generalspeaking

Outside Threats?

Who needs exterior threats extended to the civil democratic, well-ordered world we are fairly confident of and privileged to live in, when we are ourselves so blessed with incompetence? Civil authority and its engineered infrastructure depends on sophisticated electronics to ensure an orderly world of resources translated into convenience to enable us to unwittingly go on about our daily lives never lingering on the thought of how vulnerable we are to succumbing to human error.

In a world where, ever-increasingly, we are interdependent upon one another, from neighbours and their near surroundings, to towns and cities and nations whose contiguous borders ensure it simply makes common sense to share commodities through trade, and natural resources through energy-sharing, we have convinced ourselves that bigger is better. And a sound way to keep operating costs minimal.

It does work, magnificently, for the most part. But when it fails it does so spectacularly. We have the example of the massive electrical grid failure that took place in 2003 when North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a joint Canada-U.S. enterprise, saw a massive and sudden cut-off of electrical energy transmission, due to human error.

Power was cut off to the American north-west and much of eastern Canada for days, and it was not a convenient nor happy occasion for all those hapless millions of people on each side of the border who suffered through the mishap, anxiously awaiting a return to normalcy. It was a costly accident in terms of dollars and as much so in terms of frustration to all affected.

And now, the most populous state in America, along with Arizona and Mexico saw five million people living in the dark for a seven-hour period because of yet another massive failure. Considered to be one of the larges U.S. blackouts in recent history the outage, traced to a botched procedure by a utility worker at an Arizona substation left all of San Diego without power.

It can be readily seen, with government, industry, individuals and primary institutions out of commission why this kind of incident, if successfully manipulated by a psychopathic malignant agency such as those represented by Islamist jihadists seems such an appealingly attractive goal. The ensuing chaos leaving a huge gap in the ability to cope with an allied, violently destructive threat.

On the other hand, a successful manipulation of energy transmission downing all manner of communication capabilities would not only play in the favour of planned covert attacks, but the damage done to an already-stung economy continues the downward slide in capabilities and functionality.

Labels: Chaos, Energy, Mexico, United States

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 10, 2011