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> In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, an

> In testimony before a Congressional Committee, it has been asserted that a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population. This could happen at any time due to a solar flare. The coronavirus has made it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major deviation from "normal".

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
intopieces 6y ago
> The coronavirus has made it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major deviation from "normal". This is the nature of the US system of competitive federalism. States only coordinate with the federal government when either (a) it's politically expedient, because the ruling party in the same for both at that time, or (b) the federal government forces this issue, at which time lawsuits ensue. It's helpful to think of the US as more a series of regions that sometimes fall under a shifting umbrella government than an actual, single entity.
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  It's pretty interesting that most countries in Europe are unitary states while most countries in the Americas are federal states. Maybe due to the centuries of warfare in Europe the states that survived were unitary states that could better handle external threats. Or maybe it's a holdover from a tradition of monarchy that the Americas never had. Interestingly, Germany is also a federal state. Yet we never seem to hear about federal regions of Germany disagreeing with each other and fighting with the Federal government like we hear about the US. Any Germans want to spill the tea on German inter-regional political drama?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    It can be argued that this it is part of the American political character because our origin story was shaped by the combination of disparate states, as in, we could have easily had colonies that sided with the British. It got cemented due to Slavery as we basically carved up the country between slaves states and free states, and ultimately fought a civil war to deal with this bifurcation. It’s been our long history, it defined us. Edit: Whoops, I did the American thing again and forgot there are other countries in the Americas.
  - detaro 6y ago
    > Yet we never seem to hear... For reference, do you hear about any internal German politics?
    - detaro 6y ago
      To expand on it: I can't really compare the magnitude, because I don't have a good sense for how much of an issue it is in the US, but yes, states do sometimes disagree with each other, have differing interests depending on local factors, want funding allocated to their projects, and they do occasionally squabble with the federal government over authority (especially when they want federal funding for things that are their area of responsibility). They also have quite an effect on how politics inside and between the political parties work (which I feel like in other countries the largest cities do instead?)
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > most countries in the Americas are federal states This ain't true¹. Most of the landmass of the Americas is covered by federated states, sure, but the vast majority of states are unitary. The more relevant factor is the size of the state's territory. With a few exceptions (like China), most big countries are federated, and most small countries are unitary. ---- ¹: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg/1920px-Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Ma...
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Good point, I was using that map when I made my observation and overlooked the cluster of smaller countries in the Andes. My bad. After doing some back of the envelope calculations, about 17% of the countries in the Americas are federated and 16% in Europe, so it's actually pretty similar. But countries in the Americas have a much bigger size disparity than in Europe which really makes the federated areas stand out.
  - frank2 6y ago
    I always thought that the post-WWII German government is federal because it was designed mainly by the US government, which is federal.
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Well, Germany when it first emerged as a nation state as Imperial Germany in 1871 did so as a federal state. Quite different from the UK or France. Even Italy, which emerged as a nation state in 1861, did so as a unitary kingdom. Germany's federal form of government seems to go against the trend in Europe.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    A hint as to the US federal infighting is that very few other countries have statues to the side that lost the civil war. Or other similarly traumatic wars; the Communist countries have demolished their statues of Lenin or herded them into museums, even Spain has removed its last statue of the dictator Franco. (Not to say that you can't see the faultlines in other European societies though. Ireland's parties inherit from her civil war. The UK has not entirely given up on anti-Catholicism, and has forgotten that its own most recent civil war only ended in 1998. I would put money on East vs West still being somewhat live in German politics, but conducted with a good deal more dignity)
- Noumenon72 6y ago
  I don't understand how you have identified this as the problem. Sure, states haven't coordinated on lockdowns, testing, or mask purchasing. But it's not because they're struggling against the federal government, it's because there's no official policy to coordinate with. Seems to me like our main difficulty deviating from normal is the fact that a 20% decrease in demand kills off 10% of businesses within weeks and causes 20% of people to instantly get behind on their rent. There's no slack in the system.
  - lisper 6y ago
    > it's not because they're struggling against the federal government Actually, it is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-governor-says-coronavirus-tests-acquired-from-south-korea-under https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-gov... “The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location [because] the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are being sent elsewhere in the nation, and so I wanted to make sure that we received what we ordered,” [Illinois Gov. J.B.] Pritzker told reporters at an April 15 press conference.
    - tenpies 6y ago
      Do you think there is even a chance that a prominent Democrat governor in a prominently Democrat state might be exaggerating for the sake of making the other party look bad? I mean I can't help but think back to the Puerto Rico days when the Democrats were complaining about a complete lack of aid, meanwhile there were warehouses filled with aid and photos of aid already on site.
      - nkrisc 6y ago
        Larry Hogan, Maryland's Republican governor, has taken similar steps.
      - wegs 6y ago
        States are reacting to confiscations which have already happened. See Massachusetts' first order of medical supplies of China. Second order was flow in on a private jet protected by the Massachusetts National Guard. No one knows what happens to the supplies after seizure. There are reports that some get resold by private Trump-affiliated companies. Government claims to be redistributing them to those most in need. There are no audit trails. It's a mess.
_bxg1 6y ago
That 90% number seems really hard to believe. Additionally, from the referenced article: > There is no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at, nor are we able to validate a primary source for this claim. Testimony given by the Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, while expressing similar concerns, gave no estimate of the deaths that would accrue from a prolonged nationwide grid collapse. I'm highly suspicious that that number is exaggerated in order to inspire action on what still seems like a worthwhile issue.
- grecy 6y ago
  > That 90% number seems really hard to believe As context, I spent three years driving right around Africa, and before that two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I've seen my fair share of collapsing infrastructure (Congo... Mali... Sudan, etc.) and what happens in just a few days without electricity. In less developed countries the impacts are actually much less than they will be in our developed countries, because the people there are used to things failing, and their lives go on regardless. i.e. many people have beasts of burden to carry loads and farm, they have bicycles or walk to get around and they grow their own food. For us, it won't be so easy. - Very quickly all the perishables in the stores go bad, and food shortages become very real very fast. - ATMs don't work - therefore no cash for anyone. - Gas and diesel are very hard to get out of underground tanks without electricity (yes, you can hand pump it or use a generator... but how many of those are sitting around ready to go?) - Communications go down - no cell phones, no internet, no radio, no TV. It's extremely hard to get accurate information in that scenario. - Soon everyone is just focused on survival, so many other basics fall by the wayside. Garbage collection. Sewage, drinking water, medical supplies and much more all stop working. - In places with low population density and where people have some "homesteading" skills this might not be so bad - they can just shoot a cow once every few weeks or whatever. In downtown LA, NYC and Chicago, it's extremely bad. In just a few weeks you have mass hysteria, and things go downhill fast. Just look at the scenes in the big box stores when COVID-19 hit of people getting violent and stockpiling toilet paper. Now imagine how desperate everyone would be if the power was out, and in all likelihood will be out for months.
  - 6y ago
Animats 6y ago
This could happen at any time due to a solar flare. Actually, no. If you want to read what happens in such an event, see section 3.8.2 of the PJM Emergency Procedures Manual.[1] You get DC current to ground in AC transformers, which results in saturation of the magnetic elements and transformer heating. It's a heat problem; it has to be dealt with in minutes, not milliseconds. That document is addressed to the people in the grid control room. There used to be a training course on line which explained this in simpler terms. [1] https://www.pjm.com/~/media/documents/manuals/m13.ashx https://www.pjm.com/~/media/documents/manuals/m13.ashx

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

intopieces 6y ago

> The coronavirus has made it pretty clear that America is completely unprepared for any sort of major deviation from "normal". This is the nature of the US system of competitive federalism. States only coordinate with the federal government when either (a) it's politically expedient, because the ruling party in the same for both at that time, or (b) the federal government forces this issue, at which time lawsuits ensue. It's helpful to think of the US as more a series of regions that sometimes fall under a shifting umbrella government than an actual, single entity.

magicsmoke 6y ago
It's pretty interesting that most countries in Europe are unitary states while most countries in the Americas are federal states. Maybe due to the centuries of warfare in Europe the states that survived were unitary states that could better handle external threats. Or maybe it's a holdover from a tradition of monarchy that the Americas never had. Interestingly, Germany is also a federal state. Yet we never seem to hear about federal regions of Germany disagreeing with each other and fighting with the Federal government like we hear about the US. Any Germans want to spill the tea on German inter-regional political drama?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It can be argued that this it is part of the American political character because our origin story was shaped by the combination of disparate states, as in, we could have easily had colonies that sided with the British. It got cemented due to Slavery as we basically carved up the country between slaves states and free states, and ultimately fought a civil war to deal with this bifurcation. It’s been our long history, it defined us. Edit: Whoops, I did the American thing again and forgot there are other countries in the Americas.
- detaro 6y ago
  > Yet we never seem to hear... For reference, do you hear about any internal German politics?
  - detaro 6y ago
    To expand on it: I can't really compare the magnitude, because I don't have a good sense for how much of an issue it is in the US, but yes, states do sometimes disagree with each other, have differing interests depending on local factors, want funding allocated to their projects, and they do occasionally squabble with the federal government over authority (especially when they want federal funding for things that are their area of responsibility). They also have quite an effect on how politics inside and between the political parties work (which I feel like in other countries the largest cities do instead?)
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > most countries in the Americas are federal states This ain't true¹. Most of the landmass of the Americas is covered by federated states, sure, but the vast majority of states are unitary. The more relevant factor is the size of the state's territory. With a few exceptions (like China), most big countries are federated, and most small countries are unitary. ---- ¹: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg/1920px-Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Ma...
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Good point, I was using that map when I made my observation and overlooked the cluster of smaller countries in the Andes. My bad. After doing some back of the envelope calculations, about 17% of the countries in the Americas are federated and 16% in Europe, so it's actually pretty similar. But countries in the Americas have a much bigger size disparity than in Europe which really makes the federated areas stand out.
- frank2 6y ago
  I always thought that the post-WWII German government is federal because it was designed mainly by the US government, which is federal.
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    Well, Germany when it first emerged as a nation state as Imperial Germany in 1871 did so as a federal state. Quite different from the UK or France. Even Italy, which emerged as a nation state in 1861, did so as a unitary kingdom. Germany's federal form of government seems to go against the trend in Europe.
- pjc50 6y ago
  A hint as to the US federal infighting is that very few other countries have statues to the side that lost the civil war. Or other similarly traumatic wars; the Communist countries have demolished their statues of Lenin or herded them into museums, even Spain has removed its last statue of the dictator Franco. (Not to say that you can't see the faultlines in other European societies though. Ireland's parties inherit from her civil war. The UK has not entirely given up on anti-Catholicism, and has forgotten that its own most recent civil war only ended in 1998. I would put money on East vs West still being somewhat live in German politics, but conducted with a good deal more dignity)
Noumenon72 6y ago
I don't understand how you have identified this as the problem. Sure, states haven't coordinated on lockdowns, testing, or mask purchasing. But it's not because they're struggling against the federal government, it's because there's no official policy to coordinate with. Seems to me like our main difficulty deviating from normal is the fact that a 20% decrease in demand kills off 10% of businesses within weeks and causes 20% of people to instantly get behind on their rent. There's no slack in the system.
- lisper 6y ago
  > it's not because they're struggling against the federal government Actually, it is: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-governor-says-coronavirus-tests-acquired-from-south-korea-under https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495519-maryland-gov... “The National Guard and the State Police are both guarding these tests at an undisclosed location [because] the federal government seems to be interrupting supplies that are being sent elsewhere in the nation, and so I wanted to make sure that we received what we ordered,” [Illinois Gov. J.B.] Pritzker told reporters at an April 15 press conference.
  - tenpies 6y ago
    Do you think there is even a chance that a prominent Democrat governor in a prominently Democrat state might be exaggerating for the sake of making the other party look bad? I mean I can't help but think back to the Puerto Rico days when the Democrats were complaining about a complete lack of aid, meanwhile there were warehouses filled with aid and photos of aid already on site.
    - nkrisc 6y ago
      Larry Hogan, Maryland's Republican governor, has taken similar steps.
    - wegs 6y ago
      States are reacting to confiscations which have already happened. See Massachusetts' first order of medical supplies of China. Second order was flow in on a private jet protected by the Massachusetts National Guard. No one knows what happens to the supplies after seizure. There are reports that some get resold by private Trump-affiliated companies. Government claims to be redistributing them to those most in need. There are no audit trails. It's a mess.

_bxg1 6y ago

That 90% number seems really hard to believe. Additionally, from the referenced article: > There is no published model disclosing how these numbers were arrived at, nor are we able to validate a primary source for this claim. Testimony given by the Chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, while expressing similar concerns, gave no estimate of the deaths that would accrue from a prolonged nationwide grid collapse. I'm highly suspicious that that number is exaggerated in order to inspire action on what still seems like a worthwhile issue.

grecy 6y ago
> That 90% number seems really hard to believe As context, I spent three years driving right around Africa, and before that two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. I've seen my fair share of collapsing infrastructure (Congo... Mali... Sudan, etc.) and what happens in just a few days without electricity. In less developed countries the impacts are actually much less than they will be in our developed countries, because the people there are used to things failing, and their lives go on regardless. i.e. many people have beasts of burden to carry loads and farm, they have bicycles or walk to get around and they grow their own food. For us, it won't be so easy. - Very quickly all the perishables in the stores go bad, and food shortages become very real very fast. - ATMs don't work - therefore no cash for anyone. - Gas and diesel are very hard to get out of underground tanks without electricity (yes, you can hand pump it or use a generator... but how many of those are sitting around ready to go?) - Communications go down - no cell phones, no internet, no radio, no TV. It's extremely hard to get accurate information in that scenario. - Soon everyone is just focused on survival, so many other basics fall by the wayside. Garbage collection. Sewage, drinking water, medical supplies and much more all stop working. - In places with low population density and where people have some "homesteading" skills this might not be so bad - they can just shoot a cow once every few weeks or whatever. In downtown LA, NYC and Chicago, it's extremely bad. In just a few weeks you have mass hysteria, and things go downhill fast. Just look at the scenes in the big box stores when COVID-19 hit of people getting violent and stockpiling toilet paper. Now imagine how desperate everyone would be if the power was out, and in all likelihood will be out for months.
- 6y ago

Animats 6y ago

This could happen at any time due to a solar flare. Actually, no. If you want to read what happens in such an event, see section 3.8.2 of the PJM Emergency Procedures Manual.[1] You get DC current to ground in AC transformers, which results in saturation of the magnetic elements and transformer heating. It's a heat problem; it has to be dealt with in minutes, not milliseconds. That document is addressed to the people in the grid control room. There used to be a training course on line which explained this in simpler terms. [1] https://www.pjm.com/~/media/documents/manuals/m13.ashx https://www.pjm.com/~/media/documents/manuals/m13.ashx