I’ve worked in the utility industry for 25 years. I started as a power plant electrician and moved into instrument & controls and now I work with SCADA systems. Over that quarter century, we have automated everything we can to reduce labor costs. We have switched from analog controls to digital controls to reduce labor costs. We have moved from heavy-duty electronics to micro-electronics to cut costs and again to reduce labor costs.
We can run a utility with 10% of the people we needed 25 years ago. The risk is that an EMP or cyber attack can knock us back to the 1800s because we don’t even have the people trained to get us back online without the easily programmed and replaced digital control systems.
When we faced the mega-hoax of Y2K, we were barely ready. We used every person we had to be standing by when the clocks rolled over, and if the worst-case scenario had happened (which no one believed it would, but the FedGov made us “prepare” anyway), we could have operated the utility without computers.
But that was 11 years ago. We have half the people working in the power plants, electric grids, and water/wastewater systems now as we did then and the reliance on cheap, digital controls is about 10x what it was in 1999.
The key to the EMP scare is that it requires detonating a large thermonucler warhead high over the USA and our Ohio-class SSBNs are hardened against EMP. Using that weapon is an act of nuclear war and we have procedures in place for that and those procedures involve the Ohio-class SSBNs. A towelhead with a suitcase nuke is not going to be able to make this attack a reality. Only a few nations could pull this off and they’ve had nukes for many years, but we’ve stared each other down for a long time without any mushroom clouds.
I think that's the concern over the Iranian nuclear reactor and missile programs. Mahmoud Ahmanutjob and friends do not think logically or rationally, and might be willing to loose an EMP nuke over the skies of the "Great Satan" in the belief that the Mahdi would then emerge from his cave to protect them and usher in an Islamic paradise over all the world.
I comprehend and agree with everything you have stated. My concern is the ship launched missiles being tested by Iran. Would our subs even be able to pinpoint where this type launched EMP came from, and do anything about it? Would they KNOW who launched it? Just questions rattling around in my mind.....
The key to the EMP scare is that it requires detonating a large thermonucler warhead high over the USA and our Ohio-class SSBNs are hardened against EMP. Using that weapon is an act of nuclear war and we have procedures in place for that and those procedures involve the Ohio-class SSBNs. A towelhead with a suitcase nuke is not going to be able to make this attack a reality.
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So after Iran , Libya or N Korea fires a long dong silver III missile from a non-descript vessel just off our coast to a height of 200 miles over IOWA what are our “procedures” , strike at all possible aggressors? Might make you feel good but that doesn’t save American lives. Maybe it was Putin? ... Me? I’m marching the family to the beach if I can’t get a car to run and stealing a sailboat...I’ll just keep going until I see harbor lights on at night.
I have heard that while EMP could be a severe threat, it takes very advanced missle technology to ge tthe EMP high enough, without being seen and shot down, so that it could go off and affect wide swaths of America, and even then only a very strong EMP would get the job done. I have heards that Iran and North Korea are at least a decade away from obtaining the technology needed to pull off an EMP attack of the caliber people are worrying about, if not longer. And in addition, those nations with the needed technology, i.e. Russian and China, realize that new technology in iran and North Korea could easily be traced back to them and so they are unlikely to actively be providing it, just like they werent actively nuking cities during the Cold War.
ANd furthermore, an EMP attack is very risky and there is a godo chance it would fail; and in any event it would still leave the guilty parties open for a nuclear counterstrike-it wouldnt do anything to hamper our abilities to strike with nuclear warheads. It doesn exactly make sense that terorrists or rogue nations would risk something like this when a series of suitcase nukes could have more guaranteed damage. And that is something ordinary Amercians can be on the lookout for and guard against without depending on govt.