© Nuclear Enviroment Survivabilty, US Army
Sometimes we all get a little reminder of just how completely and totally dependent we are on the power grid. Massive thunderstorms that ripped through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Virginia left millions without power over the weekend. At this point it is being projected that some people may not get power back until the end of the week.
The "
super derecho" storm that pounded the Washington D.C. area on Friday night with hurricane-force winds is being called unprecedented. But the truth is that there are other events that could happen that would be far more damaging to our power grid. For example, a substantial EMP burst over a major U.S. city would fry virtually all of the electronics in the city and take the power grid in the area down indefinitely. A gigantic EMP burst over the entire country (caused by a massive solar storm or a very large nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere) could theoretically take down the entire national power grid.
Just try to imagine a world where nobody has any electricity, nobody can pump gas, nobody can use their credit cards or get any more money, where most vehicles won't start, where nobody has the Internet, where all cell phones are dead and where nobody can heat or cool their homes. That is how serious an EMP burst could potentially be.
We are talking about an event that could be millions of times worse than 9/11.
Hopefully this latest storm has reminded Americans about how vulnerable our power grid really is and about how close we really are to being knocked back to the late 1800s.
Let's review some of the damage that this "super derecho" storm caused to the D.C. area....
-Thousands of businesses have been forced to close temporarily because they cannot operate without electricity
-Many federal agencies
were closed on Monday because there was no power
-Many 911 call centers throughout Northern Virginia
were down over the weekend and could not respond to emergencies
-Without electricity, many families have not been able to cook warm meals
-Without warm water, many families have not been able to take hot showers
-A "
boil water advisory" was put into effect for several areas of northern Virginia
-Many families that still do not have power are in danger of losing much of the food
in their refrigerators and freezers-Many gas stations were not able to operate because of a lack of electricity and so this has made filling up the gas tank a major hassle for many families
-Hundreds of traffic lights
are still out and this is making commuting a major problem in some areas
-Without air conditioning many families are absolutely sweltering as high temperatures remain well above 90 degrees
-During the power outage some people have been without cell phone service because many cell phone towers were inoperable
-Without electricity, thousands upon thousands of people have not been able to use their computers for several days and this is causing a lot of frustration
-Several major websites were totally knocked offline by the storms
as Robert McMillan of Wired Magazine explained....
Hurricane-like storms knocked an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, offline last night, and a chunk of the internet felt it. The six-hour incident temporarily cut off a number of popular internet services, including Netflix, Pinterest, Heroku, and Instagram.
But to be honest this was not a major disaster.
Comment: A snapshot of daily life for Palestinians under Israeli rule. The state of Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated minorities and the whole world pretends it is normal and acceptable. But it should be obvious to any rational human being that what is acceptable in the Jewish state is not substantially different than what was acceptable in the Third Reich.
This Palestinian boy should count himself lucky though, he could just have easily been shot through the head by an Israeli soldier, who would have then been found innocent. In the totalitarian world he lives in, the world Zionists and psychopaths in power everywhere envisage for all humanity in the very near future, he will have to become very street-smart if he is to survive into adulthood.