From my almost 30 years in the telecommunications field, I can tell you that it doesn't take much. As residents of Arizona found out the hard way this past week.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security ... oss-state/
What does it take to shutdown our electronic infrastructure?
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OakRidgeStars
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MarcSpaz
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Re: What does it take to shutdown our electronic infrastructure?
When I was an AEC in PW County, we ran disaster drills regularly, simulating large area or national cyber terror attacks taking out commercial power.
I'm not going to give out too much detail. The issue has since long been secured, but i don't want to give any bad guys new ideas. Lets just say that if a single key component were to fail, literally half the country could be without power in minutes. And all it would have taken is a single (and simple) computer virus to do.
I love electricity, but no one should be solely dependent on it. Generators are nice until fuel is no longer available. The best thing is to learn to live without power now, rather than being in complete crisis if an outage occurs.
I'm not going to give out too much detail. The issue has since long been secured, but i don't want to give any bad guys new ideas. Lets just say that if a single key component were to fail, literally half the country could be without power in minutes. And all it would have taken is a single (and simple) computer virus to do.
I love electricity, but no one should be solely dependent on it. Generators are nice until fuel is no longer available. The best thing is to learn to live without power now, rather than being in complete crisis if an outage occurs.