Tell me again why we don't know what caused this blackout?

I find it hard to believe that we still don't know what's behind this considering it's the biggest energy outage in US history. This thing stretches from Ottawa to New York to Michigan!! I don't believe this crap.

She conjured up a spell; what say we burn her at the stake?


:evilgrin: :kick:

It was clearly the work of Samantha Stevens! She twitched her nose in a snit over Darren being out all night.

Get your facts straight! :)

I'd have to kill everyone else on this board.

The military (and cia?) have the capability to knock out powergrids. They do it in countries we attack all the time. Leaves no burning power plants or no evidence (electro magnetic pulse I think). Would explain the timing (markets close) and how those in the know could claim quickly with certainty was not terrorists (foriegn anyway< )plus make the evening news.

The only way I know of to create a EMP big enough to short out the power grid would be a nuke.
This would also short out car batteries, flashlight and radio batteries, etc. So, it wasn't a EMP.
BUT...
There are other methods...
Strips of aluminum foil dropped over power lines will short out those lines, and could create a cascade affect...
It leaves evidence, though, the strips are 6" wide and 50' long!

... is a threat to semiconductors and not to the heavy conductors, relays and whatnot that comprise a power grid. Of course, if there is computer control of such things EMP could blow out the computers... but that would be readily diagnosed. A dead computer is pretty easy to spot.

It would be nice to have an immediate answer but I'm on board with the idea that it can easily take a lot of time to ferret out - simply because the "power grid" is an ad-hoc collection of connected entities that do not always play well together :)

Determining the cause of a large blackout is actually fairly complicated. In the 1965 Northeast blackout, it took six days for engineers to track down just the source of the failure, and months before they knew exactly what happened.

there is a toasted mouse.

Sorry I wasn't able to get more info. Up all night due to lightening/thunder and one very nervous puppy.

In between dog and loss of satelite power, heard two older gentlemen being interviewed on CNN or MSNBC as to the possibility of hawkers hitting the system. One of them stated that three years ago they tested the system with attempts to hawk it and they were able to attack it 90% (90% shook my adled brain)of the time. He, stated that he would not say that this event, is due to this, but that it is possible.

Sure hope someone else was more awake than I and can give better info.

Also - what is actually considered terrorist? If a terrorist attacks our energy supply and in the process causes panic, possible loss of life, what is that called??