Blackout in America

Blackout in the United States and Mexico leaves millions without electricity causing massive chaos in the affected regions. The news appears to be the most viewed news on BBC, although the American based CNN barely talks about the event, giving misleading information about the number of people struck by the powercut. According to BBC News Channel, the number of those hit by power outage reached an estimated 2M. CNN talks about a million people, whilst relying on ABC News statistics, the number of people affected exceeds 5M. Interestingly, the top news on CNN is a report about the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

What was the cause of this power outage?

Partly human error, partly Murphy's Law...

Just read this in the Christian Science Monitor of all things:

By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer / September 9, 2011

Los Angeles
The precise reason for the 12-hour, full system blackout affecting 5 million people across a large swath of Southern California and Mexico Thursday is still being investigated. By 2:15 a.m. Pacific time Friday, all but 200 megawatts of the initial 4,300 lost megawatts had been restored according the North American Regulatory Commission (NERC).

Initial reports blame a utility worker doing maintenance near Yuma, Ariz., for triggering the massive blackout that affected residents across San Diego County, southern Orange County, western Arizona, northern Baja California and parts of Mexico.

Hi Alex, thank you for being interested in my topic. I'd like to add something to your comment. Last week, just a day before the blackout-, I was reading about possible cyber-attacks on nuclear plants across the globe. The study was published on Security News Daily's website. According to this article, current plc-s ( Siemens s700) used in power plants and in several industrial areas- , can be remotely hacked, manipulated and crashed by anyone who's got the knowledge to do so...

http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/how-easily-can-a-power-plant-be-hacked-very-1023/

That's really interesting. The implications are awful.

Watched something on the History Channel the other night about how easy it is today to make for less tha GBP 100,000 a dirty bomb that could take out a large patch of Central London. Now granted the terrorists would need to also get hold of enriched uranium but that is now come by via disaffected or impoverished individuals 'guarding' the huge stockpiles from the former USSR. Then all that is needed apparently is a long pipe, certain type of detonator and some know-how which is in the public domain in the Net.

We live in scary times Lewisiom.