This is one story you will not be hearing on the 5 o’clock crap media news. I have no doubt this was a test run terror attack to see how much damage could be done and what steps were taken to avert power failure. People keep expecting something huge to happen with “shock and awe” from terrorists to take down the US. Those days are potentially over IMO, they are getting smarter and more sophisticated as this test run attack was. Unconfirmed, but there have been some strange stock trades and a flash crash that have left people wondering if it was terrorism to collapse our economic system. In recent news there have been numerous retailers who have been hacked resulting is massive data theft. Terrorists know they can’t beat us in a gunfight, and the odds of them shooting up a mall like we have seen in other countries is possible but remote. But hitting soft targets like the financial markets or our power grid will allow them to inflict the maximum amount of damage they could only hope with a bullet or bomb.
Shutting down the US power grid would cripple the US and result in larger number of deaths than any bullet or pressure cooker bomb! If coordinated terrorists could theoretically knock out transformers across the country in an attempt to have the same effect that an EMP attack would have. Either way with bullet or EMP shutting down our power grid would send the US back to the stone age! These transformers aren’t made in the US, they come from South Korea and Germany and could take up to and over 6 months to replace! Think about the number of people relying on machines to stay alive! I’m not just talking about one on a respirator, but those who depend on medicine especially meds that must be refrigerated!
How many billions does this govt waste every year on stupid studies and pork spending? The powers that be are not taking the necessary steps to protect our power grid, which requires a $500 million dollar upgrade. If I were you I would be more concerned about the lights going out than some monster shooting or blowing something up!
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Assault on California Power Station Raises Alarm on Potential for Terrorism
by Rebecca Smith| WSJ
SAN JOSE, Calif.—The attack began just before 1 a.m. on April 16 last year, when someone slipped into an underground vault not far from a busy freeway and cut telephone cables.
Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley. A minute before a police car arrived, the shooters disappeared into the night.
To avoid a blackout, electric-grid officials rerouted power around the site and asked power plants in Silicon Valley to produce more electricity. But it took utility workers 27 days to make repairs and bring the substation back to life.
Nobody has been arrested or charged in the attack at PG&E Corp.’s PCG -0.55% Metcalf transmission substation. It is an incident of which few Americans are aware. But one former federal regulator is calling it a terrorist act that, if it were widely replicated across the country, could take down the U.S. electric grid and black out much of the country.
The attack was “the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred” in the U.S., said Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time.
The Wall Street Journal assembled a chronology of the Metcalf attack from filings PG&E made to state and federal regulators; from other documents including a video released by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department; and from interviews, including with Mr. Wellinghoff..more