Nat Geo- American Blackout

It doesn't matter if they really do or do not explode. It was the premise of the show. When we lost one of those giant transformers due to fire ( much larger than those small ones shown in the show) it took months to get a single replacement. Replacing the smaller ones is not as much of a concern as replacing the big guys is. We still have some domestic supply of the small ones. I don't believe we have a current manufacturer making the large ones in this country. Regardless of the cause of the blackout it was more interesting seeing the human reactions. Blackouts can be caused by numerous things like some comments here have stated. Unfortunately, I think there would be worse behavior than that shown in the show in some areas.

 

I have seen transformers go also during ice storms or hurricanes. But they are few and far between. Most transformers get through things like storms just fine. Even after Katrina most of the transformers that didn't end up underwater water were fine.

Like I said earlier, the local power companies perform emergency shutdowns when they see the loads going up, the result is no power, but the equipment is protected. Since every power company relies on the power company next door to share the load, a large scale blackout is very possible with a cyber attack (computer virus). The power companies however use distributed computing and different software and hardware so there is no way to coordinate a large scale attack on every power company at the same time.

An attack a a few large power companies in separate parts of the nation can take down the entire grid, but most of the power outages would be caused by the local power companies shutting down the grid themselves to save their infrastructure.

This is what happens during a storm like Katrina, as one part of the grid goes down because of the storm the surrounding power companies start shutting down the grid around the effected area which isolates it from the rest of the grid. The other surrounding power companies start redistributing the load to prevent overloading of the adjacent areas.

The bottom line is that a cyber attack will not cause wide spread physical damage to the power distribution infrastructure, but can cause significant damage to the local infrastructure where the cyber attack occurred.

As for how people will react to a widespread power outage, well I think that depends on where you are. I have no doubt in some parts of our country, people will turn into animals very quickly, in other parts I think life will go on just like it has for generations.

 

Agree with Ghrit. Sheeple need awakened slowly. Too much, too fast and panic ensues. That being said Martial Law invoked makes Sheeple head to nearest Camp FEMA to be protected from themselves.....

Any invocation of Martial Law puts into effect my Vonuist Separation into " The Independent Freehold of Rangerland " ( all rights reserved )

 

I was impressed with one of the TTPs in Iraq as part of the sectarian violence. Shias and Sunnis would drive through each other's neighborhoods and put 3 AK rounds in every transformer. It was hopeless to consider ever getting grid electricity back.

 

I have talked about it before in other threads, but the one thing that will get anyone through a situation like this is community. Get to know your neighbors and establish relationships with others that have capabilities you might need.

The family with the bug out bunker did a lot of things wrong, but the biggest thing was not knowing their neighbors. The second thing was making enemies of them very early on by pulling a gun on one of them. We won't even talk about having four adults sleeping at night with a little kid on watch.

I hear folks in the city tell me all the time that they are going to bug out to their uncles cabin in the mountains (or wherever) if something like this happens. Well guess what, there are people in them there mountains, and if you don't know them and they don't know you, it will not turn out well. The producers got that part right.

In a real situation like this, the reality is the guys bug out location probably would have been picked clean before they ever got there, because he didn't know his neighbors and he didn't have anyone looking after his property when he was not there.

 

The show took a large amount of artistic license to make a point but certainly acted as a wake up call to some. I got requests to borrow " 77 Days in September " and " Lights Out"

 

Another pretty good film on the same topic is called The Trigger Effect from '96 with Elisabeth Shue. Here is the trailer



The things that were not noted in the NetGeo movie were

1. Medical services and. EMS would quickly get over run
2. Patients needing Meds such as insulin that is refrigerated and other patients needing electricity of medical equipment.
3. Look what happen at some stores when in just one day the SNAP cards failed. Expect crime of all kinds to skyrocket.
4. Road congestion. In almost any disaster many people get in the car and go someplace. Some cars will fail or stall and be abandoned leading to gridlock quickly
5. The weather was good in all the USA it seems. Even in the summer I assume it depicted wildfires and all other fires would be more difficult to contain. What of it happened in the winter? How many would freeze ?



Go Seahawks!

 

I missed the first showing but set the dvr to record the next one. Based on the replies referring to everything they missed, I really think that was done to avoid causing a panic. If they really showed how bad things could get, the response would probably have jumped past "awakening" and surged to full on freak-outs. That could easily escalate to hasty fire arm purchases, and hoarding of meds and food. I'm all about being prepared, but if they basically took the worst parts (realistic) of One Second After or Lights Out or the Grid Down series and made a short movie I think Chaos would ensue. Using people in my life as examples, I can only imagine some of the phone calls I'd be getting asking if I think it's plausable, etc.

 

I remember watching that movie in the theater! For the life of me I couldn't remember the name of the movie. The opening credits set the stage for the rest of the movie- it shows how people can be nonchalantly insensitive, vindictive, and downright petty with each other, and they were still in the egalitarian rules of society before all the SHTF.

I was wondering why I haven't seen it mentioned earlier- it was a decent flick about human nature, packaged up in a tidy way for those who may not be used to thinking about such things. Like how the family react when they discover that their traveling companion was armed (oh my, a colt SAA!), or how the wife decided she didn't like the idea of a gun in the house and dumped the newly acquired (for quite a bit of money) shotgun in the pool.

Not particularly violent, it lends itself for younger viewers to open their minds up and think about how things would be in that situation.