Government Agency: If 9 Substations Are Destroyed, The Power Grid Could Be Down For 18 Months

Michael Snyder theeconomiccollapseblog.com What would you do if the Internet or the power grid went down for over a year?  Our key infrastructure, including the Internet and the power grid, is far more vulnerable than most people would dare to imagine.  These days, most people simply take for granted that the lights will always be on and that the Internet will always function properly.  But what if all that changed someday in the blink of an eye?  According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's latest report, all it would take to plunge the entire nation into darkness for more than a year would be to knock out a transformer manufacturer and just 9 of our 55,000 electrical substations on a really hot summer day.  The reality of the matter is that our power grid is in desperate need of updating, and there is very little or no physical security at most of these substations.  If terrorists, or saboteurs, or special operations forces wanted to take down our power grid, it would not be very difficult.  And as you will read about later in this article, the Internet is extremely vulnerable as well. When I read the following statement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's latest report, I was absolutely floored...

"Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer."

Wow. What would you do without power for 18 months? FERC studied what it would take to collapse the entire electrical grid from coast to coast.  What they found was quite unsettling...

In its modeling, FERC studied what would happen if various combinations of substations were crippled in the three electrical systems that serve the contiguous U.S. The agency concluded the systems could go dark if as few as nine locations were knocked out: four in the East, three in the West and two in Texas, people with knowledge of the analysis said. The actual number of locations that would have to be knocked out to spawn a massive blackout would vary depending on available generation resources, energy demand, which is highest on hot days, and other factors, experts said. Because it is difficult to build new transmission routes, existing big substations are becoming more crucial to handling electricity.

So what would life look like without any power for a long period of time?  The following list comes from one of my previous articles... -There would be no heat for your home. -Water would no longer be pumped into most homes. -Your computer would not work. -There would be no Internet. -Your phones would not work. -There would be no television. -There would be no radio. -ATM machines would be shut down. -There would be no banking. -Your debit cards and credit cards would not work. -Without electricity, gas stations would not be functioning. -Most people would be unable to do their jobs without electricity and employment would collapse. -Commerce would be brought to a standstill. -Hospitals would not be able to function. -You would quickly start running out of medicine. -All refrigeration would shut down and frozen foods in our homes and supermarkets would start to go bad. to read more: theeconomiccollapseblog.com