End Times and Current Events
March 28, 2024, 10:38:27 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me." John 5:39 (KJB)
 
  Home Help Search Gallery Staff List Login Register  

EMP Nightmare: How one bomb can destroy a country

Shoutbox
March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
View Shout History
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: EMP Nightmare: How one bomb can destroy a country  (Read 10934 times)
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #30 on: April 27, 2014, 06:13:38 am »

Sun Unleashes Major Solar Flare (Video)

 The sun erupted with a massive solar flare late Thursday (April 24), triggering a temporary communications blackout on some parts of Earth.

The powerful flare peaked at 8:27 p.m. EDT Thursday (0027 April 25 GMT), and ranked as an X1.3-class solar storm, one of the strongest types of flares the sun can experience, according to a report from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory captured video of the intense solar flare in several difference wavelengths.

The solar flare erupted from an active sunspot region known as Region 2035 located on the far western side (or limb) of the sun as seen from Earth. Because of its position, the flare sparked a high-frequency radio blackout for about an hour on the daytime side of Earth, most likely over the Pacific Ocean and Eastern Pacific Rim, according to the SWPC update.

http://www.space.com/25631-sun-unleashes-major-solar-flare-video.html
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #31 on: May 09, 2014, 06:43:27 am »

Hearing: Electric Grid Vulnerable to EMP
Witness: Could kill 9 in 10 Americans


Experts on Capitol Hill Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack aimed at the nation’s electrical grid could leave the majority of Americans dead.

The hearing, “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP): Threat to Critical Infrastructure,” before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies explored the effects an EMP would have.

“Some would say it’s low probability, but the damage that could be caused in the event of an EMP attack, both by the sun, a solar event, or a man-made attack, would be catastrophic,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas). “We talk a lot about a nuclear bomb in Manhattan, and cybersecurity threat to the power grid in the Northeast, and all of these things would actually probably pale in comparison to the devastation that an EMP attack could perpetrate on Americans.”

Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.), who has worked to raise awareness on the issue for years, testified during the first panel that “catastrophic civilian casualties” could result unless Congress acts.

An overload of radio waves to electric systems, an EMP could result from a natural disaster, such as a solar storm, or a terrorist attack. Franks said “every single facet of modern human life” would be “crippled” by such an event.

“It strikes at my very core when I think of the men, women, and children in cities and rural towns across America with a possibility of no access to food, water, or transportation,” he said. “In a matter of weeks or months at most, a worst-case scenario could bring devastation beyond imagination.”

Franks told the Washington Free Beacon that while the nation’s critical defense assets, including nuclear defense capabilities, are currently protected against an EMP, the civilian grid is “almost entirely vulnerable.”

“The civilian grid, in my judgment, is very vulnerable,” he said. “Some of the largest transformers, the very largest ones, have an inherent resistance to all but the more intense electromagnetic pulses. But the fact is, we have enough of those mid-range transformers where a major event would be catastrophic.”

To protect the civilian grid against an EMP event, Franks has introduced H.R. 3410, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which would enable the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement practical steps to protect the electric grid.

Dr. Michael J. Frankel, a senior scientist at Pennsylvania State University, said Franks’ bill is a “necessary first step” for the defense of the electric grid. The bill currently has 19 cosponsors.

The issue is an urgent one, said Dr. Peter Pry, a member of the Congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, who testified that an EMP event could wipe out 90 percent of America’s population.

“Natural EMP from a geomagnetic super-storm, like the1859 Carrington Event or 1921 Railroad Storm, and nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013, are both existential threats that could kill 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse,” he said.

Subcommittee Vice Chairman Scott Perry (R., Pa.) said that America’s adversaries may already have the ability to launch an EMP attack, which could be achieved by dropping a nuclear warhead miles above the electric grid.

“Currently the nations of Russia and China have the technology to launch an EMP attack, and we have speculated that Iran and North Korea may be developing EMP weapon technology,” Perry said. “This is why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to mitigate the effects of an EMP attack.”

Franks told the Free Beacon that Americans are unaware of the devastation that would occur if the country experienced a solar storm similar to the Carrington Event. Named after British astronomer Richard Carrington, Carrington is the biggest solar storm on record, and took place in 1859.

“If a Carrington event happened now, it’s an unthinkable, almost cataclysmic event,” Franks said. “What people don’t realize, we’re so used to things we think, ‘Oh, well power goes down for a week and it usually comes back up.’ And most of the reason it does is because of a lightning storm. Well, lightning is EMP. Lightning is E2.”

“We have put a lot of hardware-based protections against lightning over our grid installations,” he continued. “Even so, we still once in a while have some extended damage for a few days. But it almost always comes back.”

“The thing that people don’t realize is it’s the length of the blackout that begins to make it dangerous,” Franks said. “Everybody thinks, ‘Oh, well we’ll go outside and we’ll build a campfire and we’ll have a nice evening at home, we’ll break out the candles, it’ll be nice.’ A couple of days like that is okay. A week like that might be okay.”

“But you start looking at two or three months, you start looking at a very dangerous and unthinkable scenario in a society that is as dependent on electric supply as we are.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/hearing-electric-grid-vulnerable-to-emp/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #32 on: May 18, 2014, 02:27:40 pm »

Congress: Save yourselves if grid fails
Experts warn EMP event could wipe out 90% of U.S. population


The lack of congressional action on critical infrastructure legislation is hampering national preparation for a natural or man-made electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event that could kill 90 percent of the U.S. population due to starvation, disease and societal collapse, charges an expert on the threat.

Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the congressional advisory Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, contends that the failure to pass the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, or CIPA, is preventing action at the federal, state and local levels to protect the nation from a catastrophic EMP event.

Pry has warned that a natural or nuclear EMP event could black out the national electric grid for months or years and collapse all of the other critical infrastructures essential to sustain a modern society and the lives of 310 million Americans.

The critical infrastructures include communications, transportation, banking, finance, food, water and emergency services.

Pry calls passage of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act to create a new National Planning Scenario focused on the EMP threat “urgently necessary.”

“As the National Planning Scenarios are the basis for all federal, state and local emergency planning, training and resource allocation, an EMP National Planning Scenario would immediately and significantly improve national preparedness for an EMP catastrophe,” he said.

Pry is referring to some 15 National Planning Scenarios maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, each of which outline procedures to act in the event of various catastrophes, such as flooding, hurricanes and even terrorism.

However, EMP is not one of the 15 National Planning Scenarios.

“Thousands of emergency planners and first-responders at the federal, state and local level want to protect our nation and their states and communities from EMP threat,” Pry said. “But they are seriously hindered and even prohibited from doing so, because the EMP threat is not among the 15 canonical National Planning Scenarios used by the Department of Homeland Security.”

Pry pointed out that the federal government, particularly the Department of Defense and the intelligence community, has known about the EMP threat for more than 50 years.

Yet, the EMP threat has only come to the attention of most policymakers and the public relatively recently.

Such a concern only began to come to the public’s attention in unclassified reports in 2004 and 2008 by the congressionally mandated EMP Commission. The panel determined that the secrecy surrounding an EMP event was a greater threat to the nation than revelations of its destructive nature to the U.S. electrical grid system and the life-sustaining critical infrastructures.

Pry said that passage of the CIPA, introduced by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., would “immediately mobilize thousands of emergency planners and first responders at all levels of government and educated millions of others, about EMP and how to prepare for it.”

Franks is chairman of the Congressional EMP Caucus and is considered to be one of the leading experts in Congress on EMP.

Pry said the threat of an EMP event is increasing, whether from a natural geomagnetic superstorm or a high-altitude nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, such as North Korea, which during the nuclear crisis in 2013.

Pry and other experts have pointed out that the sun is going through its most intense solar storm maximum, which occurs every 11 years, spewing solar flares from its surface into space. Some of these flares can be from 14 to 20 times the size of the Earth.

If there is a direct hit on earth by one of these flares, for example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has projected that the damage to the U.S. alone would be more than $2 trillion in the first year. It would affect some 90 percent of the U.S. population, and the nation would take anywhere from four to 10 years to recover, if ever.

Because of its greater reliance on these critical infrastructures for survival, urban centers could be all but wiped out, EMP experts say.

In addition, there is the threat of an EMP from a manmade high-altitude nuclear explosion that would affect the U.S. population over a wide geographic area, well beyond anything that local utilities would be able to handle.

Pry said North Korea appears to be developing nuclear weapons that are not large in kilotons but are designed to emit more gamma rays, which he calls a “super-EMP” bomb.

North Korea also has demonstrated the ability to place vehicles into orbit. Such a device could be a nuclear weapon capable of orbiting Earth and detonating over large, populated areas.

Following its nuclear tests in December 2012, Pyongyang began to threaten the U.S. with pre-emptive nuclear strikes and published videos showing nuclear attacks on New York City and Washington.

Because the federal government hasn’t taken national action to date to confront an EMP event, various states now are trying to do something about it, but action is slow and not consistent.

“Passage of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act would immediately help states that are frustrated with lack of action on EMP in Washington and are trying to launch initiatives protecting their electrical grids from EMP, as is being attempted now in Maine, Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida,” Pry said.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/congress-save-yourselves-if-grid-fails/print/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #33 on: May 19, 2014, 12:09:45 pm »

Prepping 101: EMP Attack – Electro-Magnetic Pulse – Natural & Nuclear

ear is among the most driving of all human emotions. When you fear something, it is very easy to take advantage of the requisite call to action inside of you. That was the original point of this prepping and survival series, to cut through all of the crap the fear mongers are trying to sell us and get to the heart of long-term survival in the face of a genuine collapse, which many of us believe is somewhat imminent.

There is a lot of banter about the fall of the dollar and a collapse of our financial system, but historically, governments and the bankers who control them don’t let that stuff happen. They start a war instead. And an easy way to start such a war would be to burst a nuke 250 miles into space, creating what is called an EMP, or Electro-Magnetic Pulse. By available information and hypothesis, such an event would be devastating to our electrical grid, thereby cutting off our ability to talk, tweet and post poorly produced YouTube videos about any financial crisis, thereby allowing them to keep us enslaved to debt, totally hush hush.

An EMP would, at least theoretically, isolate us from one another. Every man for himself, totally cut off from help and from helping others. Our cars supposedly won’t work. The electric grid could be down for as many as 10 years. No cell phone service, no Internet, blah blah blah. Even the Discovery Channel did an EMP documentary, and a lot of what you see and read out there is just plain wrong, or at best it is poorly researched and largely theoretical. To create an actual EMP on the scale of Armageddon is impossible today, for reasons that I’ll get to. And though we can speculate using available data as to what the actual effects of an EMP would be, at best it is a guess. At the end of the day, prepping for EMP survival is not really different from prepping for the fall of the petro dollar, or the eruption of Yellowstone or little green men (or tall white ones) taking over the world. Water, food, shelter, security, medicine, communications and all the other issues we’ll be talking about in this series matter, and you should get started right away.

lots of charts: http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/prepping-101-emp-attack-natural-nuclear/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #34 on: May 28, 2014, 07:39:36 am »

If the grid fails, will you die?
Exclusive: Patrice Lewis examines possible aftermaths of long-term power failure


Every so often WND runs an article about the possible repercussions of a long-term power grid failure due to an EMP or a massive solar flare. The articles usually run along the lines of the inherent vulnerability of our national grid, and what the societal impact would be should the power go down. It’s worth adding that WND is one of the few news organizations which routinely covers this possibility.

These articles are interesting, as much for their content as for the comments that follow. It astounds me – absolutely flabbergasts me – how few people understand what life would be like without electricity. I’m not talking about losing power in your home – we all do, from time to time. I’m talking about losing power on a national scale for the long term.

It seems too many people are flippant or dismissive of the potential hardships. “An electromagnetic pulse is a joke and would be minor at best,” notes one person. “I say that because most people know how to survive without all the modern conveniences.”

Or, “We’d go back to the 1800s. Big deal. People lived just fine in the 1800s.”

I’m not here to argue about the odds of an EMP taking out the grid. I’m not going to discuss the technicalities of Faraday cages or the hardening of electronics. I’m here to state that if you think life in America without electricity will merely revert us to pioneer days, you are dead wrong (no pun intended, I hope). We wouldn’t regress to the 1800s; we would regress to the 1100s or earlier. Life would become a bitter, brutal struggle for survival.

Society thrived in the 1800s for four very simple reasons: 1) a non-electric infrastructure already existed; 2) people had the skills, knowledge and tools to make do; 3) our population levels were far lower, and most people lived rural and raised a significant portion of their own food; and 4) there were relatively few people who didn’t earn their way. To be blunt, if you didn’t work, you seldom ate. Those who couldn’t work (the disabled, the elderly, etc.) were cared for by family members or charitable institutions. There were no other options.

Learn how to achieve a simple lifestyle without “going green” or joining a monastery. Read Patrice Lewis’ helpful book, “The Simplicity Primer: 365 Ideas for Making Life more Livable”

These conditions no longer exist. Homes do not come equipped with outhouses, hand water pumps and a trained horse stabled in the back. Many people don’t have the faintest clue how to cook from scratch, much less grow or raise their own food. Eighty percent of Americans live in cities and are fed by less than 2 percent of the population, which means farmers must mass-produce food for shipments to cities. And there are far too many people on multi-generational entitlement programs who literally know no other lifestyle except an endless cycle of EBT cards and welfare payments.

Additionally, the interconnectivity that exists in today’s society is complex beyond belief. It’s been proven again and again that a single weak link can bring down the whole chain. A trucker’s strike or a massive storm at one end of the country can mean interrupted food deliveries at the other end.

Even the most humble object – a pencil, for example – has a pedigree of such unimaginable complexity that its manufacture requires the cooperation of millions, and not one single person on the planet knows how to make one from start to finish. Read this essay to see what I mean. How much more complex would it be to rebuild a fallen electrical grid than a pencil?

And yet some people claim that a grid-down situation will be a minor inconvenience. They think that because they line-dry their clothes and have a few tomatoes on their patio, that they’ll be able to survive a situation in which all services cease. They think food production and distribution is somehow independent of fuel and electricity. In fact, it’s intimately connected. Ever try to till a 3,500-acre wheat field by horse-drawn plow? Shut off power and you shut off food. Period.

Some people contemptuously dismiss the hardships that would ensue after grid-down by noting that we already posses the know-how for technological and medical advances. We know how to treat or cure illness and injury. We know how to provide electrical power. We know how to make engines. Therefore, it will be easy to rebuild America’s infrastructure in the event of a grid-down situation.

And these people are right – we do possess the knowledge. What we would lack is the infrastructure to rebuild the infrastructure. We lack the stop-gap services that would allow engineers and manufacturers to rebuild society without facing starvation first. And if the people with the specialized knowledge to rebuild die off in the interim before the infrastructure gets rebuilt, then where will we be?

America’s connectivity, more than anything else, will cripple our society should the power fail. It’s all well and good for a surgeon to have the knowledge of how to operate on a cancerous tumor, but if sterile scalpels and anesthesia and dressings and other surgical accouterments are not available, the surgeon’s abilities regress almost to the point of a tribal witch doctor by the lack of infrastructure, services and supplies.

In short, society is no longer (if it ever was) comprised of self-sufficient and autonomous individuals who can shear their own sheep, weave their own cloth, grow and preserve their own food, manufacture their own tools, doctor their own illnesses, accept death at a young age and otherwise live without outside services. Instead, we’re all soft, specialized cogs in a wheel of dependency powered by electricity. If we lose electricity, we will break into millions of lost, useless, bewildered and starving pieces of organic material. Cheery thought, eh?

None of this is to say an EMP is likely or will have the repercussions that some people claim. My point is that if – if – a grid-down situation ever happens for whatever reason, we won’t be reverting to the 1800s. We will be reverting to the brutal conditions preceding the early Middle Ages, at least. The oopsy-daisy notion that America without power will merely revert us to a jolly pioneer lifestyle is naïve, idealistic and immature. This is why it’s theorized that 90 percent of Americans would die in the aftermath of a grid-down situation: They’re not capable of surviving.

For a host of reasons, I firmly believe everyone should become preppers and stockpile beans, bullets and Band-Aids. But more importantly, stockpile a relationship with your Savior. You may not survive a grid-down scenario, but you can survive in the Lord. It’s the best strategy on the planet and utterly immune to a failing grid.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/05/if-the-grid-fails-will-you-die/print/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #35 on: July 11, 2014, 10:39:35 am »

Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now

Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from huge blasts of deadly solar radiation, has been weakening over the past six months, according to data collected by a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite array called Swarm.

The biggest weak spots in the magnetic field — which extends 370,000 miles (600,000 kilometers) above the planet's surface — have sprung up over the Western Hemisphere, while the field has strengthened over areas like the southern Indian Ocean, according to the magnetometers onboard the Swarm satellites — three separate satellites floating in tandem.

The scientists who conducted the study are still unsure why the magnetic field is weakening, but one likely reason is that Earth's magnetic poles are getting ready to flip, said Rune Floberghagen, the ESA's Swarm mission manager. In fact, the data suggest magnetic north is moving toward Siberia.

"Such a flip is not instantaneous, but would take many hundred if not a few thousand years," Floberghagen told Live Science. "They have happened many times in the past."[50 Amazing Facts About Planet Earth]

Scientists already know that magnetic north shifts. Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner.

Floberghagen hopes that more data from Swarm will shed light on why the field is weakening faster now.
View gallery
Earth's Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster …
Changes measured by the Swarm satellite over the past 6 months shows that Earth's magnetic field …

Still, there is no evidence that a weakened magnetic field would result in a doomsday for Earth. During past polarity flips there were no mass extinctions or evidence of radiation damage. Researchers think power grids and communication systems would be most at risk.

Earth's magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds. The field exists because Earth has a giant ball of iron at its core surrounded by an outer layer of molten metal. Changes in the core's temperature and Earth's rotation boil and swirl the liquid metal around in the outer core, creating magnetic field lines.

The movement of the molten metal is why some areas of the magnetic field strengthen while others weaken, Florberghagen said. When the boiling in one area of the outer core slows down, fewer currents of charged particles are released, and the magnetic field over the surface weakens.

"The flow of the liquid outer core almost pulls the magnetic field around with it," Floberghagen said. "So, a field weakening over the American continent would mean that the flow in the outer core below America is slowing down."

The Swarm satellites not only pick up signals coming from the Earth's magnetic field, but also from its core, mantle, crust and oceans. Scientists at the ESA hope to use the data to make navigation systems that rely on the magnetic field, such as aircraft instruments, more accurate, improve earthquake predictions and pinpoint areas below the planet's surface that are rich in natural resources. Scientists think fluctuations in the magnetic field could help identify where continental plates are shifting and help predict earthquakes.

These first results from Swarm were presented at the Third Swarm Science Meeting in Denmark on June 19.

http://news.yahoo.com/earths-magnetic-field-weakening-10-times-faster-now-121247349.html
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #36 on: November 07, 2014, 06:57:47 am »

Sunspots facing Earth may trigger blackouts

A new group of sunspots that has come into view of Earth has the attention of the US Space Weather Prediction Centre.

The area, referred to as 2205, spat out an x-ray flare that produced a moderate radio blackout today, according to the centre's website. Earlier this week, it let loose several coronal mass ejections, explosions of magnetic fields and plasma from the sun's atmosphere that can knock out power grids and disrupt navigational systems.

Most of the material in today's flare, along with the earlier eruptions, was pointed away from Earth, thus sparing the planet severe storms.

"We're kind of seeing a bit of resurgence now," said Robert Rutledge, lead operations at the centre. "The sun is making a second run at us."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sunspots-facing-earth-may-trigger-blackouts-20141106-11hlp8.html#ixzz3IO40mtOR


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #37 on: December 12, 2014, 12:32:25 pm »

DHS: 100 Million Americans Could Lose Power in Major Sun Storm
Document says FEMA unsure of damage to grid from magnetic storm


Millions of Americans face catastrophic loss of electrical power during a future magnetic space storm that will disrupt the electric grid and cause cascading infrastructure failures, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document.

DHS’ Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stated in an internal 2012 fact sheet outlining its response plan for severe “space weather” that the actual impact and damage from a future solar storm is not known.

“An analysis of the space weather impacts indicates that the greatest challenge will be to provide life-saving and life-sustaining resources for large numbers of people that experience long-term power outage from damage to the U.S. electrical grid,” the FEMA document, dated March 1, 2012, states.

The FEMA fact sheet noted the findings of a 2010 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency that monitors sun storms, warning that an extreme solar storm could leave “130 million people without power for years,” and destroy or damage more than 300 hard-to-replace electrical grid transformers.

Major solar storms are rare. Two major solar disruption events took place in 1859 and 1921, times when electricity was less prevalent than today.

The study said a future solar storm like the great magnetic storm of May 1921 would black out most states east of the Mississippi River along with most states in the Pacific Northwest.

The long-term loss of electrical power likely would produce catastrophic loss of life.

However, the FEMA document disputed that worst-case scenario, noting that in 2011 DHS experts were “not convinced” about the dire consequences outlined in the earlier study.

Still, DHS scientists in 2011 warned that the U.S. electric grid remains vulnerable to damage from an extreme geomagnetic storm. The scientists said the extent of damage to high-voltage transformers from a space storm “are not well known” and the matter needs further study, the report says.

“Based on an analysis of many space weather studies, there does not appear to be specific agreement among space weather and electric industry experts regarding space weather impacts on the U.S. electric grid,” the document says, adding that there is “general agreement among the experts that extreme geomagnetic storms could have significantly damaging impacts on the U.S. electric grid.”

Space weather is defined as conditions on the Sun, in space, in the earth’s magnetic field, and upper atmosphere that impact space and ground technological systems and can “endanger human life on earth,” the report says.

The report outlines the scenario for a major “coronal mass ejection” from the Sun that will first be detected by U.S. satellites. The magnetic band reaches the earth within 24 to 72 hours, affecting up to 100 million people.

The largest such storms, called G-5s, would cause transformers and transmission lines to be “severely damaged.”

The storms last from hours to a day but can disrupt electric power grid operations, GPS satellites, aircraft operations, manned space flight, satellite operations, natural gas distribution pipelines, and undersea communications cables.

GPS satellites could be disrupted causing them to produce false positioning information.

“The extreme geomagnetic space weather event will cause widespread power outages to a large number of people (approximately 100 million people) in a multi-region, multi-state area of the U.S. due to geomagnetic induced currents damaging EHV transformers, especially along coastal regions,” the report says.

Power losses may cause spiraling failures that could lead to loss of systems that control water and wastewater systems, perishable foods and medications, lighting and air conditioning, computer, telephone and communications systems, public transportation, and fuel distribution.

After the magnetic storm passes in some 36 hours, power will be restarted and within 36 hours up to 65 million will regain electric power.

By two weeks, after damaged equipment is replaced or repaired, another 25 million people will have power restored.

However, the report indicates that it would take up to two months to repair or replace damaged electrical power equipment for the remaining 10 million people over six states.

Mark Sauter, an adviser to security companies and coauthor of the textbook Homeland Security: A Complete Guide, said severe space weather poses a major homeland security challenge.

“It occurs rarely, can’t be predicted, full protection is impossibly expensive and the potential impact ranges from inconvenient to cataclysmic,” said Sauter, who obtained the document under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The released documents indicate DHS/FEMA—with buy-in from the electrical industry and U.S. military—has now settled on a ‘plausible’ planning estimate that 25 million Americans could lose power for two weeks and 10 million could be without power for up to two months—and this estimate, the government admits, is 10 percent of one major outside study,” he said.

Sauter said FEMA’s more-than-200-page response plan for dealing with a solar storm was blacked out from the released documents.

“This makes one wonder why FEMA is refusing to release the government’s space weather response plan,” he said. “How would the government deal with 10 million, or many more, Americans without power for two months, or even longer?”

Sauter questioned whether the government is taking the threat of a major solar storm seriously, or is “just going through an obligatory bureaucratic exercise that in reality reflects DHS/FEMA crossing its fingers and hoping that such a plan will never need to be used.”

“Is FEMA simply worried about alarming the public?” Sauter asked. “For example, advice on the DHS Web site urges citizens to disconnect appliances and avoid using the phone during a space weather emergency, but doesn’t go into how people should survive for two months without electricity.”

Peter Pry, a former CIA official who now heads a group that has warned about the impact on the electric grid of a nuclear detonation-caused blackout from electromagnetic pulse, said a congressional EMP Commission warned several years ago of the threat posed by a geomagnetic super storm.

Such an event “could have catastrophic consequences for civilization,” Pry said.

A similar solar blast like the 1859 Carrington Event could collapse electric grids and life-sustaining critical infrastructures worldwide, putting the lives of billions at risk, he said.

U.S. utilities are unprepared for major solar storms such as the Carrington Event or the 1921 magnetic storm.

“We are running out of time to prepare,” Pry said, noting that NASA reported in July that Earth narrowly missed a second Carrington Event.

Pry said current legislation known as the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA) passed the House last week unanimously and would help protect against natural or manmade EMP.

FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre had no comment on the fact sheet and its outline of the potential damage from a major solar storm

“FEMA constantly monitors and plans for all hazards, and that includes the potential impact from a coronal mass ejection,” he said.

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/dhs-100-million-americans-could-lose-power-in-major-sun-storm/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #38 on: April 09, 2015, 05:54:42 am »

The EMP Threat: All It Would Take Is A Couple Of Explosions To Send America Back To The 1800s

Our entire way of life can be ended in a single day.  And it wouldn’t even take a nuclear war to do it.  All it would take for a rogue nation or terror organization to bring us to our knees is the explosion of a couple well-placed nuclear devices high up in our atmosphere.  The resulting electromagnetic pulses would fry electronics from coast to coast.  Of course this could also be accomplished without any attack.  Scientists tell us that massive solar storms have hit our planet before, and that it is inevitable that there will be more in the future.  As you will read about below, the most recent example of this was “the Carrington Event” in 1859.  If a similar burst from the sun hit us today, experts tell us that life in America could suddenly resemble life in the 1800s, and the economic damage caused could potentially be in the trillions of dollars.  This is one of the greatest potential threats that we are facing as a nation, and yet Barack Obama has essentially done nothing to get us prepared.

The technology necessary to conduct such an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States has become much more accessible in recent years.  According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, even rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran either already have or will soon have the capability to hurt us in this way…

    Rogue nations such as North Korea (and possibly Iran) will soon match Russia and China and have the primary ingredients for an EMP attack: simple ballistic missiles such as Scuds that could be launched from a freighter near our shores; space-launch vehicles able to loft low-earth-orbit satellites; and simple low-yield nuclear weapons that can generate gamma rays and fireballs.

If a successful, large scale EMP attack ever did take place, it would be a catastrophe beyond anything that the United States has ever seen before.  The EMP Commission, which was established by Congress, says that it is likely that most of us would end up dead…

    What would a successful EMP attack look like? The EMP Commission, in 2008, estimated that within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown.

    In 2009 the congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, whose co-chairmen were former Secretaries of Defense William Perry and James Schlesinger, concurred with the findings of the EMP Commission and urged immediate action to protect the electric grid. Studies by the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Intelligence Council reached similar conclusions.

If you are a terrorist, a dictator or a fanatic that is looking for a “killshot” for the United States, those kinds of numbers would certainly get your attention.

And it was recently reported by WND that the Iranian military has already been playing around with such a scenario…

    Peter Vincent Pry, who is executive director of a congressional advisory group called the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, raised the alarm as the agreement is about to be finalized.

    He said U.S. military officials have confirmed such an Iranian plan.

    “Iranian military documents describe such a scenario – including a recently translated Iranian military textbook that endorses nuclear EMP attack against the United States,” Pry wrote in a recent column in Israel’s main online media network, Aruz Sheva.

    “Iran with a small number of nuclear missiles can by EMP attack threaten the existence of modernity and be the death knell of Western principles of international law, humanism and freedom,” he said.

Very chilling stuff.

And of course there are many, many others out there that would love to see the U.S. taken down other than just the Iranians.

Meanwhile, our power grid is far more vulnerable than most Americans would dare to imagine.

In previous articles, I discussed a recent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report which stated the following…

    “Destroy nine interconnection substations and a transformer manufacturer and the entire United States grid would be down for at least 18 months, probably longer.”

Are you starting to get the picture?

Our entire way of life depends upon electricity.  If you take away that electricity, our society is transformed literally overnight.

A successful EMP would be an utter nightmare for this nation.  Just consider what U.S. Representative Scott Perry had to say about a potential attack last year…

    “The consequences of such an attack could be catastrophic; all electronics, power systems, and information systems could be shut down,” Rep. Scott Perry said in prepared remarks during an EMP hearing in May held by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. “This could then cascade into interdependent infrastructures such as water, gas, and telecommunications. While we understand this is an extreme case, we must always be prepared in case a rogue state decides to utilize this technology.”

In essence, suddenly nothing would work and just about everything that we take for granted would suddenly be gone.

In a previous article, I spelled out some of the implications of such an event…

-There would be no heat for your home.
-Water would no longer be pumped into most homes.
-Your computer would not work.
-There would be no Internet.
-Your phones would not work.
-There would be no television.
-There would be no radio.
-ATM machines would be shut down.
-There would be no banking.
-Your debit cards and credit cards would not work.
-Without electricity, most gas stations would not be functioning.
-Most people would be unable to do their jobs without electricity and employment would collapse.
-Commerce would be brought to a standstill.
-Hospitals would not be able to function normally.
-You would quickly start running out of medicine.
-All refrigeration would shut down and frozen foods in our homes and supermarkets would start to go bad.

And as I mentioned above, all of this can happen even without an attack.

A direct hit from a major solar storm can cause the exact same thing.

In fact, NASA says that there is a 12 percent chance that such a storm will hit us during the next ten years…

    NASA is warning that there’s a 12 percent chance an extreme solar storm will hit Earth in the next decade, sending out massive shock waves that would knock out grids across the world.

    The economic impact of this doomsday scenario could exceed $2 trillion — or 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

In recent years, we have been really lucky.

There was a close call in 2012 and another one in 2013.

The following is an excerpt from an upcoming book that I have co-authored with Barbara Fix that will soon be published entitled “Get Prepared Now”…

    Most people have absolutely no idea that the Earth barely missed being fried by a massive EMP burst from the sun in 2012 and in 2013. And earlier in 2014 there was another huge solar storm which would have caused tremendous damage if it had been directed at our planet. If any of those storms would have directly hit us, the result would have been catastrophic. Electrical transformers would have burst into flames, power grids would have gone down and much of our technology would have been fried. In essence, life as we know it would have ceased to exist – at least for a time. These kinds of solar storms have hit the Earth many times before, and experts tell us that it is inevitable that it will happen again. The most famous one happened in 1859, and was known as the Carrington Event. But other than the telegraph, humanity had very little dependence on technology at the time. If another Carrington Event happened today, it would be a complete and utter nightmare. A study by Lloyd’s of London has concluded that it would have taken a $2,600,000,000,000 chunk out of the global economy, and it would take up to a decade to repair the damage. Unfortunately, scientists insist that it is going to happen at some point. The only question is when.

So keep an eye on the sun.

The giant ball of fire that we revolve around has started to behave very erratically, and it has the power to end our way of life at any time.

In fact, scientists tell us that we are about to get hit with a “glancing blow” on April 7th…

    A filament of magnetism stretching halfway across the sun erupted during the late hours of April 4th (22:00-23:00 UT). The eruption split the sun’s atmosphere, hurling a CME into space and creating a “canyon of fire,” shown in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory: The glowing walls of the canyon trace the original channel where the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above the sun’s surface. From end to end, the structure stretches more than 300,000 km–a real Grand Canyon.

    Fragments of the exploding filament formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun at approximately 900 km/s (2 million mph): image. Most of the CME will miss Earth, but not all. The cloud is expected to deliver a a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field could on April 7th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

The event of April 7th is not going to cause us major problems.  But someday there will be a solar storm that will.

Personally, I cannot even imagine what life would be like without electricity.

Because we have become so deeply dependent on technology, most of us would have absolutely no idea how to live without it.

An electromagnetic pulse attack would be one of the fastest ways to cripple America and end the dominance of the United States in world affairs.  And in this day and age, there are hundreds of millions of people around the planet that would love to see that happen.

So to not take steps to protect our power grid from such an attack is very foolish.  But that is precisely what Barack Obama (and presidents before him) have chosen to do.  We have technology which would mitigate the damage from an electromagnetic pulse, but rather than spend the money Obama has decided to just hope that it will never happen.

Up to this point, we have been fortunate.

But someday, our luck may run out.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-emp-threat-all-it-would-take-is-a-couple-of-explosions-to-send-america-back-to-the-1800s
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #39 on: December 22, 2015, 07:03:30 pm »

Iranian hackers breached US power grid to engineer blackouts

Investigation finds outdated cyberdefense for America’s key infrastructure, with attackers lurking, waiting to strike

SaN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Security researcher Brian Wallace was on the trail of hackers who had snatched a California university’s housing files when he stumbled into a larger nightmare: Cyberattackers had opened a pathway into the networks running the United States power grid.

Digital clues pointed to Iranian hackers. And Wallace found that they had already taken passwords, as well as engineering drawings of dozens of power plants, at least one with the title “Mission Critical.” The drawings were so detailed that experts say skilled attackers could have used them, along with other tools and malicious code, to knock out electricity flowing to millions of homes.


Wallace was astonished. But this breach, The Associated Press has found, was not unique.

About a dozen times in the last decade, sophisticated foreign hackers have gained enough remote access to control the operations networks that keep the lights on, according to top experts who spoke only on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter.

The public almost never learns the details about these types of attacks — they’re rarer but also more intricate and potentially dangerous than data theft. Information about the government’s response to these hacks is often protected and sometimes classified; many are never even reported to the government.

These intrusions have not caused the kind of cascading blackouts that are feared by the intelligence community. But so many attackers have stowed away in the systems that run the US electric grid that experts say they likely have the capability to strike at will.

And that’s what worries Wallace and other cybersecurity experts most.

“If the geopolitical situation changes and Iran wants to target these facilities, if they have this kind of information it will make it a lot easier,” said Robert M. Lee, a former US Air Force cyberwarfare operations officer. “It will also help them stay quiet and stealthy inside.”

In 2012 and 2013, in well-publicized attacks, Russian hackers successfully sent and received encrypted commands to US public utilities and power generators; some private firms concluded this was an effort to position interlopers to act in the event of a political crisis. And the Department of Homeland Security announced about a year ago that a separate hacking campaign, believed by some private firms to have Russian origins, had injected software with malware that allowed the attackers to spy on US energy companies.

“You want to be stealth,” said Lillian Ablon, a cybersecurity expert at the RAND Corporation. “That’s the ultimate power, because when you need to do something you are already in place.”

The hackers have gained access to an aging, outdated power system. Many of the substations and equipment that move power across the US are decrepit and were never built with network security in mind; hooking the plants up to the Internet over the last decade has given hackers new backdoors in. Distant wind farms, home solar panels, smart meters and other networked devices must be remotely monitored and controlled, which opens up the broader system to fresh points of attack.

Hundreds of contractors sell software and equipment to energy companies, and attackers have successfully used those outside companies as a way to get inside networks tied to the grid.

Attributing attacks is notoriously tricky. Neither US officials nor cybersecurity experts would or could say if the Islamic Republic of Iran was involved in the attack Wallace discovered involving Calpine Corp., a power producer with 82 plants operating in 18 states and Canada.


 
Private firms have alleged other recent hacks of networks and machinery tied to the US power grid were carried out by teams from within Russia and China, some with governmental support.

‘If we don’t protect the energy sector, we are putting every other sector of the economy in peril.’
Even the Islamic State group is trying to hack American power companies, a top Homeland Security official told industry executives in October.

Homeland Security spokesman SY Lee said that his agency is coordinating efforts to strengthen grid cybersecurity nationwide and to raise awareness about evolving threats to the electric sector through industry trainings and risk assessments. As Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas acknowledged in an interview, however, “we are not where we need to be” on cybersecurity.

That’s partly because the grid is largely privately owned and has entire sections that fall outside federal regulation, which experts argue leaves the industry poorly defended against a growing universe of hackers seeking to access its networks.

As Deputy Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood Randall said in a speech earlier this year, “If we don’t protect the energy sector, we are putting every other sector of the economy in peril.”

The Calpine breach
The AP looked at the vulnerability of the energy grid as part of a yearlong, AP-Associated Press Media Editors examination of the state of the nation’s infrastructure. AP conducted more than 120 interviews and examined dozens of sets of data, government reports and private analyses to gauge whether the industry is prepared to defend against cyberattacks.

The attack involving Calpine is particularly disturbing because the cyberspies grabbed so much, according to interviews and previously unreported documents.

Cybersecurity experts say the breach began at least as far back as August 2013, and could still be going on today.

Calpine spokesman Brett Kerr said the company’s information was stolen from a contractor that does business with Calpine. He said the stolen diagrams and passwords were old — some diagrams dated to 2002 — and presented no threat, though some outside experts disagree.

Kerr would not say whether the configuration of the power plants’ operations networks — also valuable information — remained the same as when the intrusion occurred, or whether it was possible the attackers still had a foothold.

According to the AP investigation, the hackers got:

—User names and passwords that could be used to connect remotely to Calpine’s networks, which were being maintained by a data security company. Even if some of the information was outdated, experts say skilled hackers could have found a way to update the passwords and slip past firewalls to get into the operations network. Eventually, they say, the intruders could shut down generating stations, foul communications networks and possibly cause a blackout near the plants.

—Detailed engineering drawings of networks and power stations from New York to California — 71 in all — showing the precise location of devices that communicate with gas turbines, boilers and other crucial equipment attackers would need to hack specific plants.

—Additional diagrams showing how those local plants transmit information back to the company’s virtual cloud, knowledge attackers could use to mask their activity. For example, one map shows how information flows from the Agnews power plant in San Jose, California, near the San Francisco 49ers football stadium, to the company headquarters in Houston.

Wallace first came across the breach while tracking a new strain of noxious software that had been used to steal student housing files at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“I saw a mention in our logs that the attackers stored their malware in some FTP servers online,” said Wallace, who had recently joined the Irvine, Calif.-based cybersecurity firm Cylance, Inc., fresh out of college. “It wasn’t even my job to look into it, but I just thought there had to be something more there.”

Wallace started digging. Soon, he found the FTP servers, typically used to transfer large numbers of files back and forth across the Internet, and the hackers’ ill-gotten data — a tranche of more than 19,000 stolen files from thousands of computers across the world, including key documents from Calpine.

Before Wallace could dive into the files, his first priority was to track where the hackers would strike next — and try to stop them.

‘It wasn’t even my job to look into it, but I just thought there had to be something more there.’
He started staying up nights, often jittery on Red Bull, to reverse-engineer malware. He waited to get pinged that the intruders were at it again.

Months later, Wallace got the alert: From Internet Protocol addresses in Tehran, the hackers had deployed TinyZbot, a Trojan horse-style of software that the attackers used to gain backdoor access to their targets, log their keystrokes and take screen shots of their information. The hacking group, he would find, included members in the Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The more he followed their trail, the more nervous Wallace got. According to Cylance, the intruders had launched digital offensives that netted information about Pakistan International Airlines, the Mexican oil giant Pemex, the Israel Institute of Technology and Navy Marine Corps Intranet, a legacy network of the US military. None of the four responded to AP’s request for comment.

Then he discovered evidence of the attackers’ most terrifying heist — a folder containing dozens of engineers’ diagrams of the Calpine power plants.

According to multiple sources, the drawings contained user names and passwords that an intruder would need to break through a firewall separating Calpine’s communications and operations networks, then move around in the network where the turbines are controlled. The schematics also displayed the locations of devices inside the plants’ process control networks that receive information from power-generating equipment. With those details, experts say skilled hackers could have penetrated the operations network and eventually shut down generating stations, possibly causing a blackout.

Snippets of Persian comments in the code helped investigators conclude that Iran was the source of the attacks.
Cylance researchers said the intruders stored their stolen goods on seven unencrypted FTP servers requiring no authentication to access details about Calpine’s plants. Jumbled in the folders was code that could be used to spread malware to other companies without being traced back to the attackers’ computers, as well as handcrafted software designed to mask that the Internet Protocol addresses they were using were in Iran.

Circumstantial evidence such as snippets of Persian comments in the code helped investigators conclude that Iran was the source of the attacks.

Calpine didn’t know its information had been compromised until it was informed by Cylance, Kerr said.

Iranian UN Mission spokesman Hamid Babaei did not return calls or address questions emailed by AP.

Cylance notified the FBI, which warned the US energy sector in an unclassified bulletin last December that a group using Iran-based IP addresses had targeted the industry.

Whether there was any connection between the Iranian government and the individual hackers who Wallace traced — with the usernames parviz, Alireza, Kaj, Salman Ghazikhani and Bahman Mohebbi — is unclear.

A ‘lucrative’ target
Cyberattacks designed to steal information are steadily growing in scope and frequency; there have been high-profile hacks of Target, eBay and federal targets such as the US Office of Personnel Management. But assaults on the power grid and other critical infrastructure aim to go a step further.

Trained, well-funded adversaries can gain control of physical assets — power plants, substations and transmission equipment. With extensive control, they could knock out the electricity vital to daily life and the economy, and endanger the flow of power to mass transportation, military installations and home refrigerators.

In the summer of 2014, a hacker of unknown origin, using masking software called Tor, took over the controls of a large utility’s wind farm, according to a former industry compliance official who reviewed a report that was scrubbed of the utility’s name. The hacker then changed an important setting, called the automatic voltage regulator, from “automatic” to “manual,” he said.

That seemingly simple change to any power plant can damage the generator and destabilize parts of the nearby grid if the plant’s output is high enough.

Last year, Homeland Security released several maps that showed a virtual hit list of critical infrastructure, including two substations in the San Francisco Bay area, water and gas pipelines and a refinery. And according to a previously reported study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a coordinated attack on just nine critical power stations could cause a coast-to-coast blackout that could last months, far longer than the one that plunged the Northeast into darkness in 2003.

“The grid is a tough target, but a lucrative target,” said Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency who now runs a cybersecurity firm. The number of sophisticated attacks is growing, he said. “There is a constant, steady upbeat. I see a rising tide.”

No one claims that it would be easy to bring down the grid. To circumvent companies’ security, adversaries must understand the networks well enough to write code that can communicate with tiny computers that control generators and other major equipment. Even then, it’s difficult to cause a widespread blackout because the grid is designed to keep electricity flowing when equipment or lines go down, an almost daily occurrence that customers never see.

Because it would take such expertise to plunge a city or region into darkness, some say threats to the grid are overstated — in particular, by those who get paid to help companies protect their networks. Still, even those who said the risks of cyber threats can be exaggerated agree it is possible for cyberattackers to cause a large-scale blackout.

And nearly everyone agrees that there are weaknesses that open the door to malefactors.

Traditional central power stations and transmission systems include equipment that is decades old and physically unable to handle electronic threats. Some run on machines that use software that is so old that malware protections don’t exist, such as Windows ’95 and FORTRAN, a programming language developed in the 1950s.

At the Tennessee Valley Authority, a corporation owned by the federal government that powers 9 million households in the southeastern US, a former operations security expert said in recent years he saw passwords for some key operating systems stored on sticky notes.

“Some of the control systems boot off of floppy disks,” said Patrick Miller, who has evaluated hydroelectric dam cybersecurity for the US Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. “Some dams have modeling systems that run on something that looks like a washing machine hooked up to tape spools. It looks like the early NASA stuff that went to the moon.”

The rush to tie smart meters, home programmable thermostats and other smart appliances to the grid also is causing fresh vulnerabilities.

About 45 percent of homes in the US are hooked up to a smart meter, which measures electricity usage and shares information with the grid. The grid uses that information to adjust output or limit power deliveries to customers during peak hours.

Those meters are relatively simple by design, mostly to keep their cost low, but their security is flimsy. Some can be hacked by plugging in an adapter that costs $30 on eBay, researchers say.

FERC recently raised concerns about another area that is not covered by federal cybersecurity rules: contractors that sell energy companies software and equipment. As is evident from the Calpine incident, attackers have used outside companies to pull off hacks against energy companies.

“We’ve got these vulnerable systems out there that are old and never had security built into them, and now we’re exposing them to a wider audience,” said Justin Lowe, a utility cybersecurity expert at PA Consulting Group.

“That wider audience is getting much more hostile.”

Defending the grid
The full extent of the attacks on the grid is not public knowledge. A Freedom of Information Act request by the AP for information regarding any FBI investigations of such hacks was not fulfilled. The Department of Justice said that agency kept no record of how often any such cases had been prosecuted.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the reliability of the electrical sector, collects information about cyber incidents involving utilities and other users, owners, and operators of the bulk power system — but it is scrubbed of identifying information and details are confidential and exempt from disclosure under FOIA.

Authorities say they take the threat seriously. In response to a FOIA request, Homeland Security said it had helped more than 100 energy and chemical companies improve their cyber defenses, and held both classified and unclassified briefings in June 2013 and late 2014 on threats to companies associated with power grid operations.

A small DHS team compiles statistics about hacks and vulnerabilities on control systems powering the grid and other public infrastructure, and responds to some attacks. But former federal employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was sensitive said government red tape kept the team from thoroughly responding to the smaller municipal and rural utilities that most needed their help, and that the statistics overstated the agency’s grasp of the problem.

The companies themselves say they are vigilant — though they caution no fortifications are foolproof.

Early this year, an operations supervisor in Virginia for a subsidiary of American Electric Power — the nation’s largest power grid operator, with operations in 38 states — opened a personal email on a company laptop and unwittingly downloaded a piece of malware called CryptoLocker.

Known as “ransomware,” CryptoLocker is a relatively common type of malware that reaches to outside servers, usually overseas, and downloads encryption instructions that scramble a computer’s contents, making them inaccessible to anyone without a specific “key.” The malware then moves through a computer — and computer network — and encrypts all the files it can, keeping users from accessing anything.

In exchange for a fee, the hackers provide the victim a key that allows the files to be unlocked.

Members of AEP’s cyber-security team — housed in the company’s Columbus, Ohio, headquarters behind an unmarked door that unlocks with a fingerprint scanner — saw the strange network behavior as soon as it started.

“When you see this (code) attempting to hit thousands of systems outside of the AEP network, that’s a ‘holy crap’ moment,” said Sean Parcel, AEP’s lead cyberinvestigator.

Had CryptoLocker wormed its way into AEP’s system, the business and operations networks could have locked up, experts say.

But Parcel said AEP’s cyberteam already had blocked the foreign addresses that the malware needed to reach to start encrypting files, part of a policy of systematically blocking hundreds of Internet Protocol addresses each week to keep employees from inadvertently downloading malicious code.

AEP said the team remotely isolated and erased the supervisor’s computer before its systems were affected.

Like most big utilities, AEP’s power plants, substations and other vital equipment are managed by a network that is separated from the company’s business software with layers of authentication, and is not accessible via the Internet. Creating that separation, and making sure that separation is maintained, is among the most important things utilities can do to protect the grid’s physical assets.

But cybersecurity experts say the protective gaps between computer systems that manage utilities’ business operations and machines that manage their grids are not always as wide or as unbridgeable as utilities say they are. And even the utilities’ own experts, who maintain it would be extraordinarily difficult for a hacker to knock out power to customers, admit there is always a way in.

“If the motivation is high enough on the attacker side, and they have funding to accomplish their mission,” Parcel said, “they will find a way.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-hackers-breached-us-power-grid-to-engineer-blackouts/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #40 on: January 18, 2016, 09:29:30 pm »

CHANCE OF STORMS: On Jan. 15th, a magnetic filament in the sun's southern hemisphere exploded. Debris from the blast formed a CME that could sideswipe Earth's magnetic on Jan. 19. NOAA forecasters say there is a 45% chance of minor geomagnetic storms when the storm cloud arrives. Arctic sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Monday and Tuesday nights.

http://www.spaceweather.com/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #41 on: March 20, 2016, 06:42:52 pm »

This Scenario Could Be 'More Horrific Than All Hollywood Disaster Movies Combined' - Experts Warn Of Modern Civilization Stopped 'In An Instant' - Could Be 'Beyond Cataclysmic For The Planet Earth'

Imagine an America in a permanent blackout, without electric power, without communications, without mass transportation, without banking and finance, without food and water. Imagine the machinery of modern civilization stopped--in an instant. Imagine the high-tech EMP threat killing millions of people the old fashioned way, through chaos, starvation, disease, and societal collapse. Sound impossible? The EMP threat is as real as the nuclear weapons programs of Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. Dr. Peter Vincent Pry - Electric Armageddon

All News Pipeline has reached out to Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, the Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, after receiving an alarming lead from Donald L. Merker who sends out a regular EMagazine and is a very concerned ANP reader who warns us that even 'preppers' likely wouldn't survive (for long) an EMP that takes down Americas power grid. In fact, Donald warns, all of life on Earth would probably be extinguished within an unknown period of time due to 'China Syndromes' all across the country with the possibility of every nuclear power plant in America going into meltdown mode. If you'd like to get Donald's free EMagazine several times a week, you can email him directly at donald.merker@gmail.com to be put on his mailing list.

More than 5 years after the catastrophic earthquake in Japan on March 11th, 2011 led to the devastating tsunami that leveled the Fukushima nuclear power plant, there still is no stop to the endless radiation flowing into the sea and into our atmosphere. All across the Pacific Ocean and West Coasts of America and Canada and up into Alaska we've seen the signs left behind as wildlife has perished in huge numbers as the food chain dies off as documented in many different stories on ANP, ENENews and several other alternative news websites.

However, if we think that what we are witnessing now due to Fukushima's meltdown is bad, we haven't seen anything yet and as we learn in this story, if an EMP were to strike America, 'China Syndromes' all across the country could soon wipe out the remaining 10% of human life that wasn't extinguished initially by the after-effects of the EMP itself within the first year. In fact, some experts believe that such a scenario might be responsible for extinguishing all of life on the planet Earth as the fallout from the meltdown of ALL of our nuclear power plants soon spreads worldwide. As we've seen in Fukushima, very little can be done to stop the meltdown process at nuclear power plants once they get out of control.

Sadly, since very little to nothing is being done about hardening our electrical grid against the effects of an EMP despite warnings going out from many different experts, including Dr. Pry and many other experts as seen in this letter to President Barack Obama, we have to ask, is this neglect of America's biggest achilles heal intentional? In fact, Investor's Business Daily penned a story back in March of 2015 asking if Obama was INVITING an emp attack upon America by Iran.   

The signs of something bad coming are all around us; back in May of 2015, Newsmax told us NORAD had returned to Cheyenne Mountain while warning of a possible future EMP attack. Cheyenne Mountain is an enormous bunker in a hollowed-out mountain that can resist an EMP. In October of 2015, US News and World Report ran a story telling us why building defenses against a possible EMP had never been more important, and telling us we needed to stop ignoring it...yet the threat continues to be ignored at the highest levels.

In the month of March 2016 alone we've read more stories of warning: from Dr. Pry who shares that the Obama administrations 'willful blindness' to the threats we face amount to 'denial, obfuscation and impotence'; from SHTFPlan who took a look at what happens to nuclear power plants after an EMP; from Ready Nutrition who gives us a huge list of what we can do to minimize the effects of exposure to radiation should nuclear plants in America melt down; and from E. Michael Maloof at WND who gives us what America needs now, some possible answers and solutions.

Telling us experts are eyeing US space-based defenses, Maloof also warns "we've been down this road before and should draw on lessons learned a quarter century ago." Yet, we do not seem to learn despite North Korea and Iran launching missiles into space recently capable of carrying an EMP that could truly lead to 'Electrical Armageddon' as also shared in the 2nd video below, a documentary called "Electrical Armageddon" and featuring many EMP experts including Dr. Pry. You can see the full 'Initiatives To Achieve Preparedness Against An Electromagnetic Pulse' document put out by the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security embedded below the videos at the bottom of this story. In the 1st video below, Dr. William Forstchen describes the horrific events that would take place if an EMP is detonated above the US.

Across America there are over 100 nuclear power plants with more in Canada and Mexico. Imagine a situation in which all US plants nearly simultaneously began to melt down after power across the nation is completely knocked out due to either a natural EMP from the sun or an attack upon our electrical grid by North Korea, Iran, China or any other country capable of delivering such a weapon.

The mere fact that North Korea has threatened to 'wipe out America all at once' while Thursday, they conducted another ballistic missile test, firing a missile into the sea tell us they're not thinking about what would really happen should they decide to go through with such an attack. We also reported on March 14th that Iran was firing a rocket into space this weekend that was capable of carrying an EMP. Are all of Americas enemies that prepared to die as well?

We thank Dr. Pry for responding to ANP and as we learn in the 3 books on EMP that he has authored and we have linked here from Amazon: Electric Armageddon, Apocalypse Unknown and Blackout Wars, the dangers we face are very real. All 3 books detail the unthinkable and what we can do as families, communities and states to give ourselves a small chance to survive such a future event. Unfortunately, the total meltdowns of nuclear power plants across the country could lead to a worldwide scenario of what we're seeing now unfolding upon our West Coast and throughout the Pacific Ocean.

According to End Times Prophecy Watch, in the year of 2016 alone there have been 128 known mass animal deaths spread across 45 countries in the 1st two 1/2 months of the year. While all of these deaths can't be directly contributed to Fukushima, the lists maintained by this website since 2011 are extensive and well documented with links to every event. Keep in mind, Fukushima was one event; imagine the damage that might be caused by 100+ nuclear power plants melting down, all across the country nearly all at once, and at a time when life everywhere was stressed anyways due to the loss of electrical power. You can check out the mass animal deaths each year between 2011 and 2015 here.:

See MASS ANIMAL DEATHS 2015 for the 2015 list.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/mass-animal-deaths-2015.html

See MASS ANIMAL DEATHS 2014 for the 2014 list.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/mass-animal-deaths-2014.html

See MASS ANIMAL DEATHS 2013 for the 2013 list.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/mass-animal-deaths-2013.html

See MASS ANIMAL DEATHS 2012 for the 2012 list.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/mass-animal-deaths-2012.html

See MASS ANIMAL DEATHS 2011 for the 2011 list.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/mass-animal-deaths-2011.html

As Donald L Merker tells us, an EMP over America, whether natural via the sun or an attack from an enemy, would quickly be more disastrous than all Hollywood disaster movies combined, with hundreds of millions dead in the US within a year and the possible extinction of the human race a strong possiblity as nuclear plants meltdown country wide. As Maloof shares, it would be 'cataclysmic for our planet Earth'. Everything that we understand about what 'life' is right now would change in one instant. The warnings given in the videos below are not 'fear ****'; they are potentially our future reality, and very little to nothing is being done to stop what's in these warnings from becoming our 'new reality'. 





https://www.scribd.com/doc/305326198/STATE-Initiatives-For-EMP-Preparedness?secret_password=dLQG6AfNeo6KbXoil9gf

http://allnewspipeline.com/EMP_China_Syndrome_Electrical_Armageddon.php
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #42 on: March 20, 2016, 06:54:19 pm »

What Happens to Nuclear Power Plants Following an EMP?

We have covered some bases on the EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) and how to prepare the home and supplies against it.  One of the major problems with the EMP is not just what will not work regarding unshielded equipment, but what will happen when certain things do not run anymore.  What I’m referring to the real danger of nuclear power plants throughout the United States.  Not only will there be a shortage of power, but there will be a larger problem: radiation.

A large percentage of electricity goes into maintaining and cooling the spent fuel rods in a nuclear power plant installation.  A prime example is a Nuclear Facility that may have one working (running) reactor and two that are shut down with spent fuel rods.  This is not uncommon to find.  Now, follow the reasoning: when the primary power shuts down and the backup is rendered inoperable, how is coolant water to be pumped to cool the spent fuel rods?

We saw what happened with Fukushima, and most of us remember the horror story that almost emerged with Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Harrisburg, PA.  The reason this is being mentioned here is that these things need to be taken into account with regard to your preparations.  What good is it to make it through the initial nuclear attack when the attack renders your nearest nuclear power facility a ticking time bomb regarding spent fuel rods?

Advanced Tactical Gas Mask – Are You Ready for a Nuclear, Biological or Chemical Disaster? (Ad)

I strongly recommend reading Cresson Kearney’s materials (downloadable for free) on Nuclear War Survival.  You will learn about doses and dosimeters, rads and fallout.  You will receive the plans on how to construct your own Kearney Fallout Meter from household materials.  The series contains a wealth of information that you can burn off…information that may save your life.

There was an interesting movie entitled “Olympus Has Fallen” starring Gerald Butler.  The premise revolved around terrorists wishing to turn the tables and utilize all of the US nuclear sites against itself…missiles, reactors, and what not.  This is not far-fetched.  A good thing to research would be the proximity of the nuclear sites to your home.  This photo comes from the International Nuclear Safety Center, and I think it substantiates my concerns.



mapYou can see by the photo that the largest concentration of nuclear power facilities is located in the Northeast and the Great Lakes regions of the United States.  Localize these facilities in your home state and you can then conduct the kind of research you need that will help protect you.  There are some questions you should ask.  What are the containment procedures in case of a power loss?  How much material is being stored in the facility?  What are all your distances of the facility from your home, where you and your family work and go to school, etc.  What routes would you use should the unthinkable actually occur?
You may wish to consider a good fallout meter (also known as a radiological survey meter, or Geiger counter), along with dosimeters and other cumulative radiation monitors.  The Nukalert monitor will actually let out a “chirping” noise when you come into a nuclear-irradiated area.  There are also hazmat suits/NBC suits that you may purchase.  As in all dangers and disasters, there are a certain amount of things that are out of your control; however, there are also many things you can do to prepare for them.  Research and planning is crucial in your preparations, and I highly recommend studying your area for as much information as you can find regarding this important topic.  Have a good day, and keep up the good work!

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson was a Special Forces Medic, EMT and ACLS-certified, with comprehensive training in wilderness survival, rescue, and patient-extraction. Mr. Johnson is an ardent advocate for preparedness, self-sufficiency, and long-term disaster sustainability for families. He and his wife survived Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Cross-trained as a Special Forces Engineer, he is an expert in supply, logistics, transport, and long-term storage of perishable materials, having incorporated many of these techniques plus some unique innovations in his own homestead.

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/what-happens-to-nuclear-power-plants-following-an-emp_03102016
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
christistruth
Full Member
***
Offline Offline

Posts: 165


View Profile
« Reply #43 on: April 06, 2016, 09:00:02 pm »

Outside of the KJV, this book may be one of the most necessary things for the average American to read. Yes, the author has a Catholic background, but that is only brought up once in the book (and that was criticized by evangelicals later), but nevertheless, it may be the most eye-opening look at reality that any fiction book can bring.


In the real-life town of Black Mountain, in the outskirts of the Appalachian Mountains, in North Carolina, a town, as well as the nation, tries it's best to survive as it's thrown back three-four hundred years in the past as a EMP launched by an unnamed enemy cripples the nation. One of the town's citizens, John Matherson, tries to keep peace and unite the people as they struggle to live as there recent ancestors had to.

This book, to be honest, led me into the mindset that led me back to Christ.




Report Spam   Logged

Luke 21:28

Jesus is the answer for our moral ills. Conservative principals are the answer to our government corruption.
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #44 on: April 06, 2016, 09:03:25 pm »

Quote
introduction by newt gingrich

 Huh You know he is a catholic also right? Is this a religious book?
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
christistruth
Full Member
***
Offline Offline

Posts: 165


View Profile
« Reply #45 on: April 06, 2016, 09:05:36 pm »

Huh You know he is a catholic also right? Is this a religious book?

Yeah, I should have mentioned Newt.

But this is not religious at all.

It's a really great read.
Report Spam   Logged

Luke 21:28

Jesus is the answer for our moral ills. Conservative principals are the answer to our government corruption.
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #46 on: April 07, 2016, 04:55:27 pm »

i went ahead and got this book, also the second one in the series. Not to far into the first but it really reminds me of the old survivalist books from the 80's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(novel_series)

The problem i have with these "survival" books, is that even in an EMP hit America or nuclear war; the Earth is doomed. period. It will be sterile in a matter of years due to all the Nuclear power plants going off line and melting down. Than you have the nuclear waste storage facilities that are super top secret. There could be one in your town and you would never know about it. Well those go boom too. There really is no surviving a nuclear war or an EMP event.

Mat 24:22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.

makes sense now doesn't it. 
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #47 on: April 08, 2016, 01:25:34 am »


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #48 on: April 08, 2016, 01:49:28 am »


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #49 on: April 08, 2016, 02:35:50 am »


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #50 on: April 09, 2016, 12:35:17 am »

FBI Warns of Cyber Threat to Electric Grid

DHS intel report downplayed cyber threat to power grid

Three months after a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report downplayed the threat of a cyber attack against the U.S. electrical grid, DHS and the FBI began a nationwide program warning of the dangers faced by U.S. utilities from damaging cyber attacks like the recent hacking against Ukraine’s power grid.

The nationwide campaign by DHS and the FBI began March 31 and includes 12 briefings and online webinars for electrical power infrastructure companies and others involved in security, with sessions in eight U.S. cities, including a session next week in Washington.

The unclassified briefings are titled “Ukraine Cyber Attack: Implications for U.S. Stakeholders,” and are based on work with the Ukrainian government in the aftermath of the Dec. 23 cyber attack against the Ukrainian power infrastructure.

“These events represent one of the first known physical impacts to critical infrastructure which resulted from cyber-attack,” the announcement by the DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team read.

“The attacks leveraged commonly available tools and tactics against the control systems which could be used against infrastructure in every sector.”

The briefings will outline the details of the attacks, the techniques used by the hackers, and strategies to be used to limit risks and improve cyber security for grid organizations.

Security researchers have concluded the attack was carried out by Russian government hackers based on the type of malicious software, called BlackEnergy, that was detected in the incident.

The threat briefings followed an internal DHS intelligence report published in January that stated the risk of a cyber attack against U.S. electrical infrastructure was low.

“We assess the threat of a damaging or disruptive cyber attack against the U.S energy sector is low,” the report, labeled “for official use only,” says.

The report said advanced cyber attackers, such as nation states like Russia and China, are mainly seeking to conduct “cyber espionage.”

Penetration by foreign hackers into industrial control systems used to remotely control the electrical power grids as well as water and other infrastructure “probably is focused on acquiring and maintaining persistent access to facilitate the introduction of malware, and likely is part of nation-state contingency planning that would only be implemented to conduct a damaging or disruptive attack in the event of hostilities with the United States,” the eight-page report states.

The majority of malicious cyber attacks against energy companies was downplayed as “low-level cybercrime that is likely opportunistic in nature rather than specifically aimed at the sector, [and] is financially or ideologically motivated, and is not meant to be destructive.”

The report also sought to dismiss public references to “cyber-attacks” as exaggeration. “Overuse of the term ‘cyber attack,’ risks ‘alarm

“Overuse of the term ‘cyber attack,’ risks ‘alarm fatigue,’ which could lead to longer response times or to missing important incidents,” the report said.

The report raises questions about whether DHS, which has primary responsibility for protecting U.S. government computer networks and works with the private sector to prevent cyber attacks, understands the infrastructure cyber threat and is seeking to downplay the threat for political reasons.

The Obama administration has adopted an approach that seeks to play down foreign national security threats under conciliatory foreign policies pursuing warmer relations with states such as Russia, China, and Iran.

The DHS report, however, contrasts sharply with recent statements by Adm. Mike Rogers, commander of the Cyber Command, who warned recently that a major cyber attack by nation-states against critical infrastructures poses a major security threat.

“It is only a matter of the ‘when,’ not the ‘if’—we’re going to see a nation-state, group, or actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure in the United States,” Rogers, who is also director of the National Security Agency, said in a speech March 2.

Rogers described the Ukraine cyber attacks as “a well-crafted attack” that temporarily disrupted electrical power in Ukraine.

The four-star admiral said the cyber attack also included the use of sophisticated monitoring of how Ukrainian authorities reacted to the attack. The attackers then took additional cyber measures designed to slow down the process of restoring electrical power, he said.

“Seven weeks ago it was the Ukraine. This isn’t the last we’re going to see this, and that worries me,” Rogers said.

A report by the State Department-led Overseas Security Advisory Council, a public-private security group, provided details of the Ukrainian electrical grid attack from open sources.

“While cyber attacks on critical infrastructure systems have long been viewed as digital aggression with physical consequences, very few have been documented to date, making the late December events in Ukraine a hallmark incident,” the report said, adding that in addition to the power grid, hackers targeted airport, rail and mining system networks.

On Dec. 23, the Ukrainian power provider Prykarpattyaoblenergo, in the western Ukrainian region of Ivan-Frankivsk, was hit by a large-scale breakdown that left 200,000 people in the region without power for several hours.

The cause was determined to be interference with the automated control system from malicious software.

The research group SANS Institute investigated and determined the blackout was caused by hackers who gained remote access and inflicted changes on the electrical distribution system.

“The cyber attack was allegedly timed to occur during a telephone flood aimed at the help desks of Ukrainian electric companies, intending to keep support staff pre-occupied and divert attention from the network intrusion,” the report said.

Other outages occurred in Kyiv Oblast that produced loss of electrical power to 80,000 people. Another unidentified power company in Ukraine also was hit.
The malware used against the three power companies was identified as BlackEnergy 3, which is believed to be Russian in origin and designed to attack infrastructure systems.

“A unique feature of BlackEnergy 3 is its KillDisk function, enabling the attacker to rewrite files on the infected system with random data and blocking the user from rebooting their system, rendering it inoperable,” the report said. “The virus also searches victim computers for software that is primarily used in electric control systems, indicating a potential focus on critical infrastructure systems.”

The Ukraine security service said in a statement that Russia was behind the power grid attack, and the Ukrainian Energy Ministry concluded Feb. 12 that the hackers “used a Russian-based Internet provider and made phone calls from inside Russia as part of a coordinated cyber attack on Ukraine’s power grid.”

The security firm iSight Partners traced the Ukraine cyber attack to a team of Russian hackers called Sandworm and noted that it was among the first destructive cyber attacks by the group that in the past had limited its activities to cyber theft.

The State Department report said some analysts believe power failures from malware cyber attacks “could entice nation-states and other nefarious threat actors to execute similar cyber attacks in the future.”

“However, the incident in Ukraine still remains the first possible instance of a blackout caused by a malicious network intrusion, not yet indicative of a trend,” the report said.

Ukrainian authorities this week disclosed that police and IT companies disrupted a Russian “botnet” server of some 4,000 computers that were hijacked and operated covertly in Ukraine and 62 other countries. The botnet, apparently used for criminal purposes, was code-named Mumblehard.

An FBI spokeswoman referred questions to DHS. A DHS spokesman declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on “purportedly leaked documents.”

http://freebeacon.com/issues/fbi-warns-cyber-threat-electric-grid/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #51 on: April 12, 2016, 04:45:43 am »

Outside of the KJV, this book may be one of the most necessary things for the average American to read. Yes, the author has a Catholic background, but that is only brought up once in the book (and that was criticized by evangelicals later), but nevertheless, it may be the most eye-opening look at reality that any fiction book can bring.


In the real-life town of Black Mountain, in the outskirts of the Appalachian Mountains, in North Carolina, a town, as well as the nation, tries it's best to survive as it's thrown back three-four hundred years in the past as a EMP launched by an unnamed enemy cripples the nation. One of the town's citizens, John Matherson, tries to keep peace and unite the people as they struggle to live as there recent ancestors had to.

This book, to be honest, led me into the mindset that led me back to Christ.






Almost done with the book. Very accurate to a very real point. My issue is he did not go into the nuclear power plant issue. He mentioned that one in Atlanta was being brought back on line. I do not see that happening. You just need ONE to go off around the great lakes, that would start a cascade effect. By By...
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #52 on: April 12, 2016, 04:46:31 am »

After the EMP comes Nuclear Meltdown

An EMP (electro magnetic pulse), if strong enough (and regardless of the source – weaponized or solar), will potentially fry electronics and electronic systems within its invisible sphere of destruction. Many expert opinions and reports suggest that our electrical power grid could go down.

A large weaponized nuclear EMP detonation (or group thereof) high in the atmosphere will cause a wide ranging debilitating EMP.

A solar super flare (X-50+) and accompanying CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) will zap the surface of the earth with an even longer lasting EMP as it did during 1859 (the Carrington event).

The question is, What will happen to our nuclear reactors following an EMP event? Will we all be facing extermination from hundreds of simultaneous meltdowns?


 
The scenario:

An X-60 solar super-flare leaps off the sun with its coronal mass ejection (CME) heading straight towards earth. The CME (a slower moving cloud of charged particles than the X-ray burst), reaches the earth – and the solar particles interact with earth’s magnetic field to produce powerful electromagnetic fluctuations. It is these fluctuations that produce electrical currents in electrically ‘conductive’ things here on Earth, such as our criss-crossing power lines suspended above our streets. Electrical currents build up during the lasting event, and while some grid circuit breakers trip in an effort to save itself, many transformers and their high number of internal windings of copper wire continue to heat up and overload until they burn up as they exceed their design capacity.

 
The result:

Electricity across the land will be gone. Lights out. Communications and cell phones – down. Gas station pumps – down. Banking and commerce – down. Food distribution networks – down. Transportation grinds to a halt.

Much of the electricity may not be restored for months or even years due to the unimaginable requirements of transformer and electronic infrastructure re-manufacture and replacement.

As if that isn’t bad enough, what happens to our nuclear reactors?

 
Nuclear Meltdown?

While modern civilization will rapidly deteriorate into chaos, the worst of it may be just beginning. What happens to the world’s 440 nuclear power reactors (about 700 if you count all research reactors)?

Nuclear reactors while running normally, are essentially in a state of controlled meltdown as they heat water into steam which turns the turbines that produce electricity. Could it be that the only thing saving us from disaster is the constant supply of fresh cool water that keep the nuclear rods from melting down?

The thing is, the flow of water requires electricity, working pumps, and working electronic systems to control them. If these electronic systems are damaged, or the electricity is OFF, well, remember Fukushima??

The nuclear plant operators will be trying to safely shut down the reactors with whatever backup power they have available to them (a SCRAM). Following that, they will need to keep the nuclear rods cool – even when they are not ‘running’ in the reactor process. The problem though with this process is you can’t shut down all radioactivity with the flip of a switch.

For a reactor that is SCRAMed after holding a constant power level for an extended period, about 7% of the steady-state power will remain after initial shutdown due to fission product decay. A long cool down period will be necessary afterwards. The cool down from the residual heat (of the radioactive decay) requires circulating water and operating pumps. Without cooling, the fuel rods will heat up to the point where they can melt.

How long do the rods need to cool after a SCRAM?

To give you an idea, one bit of research revealed that even a week after being shut down, the heat from a reactor core boils water at a rate of nearly 60 gallons per minute; and after a month it’s still boils off 40 gallons a minute (source).

We’re talking months – years.

Separate from the scrammed rods of the reactors, there is the issue of the spent fuel rod Storage pools of the containment facility. They too need a constant supply of water.

Backup batteries will keep pumps running for a day or so.

Diesel generators (assuming they or their electronics are hardened and not damaged from the effects of the EMP) will keep pumps running as long as there is diesel fuel on hand. A question is, do the nuclear plants have enough stored diesel fuel to keep the cooling pumps operating for months and months afterwards?

The fuel (gasoline-diesel) distribution systems will be down (or mostly), so where will the fuel come from? This will obviously be a high priority for plant managers, but will they all be able to scrounge up what they need?

 
In conclusion:

It is a foregone conclusion that a Carrington event will happen again. When it does, will we be ready? Will the world’s arsenal of nuclear weapons (and EMP weapons) always remain silent and unused? Will the world’s ‘leaders’ always be sane? There are risks, and this article simply exposes one or two – and presents questions for you to ponder.

http://modernsurvivalblog.com/emp-electro-magnetic-pulse/after-the-emp-comes-nuclear-meltdown/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #53 on: April 13, 2016, 03:54:51 pm »

A Massive Solar EMP Could Do More Damage Than A Nuclear EMP! - 'Ezekiel's Fire' Interview With John Little Of Omega Shock

With tensions in the Middle East high, widespread lawlessness, a global economy that appears to be on the threshold of collapsing, Fukushima killing the oceans through radiation, swarms of earthquakes and  volcanoes erupting these signs should be enough to wake anyone up to the fact that we are in the birth pangs spoken of by Jesus in the gospel of Luke.

The threat of conventional nuclear war always remains potentially on the horizon. Not since the cold war have tensions been like this when it comes to the threat of nuclear war. Besides the possibility of conventional super-powers going to war that ends up being a nuclear exchange, you have rogue nations such as North Korea and their blusterous leader rattling sabers too. In fact, in this past week, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced it has recently tested a new  type of inter-continental ballistic rocket that can be tipped with more powerful nuclear warheads, and Leader Kim Jong-Un claims these will put the USA within striking range, and could "reduce them to ashes" according to his boasting. Coupled with the fact that back on March 9th, the government of North Korea announced that it had a "standardized" design for a miniaturized nuclear weapon, where these are designed to be carried by the ballistic missiles one wonders if they could actually deliver on some of that threat.

But more likely than the use of conventional nuclear warfare is the threat of a nuclear missile be used as an EMP bomb.

A nuclear EMP is the abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation resulting from a nuclear explosion. The resulting rapidly changing electric fields and magnetic fields may couple with electrical/electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges.

The intense gamma radiation emitted can also ionize the surrounding air, creating a secondary EMP as the atoms of air first lose their electrons and then regain them.

NEMP weapons are designed to maximize such EMP effects as the primary damage mechanism, and some are capable of destroying susceptible electronic equipment over a wide area.

Quote: An NEMP warhead designed to be detonated far above the Earth's surface is known as a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) device. The explosion releases a blast of gamma rays into the mid-stratosphere, which ionizes and the resultant energetic free electrons interact with the Earth's magnetic field to produce a much stronger EMP than is normally produced in the denser air at lower altitudes. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse)

What many people do not realize is that a solar flare emitted from the sun could also create an EMP effect. The worst of these possibilities would be a superflare.

Quote: Superflares are very strong explosions observed on stars with energies up to ten thousand times that of typical solar flares. The stars in this class satisfy conditions which should make them solar analogues, and would be expected to be stable over very long time scales. The original nine candidates were detected by a variety of methods. No systematic study was possible until the launch of the Kepler satellite, which monitored a very large number of solar-type stars with very high accuracy for an extended period. This showed that a small proportion of stars had violent outbursts, up to 10,000 times as powerful as the strongest flares known on the Sun. In many cases there were multiple events on the same star. Younger stars were more likely to flare than old ones, but strong events were seen on stars as old as the Sun. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superflare)

Actually, in 1859 a powerful geomagnetic solar storm known as The Carrington Event caused widespread problems, such as the failure of telegraph systems, even giving operators electric shocks and causing telegraph pylons to throw off sparks. now that was in the 19th century when no one relayed on electricity for survival. Imagine what an event that size would do in today's world of computer chips and electrical dependence!

Well, one man believes that not only could such an event occur, but that according to his interpretation of the bible, on such event much bigger in magnitude is likely to take place in the very near future.

Episode 037 of A Minute To  Midnite sees Tony interview John Little of www.omegashock.com. In this discussion John voices his views that we may be on the verge of both nuclear EMP strikes, and an even more deadly EMP that would be caused by a solar superflare that would knock out electrical infrastructure, causing the deaths of many millions of people. He bases his findings on both the Bible and astronomical discoveries. He lays out a case for the worst case scenario, what it would look like in it's effects, and he also gives some advice on how to prepare for this event. John believes it will tie in directly with the Gog & Magog war. He explains why he feels the Bible points to this event being very soon.

John believes that six biblical books actually prophesy of such an event. These six prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Micah and Zephaniah all spoke of an event that could fit the description of a massive solar flare. John believes that up to a billion people could die if such an event were to occur. He explains in the interview some of the reasons why this would be the case, outlining how our dependence on electricity for just about everything to survive today, would prove to be catastrophic if the grids were knocked out for an extended period of time.

Tony and John then discuss the necessities for surviving such an event. They discuss the needs for food storage and a clean supply of water, and the importance of community. The discussion turns to the role of precious metals such as Gold & Silver, why they will play an important part, and why it is important not to put off buying it now. It is highly likely that we are on the verge of economic collapse and the bargain basement prices ( particularly of silver) may very well be about to end. Many people can't afford to buy gold, but the price of silver is still within reach ( for the moment).

Also the potential role of this solar event knocking out power and the internet, and  then being the catalyst to launch the Antichrist and the system of the Beast with it's Microchipping after the "lights come back on" is talked about.



http://allnewspipeline.com/Massive_Solar_EMP.php
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #54 on: April 15, 2016, 12:28:39 am »

Failure to Protect U.S. Against Electromagnetic Pulse Threat Could Make 9/11 Look Trivial Someday

Exploding A Nuclear Bomb In The Sky Creates An Interesting Phenomenon

In 1962, during the depths of the Cold War, the U.S. military exploded a nuclear weapon high above an atoll in the Pacific Ocean. Dubbed Operation Starfish, this exercise was part of a larger project to evaluate the impacts of nuclear explosions in space. The missile, launched from Johnson Island, 900 miles from Hawaii, was armed with a 1.4 megaton warhead, programmed to explode at 240 miles above the earth. It detonated as expected. What was not entirely expected was the magnitude of the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

The EMP was powerful enough to affect the electric grid in Hawaii, blowing out streetlights, and resulting in telephone outages and radio blackouts.

Dr. William Graham was active in the follow-up to the project, working out of the Air Force weapons lab in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After the blast, it was his job to understand the data collected, find out just what had happened in Hawaii, and what the defense implications were of this phenomenon.  In a recent interview, Graham commented,

    The effects were bizarre and almost entirely unanticipated.  One effect was an electromagnetic pulse, but nobody knew it was going to be anywhere nearly as large it proved to be.  They had all this data and they didn’t understand very much of it, including the EMPs that had been observed and the effects produced…all kinds of electrical disturbances were seen over 1000 kilometers away in Oahu. The Air Force brought in a bunch of us…and asked us to explain it.  With the leadership of scientists from Los Alamos, we figured it out.  It was a fairly subtle piece of physics.  At that time we were worried it could be used as a precursor attack on the U.S. and suppress our retaliatory capability.  Since the effect wasn’t really understood before 1962, our military systems hadn’t protected against it up to that point.

big article: http://www.allselfsustained.com/failure-u-s-electromagnetic-pulse/
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #55 on: April 21, 2016, 09:59:48 pm »

Nuclear plants face EMP disaster as feds scramble for quick fix

Federal agencies that regulate nuclear power stations are rushing to address a potential threat from an electromagnetic pulse attack on the U.S. electric grid: nuclear power plant meltdowns.

The good news is that the issue and proposed fix are easy. The bad news is that there is growing concern that an EMP attack, either from a North Korean nuclear bomb or a solar storm, will occur first.

In focus are cooling pools used to store spent, but still radioactive, fuel rods used to make power. Cold water must continuously flush through or the rods can catch fire and explode, spewing killer radioactive smoke for miles.

Federal agencies believe an EMP attack would knock the power grid out for months.(YEARS) Most nuclear plants use diesel-powered generators for backup power to the water pumps and only store up to 17 days of fuel.
Thats it, 17 days of fuel, even IF the generators work. In almost all instances unless they are severly hardened for an EMP strike, they will not work. in that case BOOM!

Enter members of former President Reagan’s “Star Wars” team with the Foundation for Resilient Societies. They saw the problem at Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and recommended a switch from diesel to long-lasting solar to power the generators.

“That’s when the alarm bells went off,” Thomas S. Popik, president of Resilient Societies told the Washington Examiner. Similar concerns were raised when New England’s Pilgrim nuclear facility was forced to shut during a blizzard.

As a result, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering the group’s fix, a rare embrace of an outside proposal. “It’s a national issue,” said proponent and retired Federal Aviation Administration investigator Brian Sullivan. “The NRC needs to change its dangerous course.”



see the full news story here: http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/nuke-plants-face-emp-disaster-as-feds-scramble-for-quick-fix/article/2559982
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #56 on: April 21, 2016, 10:24:05 pm »


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #57 on: April 21, 2016, 10:30:11 pm »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daxuBBMRl8g&ebc=ANyPxKoz_yFA52_tE5DDa_5HC0Bm1aBYEBHD44-tT8G-qtlZiWDNqEbImA2ZiqoRWdX7kVTHbqfd-2rBp4uubaO1VdT6C5JHTA
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #58 on: April 21, 2016, 11:30:39 pm »

Guilty Knowledge: What the US Government Knows about the Vulnerability of the Electric Grid, But Refuses to Fix (Center for Security Policy Archival Series)

Over the course of a decade, a stream of credible scientific reports from various government agencies, congressionally-mandated commissions and federal research organizations have warned of the grave vulnerability of our nation’s most important asset: the electric power grid. For millions of us, life in 21st Century America would be all but impossible without access to electricity. As this compendium of the government's own studies makes clear, the protracted unavailability of the power required for all of our critical infrastructures poses a truly existential threat to our country and its people—unless we take practical and relatively low-cost steps to prevent it.

https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Guilty-Knowledge-6x9.pdf
Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Mark
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 21786



View Profile
« Reply #59 on: April 21, 2016, 11:52:57 pm »


Report Spam   Logged

What can you do for Jesus?  Learn what 1 person can accomplish.

The Man from George Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjMvPhLrn8
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
Free SMF Hosting - Create your own Forum

Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy