Terrorism attack on California power grid

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RedDead1981 said:
Then who, pray tell, were you calling intolerant? Carlos? There were only a few people participating in the thread at that point, so it's a pretty short list.

I wasn't calling anyone in particular intolerant. I was pointing out how some people like to focus on the poster instead of what's going on in the thread just because they don't like the person. Why are you trying your hardest to label me as someone to hate? I didn't even mention you or anyone else, but apparently you think I'm calling people out when I did no such thing.
 
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RedDead1981

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I wasn't calling anyone in particular intolerant. I was pointing out how some people like to focus on the poster instead of what's going on in the thread just because they don't like the person. Why are you trying your hardest to label me as someone to hate? I didn't even mention you or anyone else, but apparently you think I'm calling people out when I did no such thing.

Im not trying to get anyone to hate you. :) And I called NHE on his omissions because they were wrong. Nothing personal. It certainly read like you were referring to me or carlos. Thank you for clarifying.
 
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NightHawkeye

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You mean not flipping out and calling everything bad 'tairrism'? I'd rather a measured response then a kneejerk reaction.
First, it's not a knee-jerk reaction.

It's a well-considered response long after the event happened ... after no lessons were learned from the event ... after no preventive measures were implemented to preclude a similar recurrence with profoundly more devastating effects.

Considering that the individuals making the claim are not fringe kooks but rather some of the highest ranking individuals within the power industry, it seems advisable to at least consider what they have to say.

A knee-jerk response would be to dismiss the claim of terrorism ...
It's not a word that should be used lightly.
In this instance it's not being used lightly.
Great. I agree the vulnerability should be fixed. Lets fix that.
Yet, there has been no action toward that end.
I'm not sure what good labeling this terrorism does. You don't know if it is or isn't and unnecessarily throwing the 't-word' around in a highly populated area is throwing gas on a fire.
Doesn't seem to matter much. The administration still isn't doing anything. The Democrat controlled Senate refused to consider implementing safeguards.
I would not be surprised if those two of the three I listed were doing just that. I don't blame them, just pointing out that I trust the FBI a little more given that it's their job to investigate this kind of thing.
Fine. Go back to sleep then.
 
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CarlosTomy

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I wasn't calling anyone in particular intolerant. I was pointing out how some people like to focus on the poster instead of what's going on in the thread

I believe that Red asked a question that I would personally feel is based on NHE's posting pattern.

Again, since there's little "meat" to the point YET (ie we don't know if its terrorism or if its just a malicious electricity geek or what) Red just wanted to point out this crucial fact which was left out of the OP.

When I see NHE post something I almost immediately try to figure out what his "angle" is. He has a track record for a posting "method".

Now in this case perhaps he just wanted to open the door for debate. Red brought the debate to him by using the same article NHE posted but NHE had cut off the counterpoint.

Perhaps if NHE were busy sowing better seeds the harvest he drew in would be more to your liking.

NHE posted a one-sided assessment of this and highlighted ONLY those things which agreed with his point. However in the same article the OPPOSING side also is presented which Red pointed out.

Again, NHE gets the responses he has programmed everyone to provide because he has set the table. He wishes to eat a different meal then he needs to set the table differently.

One normally doesn't just get "attacked" apropos of nothing. It is usually for a "reason".

I personally think this newsstory IS interesting and MAY VERY WELL BE an example of a dry-run "terrorist" type attack as you've seen in my posts. But Red was certainly NOT out in the weeds for pointing out how NHE had constructed the OP.

And, in a different world, where NHE didn't have a "track record" one could probably give him the benefit of the doubt.

But again, as one sows so shall one reap.
 
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Armoured

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I think what has people freaked out is that it was rather surgical in nature.

Just randomly shooting into a substation will more likely result in explosions and fires....this was MANY shots into key parts of the substation intended to take it out without "blow it up".

It is probably silly to scream "terror" now, but it certainly gives one pause for thought. From what I understood this was not a key substation but if this type of thing had happened at a bigger, more crucial substation and during mid day in the summer when more load was on the grid it could have been much more damaging.

It is important that we as Americans live in abject terror all the time these days. There's nothing we can do because "they" hate us for our "freedoms". And I'm sure there's no way this could possibly have been an American home-grown terrorist like Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph
...but poison the drinking water of 300,000 people and no one bats an eye, indeed, it barely makes the news, without the word 'terrorism' attached.

Some, it appears, want a terrorist attack so badly to prop up their ill-conceived bunker mentality that they'll gladly grasp at any straw with the least tangential mention of terrorism. After all, if the terrorists AREN'T actually an imminent threat, then that would mean admitting to an over reaction, possibly even to being WRONG! No, much better hyperbolising every petty vandalism as 'possibly terror related' from now on.
 
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Belk

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I'm still confused about how this counts as terrorism. Knocking out the power grid would definitely be an inconvenience and cause hardship. But it's not terrifying. It lacks the psychological effects of effective terrorism. At best you're still only gonna be as terrifying as a good windstorm.

There are much easier targets that will do much greater real and psychological damage. Some shmuck with a couple college classes in fire behavior and a box of road flares could easily burn down large swathes of LA and kill a bunch of people. Why real terrorists haven't done this yet I don't know. Perhaps even that lacks the Hollywood-style theatrics they get with explosions and suicide attacks.


Ah, but what if you took out the power grid and then had some sort of catastrophic attack? you have then magnified the significance of the attack because of the general confusion and limiting the capabilities of the responders. It seems to me that this would not be the attack itself but a tool in increasing the severity and impact of a later attack.
 
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Sistrin

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Ah, but what if you took out the power grid and then had some sort of catastrophic attack?

This is a point I think some are missing here. Back in January of 1989 G. Gordon Liddy wrote an article for Omni magazine entitled "Terrorists in America: An Insider's Memo to the President," in which one of the postulates concerned an attack against the US power grid. The central point was if the goal of the initial attack was to deprive a significant portion of the nation of power, all secondary targets to some degree become easier to hit. Of course since 1989 most corporate buildings and I believe all military installations have incorporated back-up systems, but local law enforcement organizations would be instantly tied up with efforts to prevent local crime and potential crowd control functions which would inevitably arise accompanying a massive loss of power. Factor in panic of portions of the populace and it could potentially be an attack with devastating results.

From what information is available on this incident there are a few indicators this was anything but a couple of drunk rednecks or gang-bangers out busting caps. They chose their specific target, one which served a specific purpose. They were able to hit their target without drawing instant attention to themselves. They got away clean. Again, based on my experience, this suggest both training and discipline, two qualities rednecks and gang-bangers often lack.
 
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Belk

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This is a point I think some are missing here. Back in January of 1989 G. Gordon Liddy wrote an article for Omni magazine entitled "Terrorists in America: An Insider's Memo to the President," in which one of the postulates concerned an attack against the US power grid. The central point was if the goal of the initial attack was to deprive a significant portion of the nation of power, all secondary targets to some degree become easier to hit. Of course since 1989 most corporate buildings and I believe all military installations have incorporated back-up systems, but local law enforcement organizations would be instantly tied up with efforts to prevent local crime and potential crowd control functions which would inevitably arise accompanying a massive loss of power. Factor in panic of portions of the populace and it could potentially be an attack with devastating results.

Exactly! One of my secondary duties as an IT guy for the city of Seattle is to man the Emergency Operation Center when it is activated. While city systems will still function to some extent due to emergency planning I assure you they are not going to be as effective as when there is full power. That is just the government side of things. Civilian infrastructure is even less equipped to handle it and is just as vital in the cases of an emergency. We have actually had a campaign of advertising locally to encourage people to have plans to take care of themselves in the case of an emergency precisely because we know our resources will be overwhelmed.

From what information is available on this incident there are a few indicators this was anything but a couple of drunk rednecks or gang-bangers out busting caps. They chose their specific target, one which served a specific purpose. They were able to hit their target without drawing instant attention to themselves. They got away clean. Again, based on my experience, this suggest both training and discipline, two qualities rednecks and gang-bangers often lack.


And quite obviously well planned and researched in advance. Knowing precisely where to place your shots to disable a power substation requires some pretty specific knowledge. A lot more worrisome when looked at in that context.
 
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SnowCal

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LOL. Sorry no. Causing blackout in one of the highest populated areas in under 15 minutes which could take DAYS to correct and cause MASSIVE disruption to our economy is hardly a downgrade.

You're saying that a power outage could be as big a deal as 9/11. I understand that millions of Angelenos not getting to watch American Idol and twitter about it afterwards would be an economic disruption. I even bet a few old folks would croak from heat stroke (a number far smaller than the number that followed the light that day because your city's love affair with cars causes some of the worst air pollution in the country). I get that it would be a deal. But it doesn't even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as 9/11.

Oh, sorry, but here in Southern California our hospitals use ELECTRICITY as do our traffic lights and our WATER SYSTEMS. It is also very HOT here in the summers and as stated NUMEROUS times already, if this were to happen during peak load in summer in SoCal it would be VERY dangerous for COUNTLESS THOUSANDS OF OLDER PEOPLE.

I forget how state of the art SoCal is. Up here we're still reliant on oxes circling to get things done up here in the north state.

Hospitals have backup generators. You can kill the power and the generator immediately kicks in. Power is limited, sure, but they can maintain the essentials. Water is stored in water towers all over LA. You can pump it to the top anytime you want. Gravity will bring it back down when somebody needs to water their lawn. No electricity needed.

And why do you think that it would be "short disruption"? The disruption in 2003 took a couple DAYS to re-establish. And that was due to a software bug related to re-routing power.

It's a lot easier to replace broken components with known values than to debug faulty software.

Really? ever seen? You mean unlike the countless wildfires ripping through Cali as we speak? Or the one that came within a mile of my home a few years back? Never seen?

Huh.

Right now? A couple small fires by SoCal standards.

The thing is SoCal has never dealt with its ultimate fire siege. You get big winds taking down power lines in random places in the hills. Lone arsonists trying to get their high. You guys do get a lot of massive fires at once. The state will dump everything it can to help. A thousand fire engines going south. Those engines will be used for structure protection or fire attack as conditions dictate.

The thing about fires is that they're not that unpredictable. If you understand how they behave you can make them do what you want. A coordinated attack using several arsonists or a single guy planting a bunch of timed firestarters would overwhelm the response. You wouldn't even have enough engines for structural protection (which is as much about preventing spread to neighboring homes as it is protecting a specific home).
 
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SnowCal

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Ah, but what if you took out the power grid and then had some sort of catastrophic attack? you have then magnified the significance of the attack because of the general confusion and limiting the capabilities of the responders. It seems to me that this would not be the attack itself but a tool in increasing the severity and impact of a later attack.

That's a concern.

First responders in general are not reliant on public utilities. They use them but they can work with backups as simple as AA batteries.

If terrorists wanted to cause a fire siege in SoCal they might try to hurt the power grid at the same time. The unavailability of TV news could increase panic. A more relevant but technical detail is that water pumps will be inoperable. In most locations this isn't an issue as water towers will continue to supply. But that supply is limited. Firefighting tactics in California advise very limited water use in these situations because of that, but loss of utility water pumps would cause issues.
 
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Belk

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That's a concern.

First responders in general are not reliant on public utilities. They use them but they can work with backups as simple as AA batteries.

If terrorists wanted to cause a fire siege in SoCal they might try to hurt the power grid at the same time. The unavailability of TV news could increase panic. A more relevant but technical detail is that water pumps will be inoperable. In most locations this isn't an issue as water towers will continue to supply. But that supply is limited. Firefighting tactics in California advise very limited water use in these situations because of that, but loss of utility water pumps would cause issues.


They are not reliant upon them and as I said they have emergency procedures in place in case of power outages. But not only are the first responders going to be less effective without their full infrastructure but the people giving them orders are going to be less effective since they have less data to work with and less efficient means of sending out orders. It would magnify the impact of any event significantly.
 
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NightHawkeye

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NHE is a mine of misinformation.
lol-044.gif


Hi, Oafman. :wave:

If ever I get something incorrect, all one has to do is provide a correction. It's not complicated ... and doesn't require insults.
Like a neocon Goebbels.
lol-044.gif
lol-044.gif
lol-044.gif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (German: [ˈɡœbəls] 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous orations and deep and virulent antisemitism, which led him to support the extermination of the Jews and to be one of the authors of the Final Solution.

Godwin's law ...
 
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SnowCal

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They are not reliant upon them and as I said they have emergency procedures in place in case of power outages. But not only are the first responders going to be less effective without their full infrastructure but the people giving them orders are going to be less effective since they have less data to work with and less efficient means of sending out orders. It would magnify the impact of any event significantly.

That really isn't the case. All of the operations personnel work without utility grid electricity every day. On any emergency response you don't use it. The dispatch centers have plenty of generator power to keep themselves fully operational. The fires themselves are run by incident management teams that get assigned to fires throughout the remote Sierras and Coastal Range during the summer. They create tent cities of thousands, turn some local runway that's never seen a twin-engine plane into a helibase supporting a half-dozen Hueys and Skycranes, and run the whole show on generators. They've got this down pat.
 
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Belk

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That really isn't the case. All of the operations personnel work without utility grid electricity every day. On any emergency response you don't use it. The dispatch centers have plenty of generator power to keep themselves fully operational. The fires themselves are run by incident management teams that get assigned to fires throughout the remote Sierras and Coastal Range during the summer. They create tent cities of thousands, turn some local runway that's never seen a twin-engine plane into a helibase supporting a half-dozen Hueys and Skycranes, and run the whole show on generators. They've got this down pat.


How much experience do you have working with government Emergency preparedness SnowCal?
 
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