(12-04-2022, 05:03 PM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote:Quote:......
Two hours earlier, Rainey had posted the message: “The power is out in Moore County and I know why.” And around the same time, she posted a picture of the Sunrise Theater, which was putting on the sold-out drag show, with the caption “God will not be mocked.”
It's odd that Emily was able to post something to the internet with the power out, no?
Quote:22 SOLDIERS AT FORT BRAGG TIED TO EXTREMIST GROUPS (Dec 23, 1995)
I know that there were some Special Forces troopers at Bragg in the 80's and 90's that had started an underground organization in their personal, rather than official, capacities. They even had an underground newsletter called "The Liberator" for a while.
But I'm with you - this was not a military op, at least not by military in any official capacity.
Quote:The Calif incident is the one where four guys wearing night vision goggles lit up the cooling tank on a power transformer with AK47s, without hitting any of the surrounding infrastructure, and then disappeared without anyone claiming responsibility or it ever happening again. To date the attack has never been solved... The Metcalf Sniper Attack (check-out that website!)
Now THAT'S how you run a guerrilla op! Just light it up and disappear, and don't talk. If your opponents are not bright enough to figure out what they fucked up enough to piss you off, that ain't YOUR lookout!
Quote:Note, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had ordered the imposition of mandatory physical security standards (for substations) in 2014.
Seems the only way to stop it is by posting guards at anything that can be sabotaged, which of course is cost prohibitive.
Despite our so-called high tech surveillance with overly sophisticated algorithms & hive-mind drone swarms, apparently not up to the job compared to armed human guards. Though if someone is hellbent determined to take out a power station/critical infrastructure they will find a way to do it.
I have some personal experience of that. Right after 9-11, I was on a team posted to secure an oil transmission pipeline. We were spread too thin - my section of it was 5 miles long, and I'm just shy of 2 feet across the shoulders. 2 feet don't compare well to a 5 mile stretch to cover.
Later, I was posted at a chemical site that they expected an attack at. There were two 40,000 gallon tanks sunk into the ground in concrete bunkers containing chemicals volatile enough that if they were attacked, would explode strongly enough to leave a crater 60 feet deep, 600 feet wide, and the shock wave would have leveled 16 square miles of the local infrastructure... and people... and children... and pets. The "bunkers" had open tops (no idea whose genius idea that was), but at least we had perimeter fencing and alarms to warn of intrusions.
Power substations are different. You can't really sink them underground in bunkers, and they depend on vulnerable transmission lines to get the product out into distribution. Either standoff shooting at the substation itself or taking out transmission lines and towers will end the party, and not much guards stationed at the substation itself can do about either possibility in the event of a determined attack. Neither will the attackers ever get caught if they simply vanish like a puff of smoke and keep their yaps shut.
Determined "extremists" can ruin your whole day if they take out several substations at once, a few bridges necessary to bring in backup supplies, and maybe a few well-placed cratering charges in access routes to boot, and then just vanish into the aether.
Let's not even mention the fact that replacement parts are not generally stockpiled, but ordered on an as needed, just in time basis, and so have to be manufactured if they are required in any quantity... and so far as I know, neither the government nor the utilities have addressed that little problem in all the years since it was discovered to even BE a problem.
It wouldn't really take much to totally screw us, really.
Odd that this evening, our power went out for about 15 minutes or so. It was as black as a banker's heart outside (just my kind of night!) with the exception of ONE window in ONE house that had light. I don't think it was a coincidence that the particular house in question has no electricity anyhow - sometimes, civilization becomes too dependent on technology. That house didn't.
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