Just another reason to be prepared!

Steve Martin - December 4, 2022

News

News story this morning out of North Carolina where a massive power outage hit….deliberately caused by gunfire. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/intentional-vandalism-leaves-40-000-without-power-in-n-c/ar-AA14SalO

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Power outages are so common and predictable that they barely qualify as emergencies….

 

This incident is literally the definition of unpredictable. 

 

This appears to be a targeted anti-LGBTQ hate crime, openly committed, which BTW also took out power to the whole city.

There were weeks of protests against an upcoming drag show. Coordinated attacks against three electric substations were launched at the same time that the show was scheduled to start. Two hours later, Emily Rainer, leader of that anti-LGBTQ protest group and formerly part of the Jan 6 capitol attack, made multiple Twitter posts claiming to know why the power was out, tying it to the drag show, and approving of the situation – but then denied such knowledge when police followed up.

 

Extensive discussion of this incident on Hacker News, with more focus on what it takes to sabotage the power grid. This particular incident was likely done by a few people with rifles. Could be a lot worse if repeated on a larger scale.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33859220

 

Greg P is in NC and reported on the status of the disruption https://theprepared.com/blog/news-roundup-for-tue-dec-06-2022#reply-100260

 

This article about vandalism to Pacific Northwest substations was in this morning’s news.

Oregon, Washington substations intentionally attacked

 

I’ve been watching the North Carolina news closely and the term “vandalism” feels – off – to me. Vandalism is graffiti on a rail car or tipping over trash cans. Intentionally destroying critical infrastructure is, at minimum, an attack (and a felony) and in many jurisdictions rises meets the legal definition of terrorism. Spray painting a rail car typically gets a fine and maybe up to a year in jail.  Attacking critical infrastructure gets 20 years in prison.

It has been fascinating watching the reporters and the local officials in North Carolina walk that line.  And I agree they should walk it until people know what actually happened.  A bunch of high school students got stoned and decided to go deer hunting at night and – missed? Unlikely, but hey – possible:  I might buy a vandalism description for that.  

A former employee intentionally targeting a piece of the equipment he or she knows will bring down the whole county, in an attempt to “create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective” (likely, but not proven):  That’s terrorism. 

There’s a fascinating article here about this conundrum and why the specific words used matter. As a final note: Apparently that county should get their power back by tomorrow morning.  Hopefully when they do a lot of them will find their way over to The Prepared!

 

https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/southeast/report-shows-intrusions-at-6-power-stations-in-florida/?utm_campaign=NewsNation-trending-now&utm_source=ktla.com&utm_medium=newsnation-cross-brand

6 intrusions into Florida power stations reported. 

 

Maybe related Shots fired near Duke Energy facility in South Carolina.

 

 

This video promotes an organization called Helena which tries to solve the main problem he raises throughout the video, that warnings of disaster are too often ignored. Here’s Helena’s project page for the blackout issue.

https://helena.org/projects/shield/

 

Thanks. I had something typed up, but it appears to not have gone up with the link. I blame the internet gremlins. 

 

Something just reminded me of this event in 1974.  Beavercreek Bomber Article

 

Power grid down..however it is caused, is one of the top risks I prep for.

 

I saw a blurb on this morning’s news about more attacks on substations in Washington State. 

 

I was brought up on power cuts, they were normal and happened more often than today.

 

There’s a big difference though between accidental power outages caused by weather or over-use, versus coordinated attacks by militant extremist groups.  Not so much in how we prep for them, but on principal.  A cluster of attacks such as we have seen in recent weeks is noteworthy because it demonstrates the vulnerability of the grid to intentional sabotage – something experts have been warning about for years. 

 

Three more vandalism events at Tacoma WA substations over the weekend, resulting in 14,000 customers without power.  In the middle of a big ice storm.

 

Hi folks,

I’ve been occupied elsewhere for a while.

I didn’t check the links here yet… 

Found a twitter thread about this issue. He’s also a good cyber guy. 

He points out what is close to the substation in NC.  Important things next to other substation failures as well it seems.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/1600917754831204353 

Kinda related, but this battery company is on my list to learn more about.

It’s been a while since I saw this, my memory isn’t real fresh.

Supposed new battery tech for households…couldn’t raise funding . Sold to chinese, but morphed into utility scale. Supposedly going for a restart in the states. Kinda makes me grumpy when no funding is available for residential scale, but apparently plenty of money to switch to utility scale 🙂 .

I’ve been meaning to research this company some more.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1114964240/new-battery-technology-china-vanadium

 

 

“Found a twitter thread about this issue. He’s also a good cyber guy.

He points out what is close to the substation in NC. Important things next to other substation failures as well it seems.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/1600917754831204353”

At first glance it’s a compelling story but in my opinion not a particularly credible analysis.

If you look at the locations of each event of course you’re going to find important facilities such as military bases. You put power infrastructure near places that use lots of power (duh) and unsurprisingly the US has a lot of military facilities in every state so if you look you’re gonna find them. It’s a near meaningless observation.

Secondly, I laughed out loud when he starting linking in antifa and anarchists with no mention of right wing domestic terrorism. The FBI has already arrested multiple white supremacists for plotting to attack the power grid. No mention of that in this analysis because the author’s political biases were allowed to influence it.

This is unsurprising though. Career people in the national security and intelligence communities have described him as a political insider who cannot be objective, repeatedly. I think he’ll fit into the cybersecurity products and services snake oil business much more readily (he’s started an ICS cybersecurity company).