Science and Inquiry discussion

aPriL does feral sometimes posed a question in Science In The News topic about EMPs.

I read some time ago the USA has a vulnerable electric grid due to the way it has built a system of three to five major critical delivery nodes which, if attacked, could bring the entire electric power system down for the USA. Is this still true?

Does anyone know how EMP works if a nuclear bomb is delivered to those nodes, say on an ICBM, even if the exploding missile doesn't even touch the ground?

Just curious.

I answered with the following:
I haven't read a good one, although I looked a while back. The Wikipedia page about EMPs is interesting in that it points out how little good information is available on the various related subjects. It's pretty complicated, but has some links to references at the bottom that are interesting.

What sort, number & where the bursts fall is only part of the problem. People only think of lights & such when they think of power, but our infrastructure is very complex & might be more delicate than we think. If enough computers go off line, communication, transportation, food, water & other necessary systems fail. One Second After was chilling, but is fiction. Still, it might be fairly true in some of its points.

aPriL does feral replied:
I am old enough to remember when several huge blackouts struck New York City, which is when I read about the interconnected US grid. I could Google it, and I will, now that I am kinda curious, but if I remember correctly, one node section went down and took out one more node because of safety mechanics built into the system. It turned out to be a contagion which started shutting down a third node before they somehow stopped it. Like I said, I haven't googled it yet, but if memory serves it happened once starting in the States around the 1970's(?), and another time in eastern Canada, which started spreading to the US (?) maybe in the 1990's.

I'll check on it more formerly, too, Jim, thanks. Just wondered if some of the folks here knew anything if the blackouts of the past got anyone in the States putting any effort into correcting the system which had failed so catastrophically once long ago - before we all connected even our fridges now to the Internet . Recent events and all that. Maybe I'll mosey down to the store and buy a few candles, or something.

: )


Susanna - Censored by GoodReads replied:
My father was in NYC when they had their big blackout in 1977 - it was something else, he says. (What a summer in New York that was - a heat wave, the blackout, the ongoing city bankruptcy, and the Son of Sam killings, to top things off.)

Good conversation, so I thought it deserved its own topic.

I've read several articles about "The Power Grid" & it doesn't really seem to be a solid thing, but ever-changing & poorly understood. Hook ups & sharing seem to change for many reasons from economics to regulations to infrastructure. Some of it seems awfully solid while it's a miracle that other parts work at all.

A lot of our critical systems seem to operate the same way. Not long ago I read an essay about the issues drilling another water main for NYC. It discussed the current big pipes & their issues, too. "Save water, shower with a friend" & other old signs are still around from the water problems in the 50s. It was pretty bad for some, but not catastrophic. If one of the pipes went out today, it would be, though. How much EMP sensitive equipment is required to run this system? If anyone could answer the question, I doubt they would due to security concerns.

Anyway, I think that illustrates 2 major problems with answering April's question. If one system goes down, how many other systems are affected? How much & how badly?

Then there are people. The blackout caused riots which stress systems even more. Police, fire, medical, & communication systems get overloaded trying to contain the riots & looting. Business & economic losses make recovering harder, too. Honestly, it's just scary. I'm glad I live out in the country.

Pertinent article in the Economist:

http://worldif.economist.com/article/...

Thanks, Betsy. That's scary. Very similar to what was described in One Second After, although recovery there was still going on after a year. In that fictional book, 3 missiles were used to create an EMP blast that covered the nation instead of one. Food, water, & medicine were all quickly exhausted. Medicines that needed refrigeration were especially heart-breaking, such as insulin for kids with diabetes.

Very interesting topic

Jim wrote: "Thanks, Betsy. That's scary. Very similar to what was described in [book:One Second After.... By."

Excerpt: Shooting up transformers at just nine critical substations could bring down America’s grid for months, according to an analysis performed in 2013 by the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), says its then-chairman, Jon Wellinghoff. Others think more transformers would need to be taken out. At any rate, information on which substations are critical is secret. In 2013 gunmen knocked out 17 of 21 transformers at a substation in San Jose. It was not a critical one.

I seriously doubt gunmen, (rogues-internal groups / outside threat?) could have gone that far, in their own

-also I've never heard before of any FERC's representative, address the public before...
Do we have, at our disposal, any other articles, or even better Any high ranking officials interviewed, on these matters at hand?

My first summer job was at Harry Diamond Laboratory. It was a US Army lab, and the branch where I worked was studying the effects of an EMP blast on army equipment. They would generate these intense blasts of radiation--using electronics, no bombs were involved!

I remember one ironic twist to the entire effort. Electronic pieces of equipment that were based on solid state--as most things are, nowadays--were readily destroyed by EMP. But the old-fashioned equipment built using tubes were immune to EMP blasts.