I remember reading it during the Texas blackout. Might've just been a reddit post actually, not sure.
As someone who works adjacent to the industry...its bad. Lead times on special transformers were 6 + months long back in September, I can't imagine it's gotten that much better
As someone from a country where it almost never snows most places, the idea turning off the power can kill people is terrifying. Even if the water went off here I know where there are more or less potable natural water sources. Also I think a good chunk of the main infrastructure is gravity fed which is lucky.
With fairly rudimentary skills you can have clean water. A slow sand filter with a biochar layer, a couple sedimentation tanks, and a drip connection from one to the next would suffice for nearly all biological contaminants and many chemical ones.
There was also that drone attempt a few months back. Drone with all identifying info scrubbed off, trailing two wires landed on the roof of a power station, narrowly missing huge HV wires. It was a near miss that could've done majorly outsized damage considering the input and risks. Despite recovering the drone they have no leads on who did it or why
Um, aktuly its genius and we have the world's greatest most bestest power grid in the whole world.
The Metcalf thing is fucking wild and I still to this day wonder who did it. The fact it’s not particularly well know is pretty bizarre to me, too.
Prior to the attack, a series of fiber-optic telecommunications cables operated by AT&T were cut by the culprits. Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be used to scout firing positions.
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1:50 a.m. – Another apparent flashlight signal, caught on film, marked the end of the attack. More than 100 expended 7.62×39mm cases were later found at the site.
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While Wellinghoff described the attack as "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred", a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that they did not believe a terrorist organization was responsible.
Did it list the specific ones? Asking for... let's just say a friend who left academia in the 90s.
You might be remembering this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ln2kem/how_the_usa_electrical_grid_is_more_precarious/
I'm pretty sure we aren't thinking of the same thing but back during the cold war(version 1) the US DOD did a bunch of nuclear assessments and I think they determined that 8 nuclear strikes could collapse the US, and for the USSR it would required 10.
