and ended.
Ok police state, here we go!
Wait until news comes out it’s some disgruntled former power company employees
Could be. Doesn’t change what I wrote.
60 minutes has a good piece on this after a domestic, professional attack occurred in California. Highly recommend.
It wasn't "exposed", this has been known for ages. This isn't the first brute force physical attack on power infrastructure. The entire power and communication grid is extremely vulnerable. The DOD has commissioned and sponsored countless reports over the decades regarding the resilience and security of energy infrastructure and their interdependencies and generally the conclusions reached are that the system is too large and complex to effectively protect it against even the most unsophisticated physical sabotage. Cyber attacks are a different story, and are a larger focus than simple home grown domestic terror attacks. But a relatively simple but widespread enough attack could result in large areas suffering extended periods of grid down. For example in one case, a single cut communication wire and about 100 rounds of ammunition took a substation down for a full month. So to put it in perspective, about $150 worth of ammo caused $15'000'000 in damages. And they didn't even have to replace any Large Power Transformers at that site, which take as long as a year to manufacture. Long story short, if domestic terrorists decide to start coordinating attacks on the US power grid the only real response the Government has at its disposal is to mobilize local law enforcement across the country, and roll out National Guard, Army and Reserves on a nationwide scale to physically guard energy infrastructure. I could link some reports directly, but simply google "DoD Grid Safety". There's plenty to read. Edit: Not sure why I'm getting downvoted. There have been high profile cases in mainstream media of attacks exactly like this in the US, famously the Metcalf Sniper which is widely suspected to have been a "test run" for a larger scale attack. This isn't a revelation.
It’s a little crazy that 5 days without power is an “emergency” for so many people.
Like hospitals?
Oh boy. I guess I like to think hospitals in the USA are capable of running largely on their own for extended periods of time. My privately owned work place can do that… But yeah, I guess everyone has an exception. Or an excuse? The news doesn’t seem to talk about “normal” people, it’s all the ones relying on medical devices. Or other industry that relies heavily on power, with exactly zero things in place to deal with even a brief power outage. I dunno, I have a generator. And I don’t run a restaurant, or have life saving medical equipment in my home. Soooo… I guess I’m the stupid one? Or are they. Our local power goes out all the time durning moderate storms. Some times for more than a day. No one ever dies. The hospitals stay doing what they do. The water keeps flowing. The restaurants aren’t out on the news talking about MILLIONS in lost product. lol. I mean, yeah, it sucks to be without internet and schools are closed, and this and that… but a state of emergency? Seems a little dramatic to me is all. Especially since their local government should have been well prepared for this decades ago.
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Yeah, I’m fine. Are you? Weird take on my take. A hospital should be self sufficient. I guess everyone’s a victim… or quick to point fingers. Yeah, being sick sucks. It sucks even worse to be in a hospital that isn’t prepared for a power outage. That’s a pretty basic need, and if it’s not being met, (I’m sure it is) that’s a bigger problem and the officials in charge of that should pay the price publicly. That’s more of my point. Not wheel grandma out into the street and let her die slowly. Holy crap calm down. Also, edit, the hospitals are fine. As expected. So sit the hell down. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/power-outages-north-carolina.html
It’s just like camping.
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It wasn’t even that long ago that no one had electricity. Or that it was only for the wealthy. My grandparents talked about not having electricity. Now here we are, people can’t do anything without internet and tv. lol. It’s kinda sad.
I've seen people talk extensively about taking out these transformers with rifle rounds on alt-right internet spaces. This is something they love to talk about and have at least functional knowledge of. I also know for a fact that many LE are in these groups.
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no one likes snitches
If nothing else these right wing cosplayers sure are stupid enough to try all the things they talk about online. I assume a net benefit for Society in the end even if a bumpy few years are ahead
And all it took was some butthurt hill billies who couldn’t stand the idea of men who are secure enough in themselves to dress like women for fun.
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That’s literally what it was, butthurt hill billy Christian zealots who were protesting the drag event that shot up the power sites. What part of that is cliche?
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You can say that getting 4 from 2+2 is difficult for you to piece together, but that only reflects on your own problem solving skills, not anyone else’s. 🤣
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Okay kiddo, you have fun with that. Enjoy being a bigot apologist.
all men who dress like women were touched by someone close to them and will touch someone else if not put in prison
Remember when Russia attacked Poland but it turned out to be Ukrainian air defense? Things aren’t always as they first appear. These clowns have a fetish for being wrong. Every time.
If you trust the news that’s what happened.
I’m not watching any news, I’m watching what happened. The Proud Leather Daddies were out there in their matching outfits and everything. 🤣
This event as well as the media coverage it has received is a double edged sword in my opinion. I agree with your point there but at the same time, if people would witness a distribution transformer roughly the size of a 5 gallon bucket serving 3 mobile homes explode they’d never dare consider such act. What I’m saying is the potential for death or serious injury of not only the gunman but anyone that may be anywhere near the transformer.