What Will You Do When the Lights Go Out?

Some people believe that we are hurtling towards physical disaster with our delicate electrical grid. Just how that disaster might occur is open for debate, but we need only look at major power outages over the last few years to see how precarious our grasp on electricity is. It isn’t a matter of “if” the lights will go out, but a matter of “when”.

Severe weather has given the grid a walloping over the past few years. For example, three years ago, parts of Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and Missouri suffered through 3 weeks sans power after a record-setting ice storm. Last summer, people in the Washington, DC metropolitan area were without power for a week during a heat wave as the result of a severe thunderstorm accompanied by high winds. And most recently, of course, we have witnessed the plight of the victims of Hurricane Sandy as they have struggled to function in the most populated area in the United States without electricity and running water, all while attempting to clean up the detritus of the massive storm.

Mother Nature could have other tricks up her sleeve with the possibility of a solar flare-related coronal mass ejection that could cause not only outages but irreparable damage to items powered by electricity. Many countries have developed EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapons that could perpetrate the same type of damage. Read more....