I am sure most of you saw this:
Gunfire On Two NC Substations Plunges Tens of Thousands Into Darkness And Cold

Huh. Sure seems like that ol’ power grid infrastructure is vulnerable to nefarious acts. At least the government isn’t overreacting and declaring martial law or anything. I won’t speculate as to the motivations or the bad actors behind this.
Totally unrelated, I thought I would share this:
U.S. Energy Atlas
All Energy Infrastructure and Resources
Just an interactive map that shows every coal fired, gas fired, solar, nuclear, etc. site that is provided by and maintained by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Looks like this, you can of course zoom in to specific areas.

You can also look at a map of power transmission lines like these around Chicago:

If you want to you can narrow it down further to only 735 volt lines and above. Using this map you can look at the area impacted in Moore County, North Carolina and follow the power transmission lines right on a map provided by the Federal government. Pretty smart!
Given the current events might be worth looking at it behind a VPN. Shared with y’all strictly for information and entertainment purposes of course.
The only real impediment to an entity that wished to take down most or all of the US power grid is the surveillance state. A small group going from one spot to the next would presumably be apprehended by the surveillance state before they got too far along (perhaps that has already happened?). And a large group that proposed to strike simultaneously nationwide has the problem of getting organized to that size without Big Brother becoming aware.
But even among dissidents and those who look upon the GAE with disfavor, not very many of them want to live in the dark.
I assume whoever shot up those substations in NC either didn’t live in the area or has a nice generator ready to go
The notion of a potential sustained power outage in Chicago certainly adds new levels of meaning to the term “blackout”.
I’ll never forget the Time magazine cover devoted to the situation in Manhattan following the historic 1977 power grid failure (“Blackout ’77. Once more, with looting”) and it’s astonishingly un-pc photograph of those looters. Pre-Photoshop and decades before our ebony betters were elevated to sainthood. I am sure that Time, Inc. would dearly love to scrub that one from the archives.
That was then, imagine it now with millions of dusky hued looter-Americans armed with Glocks going berserk.
There was an Identical Attack a number of Years ago out West, Arizona or Californistan if I recall. Shooter never caught, despite leaving a large pile of Brass behind, with no Fingerprints. This kid of thing is All too Easy to Do, and Impossible to Prevent… LWO FTW.
This?
https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-power-station-sniper-attack-2014-2
I’ve heard people who know more than me about such things say that it had the look of a “proof of concept” raid.
Gryphon,
It was in california, and the brass didnt match the ammo dug out of the transformers which took weeks to find out. Looks like the brass was a false trail.
a funny guy could pick up brass from a range and … well you get the idea. it’d sure be funny if a bunch of po-leece brass showed up at a place like that
Another handy reference….
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/
The railways are likewise incredibly vulnerable
As are bridges. I remember reading somewhere that there are only about 130-200 bridges across the MS, with most being on the upper reaches for obvious reasons. Many are already in a state of disrepair. Some major damage has been found by tourists taking pictures and posting something along the lines of, “isn’t this bad?”
I seem to remember this story went something like, “tourist posts pic, asks if this is bad. Inspectors go out and say, yeah its bad but its cool because we did an inspection 2 years ago with video of that issue.”
Which leads me to wonder why it’s good that they saw a crack in a support structure and did nothing for 2 years…
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/14/996870237/mississippi-river-traffic-reopened-under-damaged-bridge
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.eGS2TvC7HN0CaYwtDcYyRwHaEK%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=317b2c9b16296cf175b63958c2781716e1a52be194c5b5f3685ef84add0cc231&ipo=images