By Gary Timco
USA – Every U.S. citizen is literally on ‘life support’ by being plugged into our nation’s electricity grid. If one of our adversaries decides to sabotage the grid with an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack, everything necessary to sustain our human population stops.
There are 16 critical infrastructure systems that depend on reliable energy, which include food, transportation, fuel, medical (i.e. hospitals) financial and communications. All these systems are plugged into the grid. Even our Military/Defense industry relies on the same grid as the civilian population. A nationwide black-out lasting one year would cause an estimated 90 percent of our population to perish.
After a few weeks without power, we could die from lack of fresh water, starvation and societal collapse. As a sovereign nation, our enemies’ list is long and requires that we take steps now to ensure our heritage is preserved for future generations.
The American Electric System is the largest machine in the history of the world – built piece by piece over many years. The grid is truly our weakest security link, cobbled together by 3,000 companies, both public and private, all loosely linked together. It consists of 55,000 base generation systems as well as secondary transmission and local distribution systems. It is also important to note that our grid supports nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants, wind turbines, and solar farms spread over 5 million miles of distribution wires and 200,000 miles of high-voltage electric wires.
It is essential that we must first insulate and protect our bulk-power systems from three main threats:
- Sabotage
- Cyber-Security attacks
- EMP attacks
An EMP attack has become a great concern due to the recent Chinese Balloon incident over our most sensitive defense sites, which includes ballistic missile silos and B-2 Bomber installations.
According to David Stuckenberg, Chairman of the American Leadership Policy Foundation, and an expert on Weapons of Mass Destruction, such an attack could strategically impact America’s infrastructure from ‘alternate delivery systems’ like balloons! In fact, due to a balloon’s slow moving and hard-to-detect presence, it would be an ideal platform from which to launch a small nuclear detonating device.
A balloon with such a payload can reach altitudes of between 35,000 and 200,000 feet. Deploying such balloons at night would achieve additional stealth delivery capability. The damage due to an EMP attack is especially devastating and effective because such an explosion produces an extensive, almost instantaneous Electrical Magnetic Gama Pulse, wreaking havoc upon almost any electrical device on the ground. Transportation systems, dams, water distribution, heating & cooling systems and other key infrastructure are at risk.
An EMP attack basically fries any and all electrical components beyond repair. This, of course, further degrades our grid system, whereby large electrical transformers would short circuit causing rolling black-outs across our nation rendering our population helpless.
Today with many rogue actors in our world, it would not be impossible for terrorists (through our open border policy) to obtain a small nuclear device, inflicting the same devastation on the ground as would result from an EMP deployed from above earth.
There are 20 key sub-stations spread out in three main grid systems – Texas Grid, PJM North East Grid, and Western Grid. If just nine of these key sub-stations are taken out, then our entire grid will cascade in a downward spiral.
Some of these critical grid events recently happened in Moore County, NC where arsonists shot at transformers causing wide spread outage. As of today, Duke Energy along with directives from Governor Cooper (Bill 951) to facilitate “Clean Energy,” will do nothing to protect our grid from catastrophic events.
The additional revenue that will be captured by Duke Energy’s new rate increase (estimated at over $850 million) will be wasted in shuttering coal plants and building additional solar farms & wind turbines. According to a recent Carolina Journal article, this will not generate any additional guarantee of Megawatt Capacity, This New Green effort, originated by the U.N. Climate/Paris Initative, will prove to be a disaster because it is based on false assumptions.
Ireland has set an example of what we should NOT follow. A March 2nd article in The New American describes how Ireland suffers from a man-made electricity emergency, with the closing of coal power plants and older gas-powered plants.
Ireland is a signatory to Paris Accord Clean Energy goal of reducing its carbon footprint (i.e., greenhouse gas) by 70 percent below 2005 levels & 0 percent by 2050 – the same goals that our Gov. Cooper shares! It is crucial that North Carolina’s legislature change course immediately in order to protect citizens from future high energy costs while at the same time following reliable efforts to insulate our grid from Cyber Attacks, EMP Threats, and vandalism!
In short, our Government has failed us! While President Trump was in office, he signed an Executive Order requiring “National Standards” to protect essential transformers from various threats. Unfortunately, President Biden canceled this Executive Order (13920) and has placed the entire grid at risk. As Patriots, we must hold our elected officials accountable through tough Federal legislation. Contact your state legislators and insist that this be done.
Next week, in a follow up article, I will discuss why many of our elected officials at the state and national level have torpedoed grid security – accepting campaign contributions meant to prevent meaningful legislation of National Standards. We now face very uncertain times with increased military risks from Russia and China. It would be very convenient for our enemies to release an Electro Magnetic Pulse 200 miles above our nation, causing a permanent Grid Black-Out.
Questions for Mr. Timco? Email him at: gtimco@hotmail.com
Gary Timco is a frequent contributor to the County Compass.