This diary was inspired by this diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
You have to take North Korea seriously. Kim Dong-Nun may be a cartoonish figure, but if they can walk around the telco and electric utility computer networks as easily as they walked around the Sony network, this Rueters article brings up a real concern.
For North Korea's cyber army, long-term target may be telecoms, utility grids
(Reuters) - The hacking attack on Sony Pictures may have been a practice run for North Korea's elite cyber-army in a long-term goal of being able to cripple telecoms and energy grids in rival nations, defectors from the isolated state said.
Or worse, EMP:
North Korea 'is capable of striking U.S. with a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack'
North Korea has the capability to deliver on its threats to carry out a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, it has been claimed.
Dr Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, has reportedly seen a long-suppressed government report that concludes North Korea is capable of using an Unha-3 rocket to carry out an attack on the U.S..
...
An electromagnetic pulse attack involves a nuclear warhead being detonated hundreds of miles above the earth's surface, with the resulting burst of energy disrupting or destroying all electronic devices - including communications, navigation and sensor systems - in the affected area.
Such an attack on the U.S. would cripple the country's defense systems, not to mention cause chaos in any scenario where an electronic device is required - including road, sea and air transport, government and civilian communications and, of course, the throughout entire economic sector.
…
He also said that in December 2012 a North Korean satellite was tracked above central and eastern U.S., and could have caused nationwide destruction had it been fitted with a nuclear warhead.
The threat from EMP is not just right wing paranoia. It is real and has existed since the early days of the cold war. Prior to
December 2012, the only nations capable of an EMP attack were NATO members, Russia, China and India. It was unlikely that any of those countries would try it. However, the North Korean leadership is nuts, and now they have a both a nuclear bomb and a missile capable of putting it in orbit over the US.
Whether it’s a hack that brings down the power grid for an extended period or an EMP attack, the result is the same.
The only way to take America out of the global picture is to shut off the lights, and the North Korean leadership knows it.
Keep reading for more information.
A US Government commission studied the EMP threat in the mid 2000s. See the “Report of the Commission to Assess theThreat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack” from 2008 (pdf):
Here is a more detailed 2004 report (pdf):
CHARTER
Public Law 106-398, Title XIV
SEC. 1402. DUTIES OF COMMISSION
(a) Review of EMP Threat. The Commission shall assess:
(1) the nature and magnitude of potential high-altitude EMP threats to the United States from all potentially hostile states or non-state actors that have or could acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles enabling them to perform a high-altitude EMP attack against the United States within the next 15 years;
(2) the vulnerability of United States military and especially civilian systems to an EMP attack, giving special attention to vulnerability of the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency preparedness;
(3) the capability of the United States to repair and recover from damage inflicted on United States military and civilian systems by an EMP attack; and
(4) the feasibility and cost of hardening select military and civilian systems against EMP attack.
(b) Recommendation. The Commission shall recommend any steps it believes should be taken by the United States to better protect its military and civilian systems from EMP attack.
The findings and recommendations presented in this report are the independent judgments of this Commission and should not be attributed to any other people or organizations. This report presents the unanimous views of the Commissioners.
If hackers can cause the electric grid to overload enough large substation transformers and fry them, it would take years to rebuild the electric grid. The wait list today for just one of these transformers to be manufactured is over a year. Once the few transformers in supply are used, it will take a long time to get more. The result would be similar to an EMP, but without the fried electronics.
From the EMP commission's 2004 report, page 12:
PROTECTING CRITICAL COMPONENTS OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE
Some components of critical infrastructures, such as large turbines, generators, and high-voltage transformers in electrical power systems, and electronic switching systems in telecommunication systems, would require long periods of time to repair or replace. These components should be configured so that even under electronic disruption and damage, such as could be produced by EMP, they do not become further damaged in the course of shutting down or attempting to restore themselves. This type of damage has occurred in the past. During the Northeast power blackout of 1965, Consolidated Edison generators, transformers, motors, and auxiliary equipment were damaged by the sudden shutdown. In particular, the #3 unit at the Ravenswood power plant in New York City suffered damage when the blackout caused loss of oil pressure to the main turbine bearing. The damage kept that unit out of service for nearly a year, and more immediately, complicated and delayed the restoration of service to New York City
Former Senator Brian Dorgan (D-ND) wrote
a book about an attack on the US power grid
The book goes into some fantasy about the hero tracking down the terrorists and saving the day before the lights go out, but it does contain some good research on the vulnerability of the electric grid to hackers.
It starts out with someone shooting out the insulators on high voltage power lines leading to a power plant. When the electric company sends someone to fix it, the guy is watching and coordinates with the hackers to energize the line. It was a practice run.
In light of North Korea’s apparent hacking abilities, along with this incident from 2013, and well, you gotta wonder if North Korea is practicing before they shut the lights off.
SAN FRANCISCO — A mysterious and sophisticated sniper attack last year on a Silicon Valley power substation has underscored concerns about the vulnerability of the country’s electrical grid and prompted debate over whether it was an act of terrorism.
The chain of events is not in dispute: Shortly before 1:30 a.m. on April 16, 2013, one or more people methodically cut communication cables near a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in San Jose, sprayed more than 100 rifle bullets and knocked out 17 of the station’s 23 transformers before fleeing and avoiding capture. A grainy black-and-white surveillance video released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s office in a search for leads shows shots being fired for about a minute at the substation.
Though the utility was able to prevent a power failure by diverting electricity from other areas, the damage took 27 days to repair, said Brian Swanson, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric.
If a hacker takes down the electric grid, cars, computers and other electronic devices will still work, but once the gas runs out and the batteries are dead, you’ll be hard pressed to fill the tank and charge the batteries without electricity.
It could take months to get the lights back on. Think of modern society without electricity. Even food is manufactured. Without electricity, it will be hard to process enough food to feed everyone. It will be hard to get the fuel for the tractors to plant and harvest crops. And for the trucks to transport the crops to the processing plant and then again to the stores. And that food processing equipment needs lots of electricity to run.
Without electricity, it will be hard to get your money from the bank so you could buy the food if they could get it to the stores. Even if you go to a bank branch, how are they going to know how much money you have in your account or even if you have an account without electricity for their computers? It's not like you can go online and print it out for them.
And once the batteries ran out and the generators ran out of gas, there’d be no communications either. No 911. It won't take the bad guys long to figure that out.
People who rely on electric medical devices will die within a few days or weeks. Diabetics would be dead once their insulin supplies ran out, and if they could get more, they’d have a hard time keeping it refrigerated.
If the outage goes on for months, millions will die of starvation and easily curable diseases from lack of medicines and poor sanitation and from the violence in the lawlessness. If the lights stay off for a year, expect a 90% mortality rate. Think of being in New York City without electricity to power elevators, no running water, no sewage and no food. Think about highly developed desert areas like SoCal or Vegas without running water for months! 22 million people in SoCal and another million in Vegas all fighting over bottled water and food. It won't be pleasant.
People will try to escape the cities and they will be met by locals in the countryside who turn them away because they don’t have enough food to feed themselves or resources to shelter or care for them. The government would not be able to keep control, let alone get enough food and water and shelter to everyone.
This is another well researched book about life in the aftermath of an EMP attack. Don’t let the forward from Newt scare you. The book is not political. And it covers a lot of what to expect in the aftermath. Starvation, disease and out of control violence. It is fiction, but the information it contains is not.
The threat from EMP (or a natural well-timed CME) is the only thing where I agree with Newt. The effects of EMP on electronics is debatable, but even if it doesn’t stop all cars and electronic devices from working, it will still damage the electric grid making those things useless.
Preppers use the threat of an attack on the power grid as one of the reasons they stockpile food, guns and ammo. But one thing they and the authors above forget, which most people never realized before March 2011, is Fukushima
As we seen in Spring 2011, nuclear power plants need outside power to run and to keep the fuel cool when the plant is shutdown. They’d have to run caravans of diesel fuel for months to each plant within days of the attack and keep the fuel coming thru the anarchy on the highways until outside power could be restored (and that’s if the computers and generators still work in the case of an EMP).
The likelihood of hundreds of uncontrollable Fukushima’s putting out Chernobyls of radiation each, every day, for 1000s of years, makes the likelihood of survival beyond a few months dim.
I’m prepped. I got a 30 day supply of beer and non-perishable food and one bullet (for the 30th day, I figure I’ll stick around and watch the end of the world unfold from my front yard for a while)