--- What Are They Thinkin over in that Swamp? What are WE Thinkin out here paying for that Sad Little Circus? Why does the USA NOT get into the business of manufacturing HV transformers > 100 kV? - 1) Only Germany and South Korea produce for export. 2) Worldwide production is less than 100 per year 3) Ordered today, delivery of a unit from overseas would take nearly 3 years How many could be built for a Trillion Dinero? hmmmmm? Is there a way to make them from the couch. Sure, no prob. From the online publication "...the American power grid" linked below. Quote: " . . . If the HV (high voltage) transformers are irreparably damaged it is problematic whether they can be replaced. The great majority of these units are custom built. The lead time between order and delivery for a domestically manufactured HV transformer is between 12 and 24 months [4], and this is under benign, low demand conditions. there is little manufacturing capability of ANYTHING remaining in the USA. quote by Michael Boskin, Chairman of President George H W Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. (Good Job there MB, thank you for your service) Worldwide production is less than 100 per year and serves the rapidly growing markets of China and India. Only Germany and South Korea produce for export. Ordered today, delivery of a unit from overseas (responsible for 85% of current American purchasing) would take nearly 3 years [6]. The factory price for an HV transformer can be in excess of $10 million—too expensive to maintain an inventory solely as spares for emergency replacement. (BS - Insurance ain't free, figure it out. Get Steppin. Earn your check, you might like it.) https://energsustainsoc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13705-019-0199-y Is Electricity Going Out of Style? Is electical distribution undergoing radical change that will eliminate HVT's? How soon would a replacement be ripe enough for deployment? Minimum, Maximum estimates? Meanwhile, what up if an emp of whatever source strikes enough transformers to put significant production capabilities offline for items as mundane as our friend the Ball Bearing. Don't look now but they are still required for Anything That Moves except for VWAP, lol. Then there's all the other stuff that we like. I got one word for you kid. HVT. Shhhhhhh. mums the word Modular Scalable HVT's. SHHHHHHHH dammit.
Couldn’t agree more … (except for the modular/scalable part for bulk grid transformers … that isn’t a widespread part of the power engineering repertoire … nonetheless a great goal to help save millions of lives.) http://www.firstempcommission.org/u...arms_cyber_warfare_by_peter_pry_july_2017.pdf Despite decades of warnings, Normalcy Bias in the USA about grid reliability still has only seen a few small dents like Texas and Cali’s ongoing problems tonight. With warfare strategy rapidly moving to “Non-Contact” methodologies, forms of mass electronic warfare are being enhanced by all military entities. Super-EMP weapons have finally been publicly admitted. Hypersonic delivery appears nearly indefensible. HVTs, as you have identified with their ultra long lead times, are a classic Sun Tzu “attack where your enemy cannot defend” mode. Not a problem? Take the weekend challenge: Friday night at bedtime, announce to the family (with no advance warning) that the power will be out until Sunday night at midnight. Switch off the main breaker and go to bed. Right there is the in your face preview of what it would be like if the warmongers take it to the next level. The challenge can get pretty interesting pretty quick with so many unexpected things going out at once. Few will even try it, fewer will make the full 48 hrs.
"Lol... California experiences that several times a year." I jad no idea WASP California Social Justice Warriors were tough and prepared enough for the following event several times a year. In the first half, author discussed the world's power grids, and why they are vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). He outlined what would happen within a few days of either an EMP from a nuclear weapon or a massive solar flare if it directly hit the Earth. He recalled the last massive solar event, which took place in 1859, and "melted telegraphy wires off the poles," while also setting railroad ties on fire as the iron rails heated up. If this occurred today, Fortschen stated that the myriad of delicate electronics that keep our society running would all fail. Water would stop flowing through supply lines as pumps are rendered inoperative, and "would not be coming [back] for a long time." Toasted Big Ass Transformers are Currently on Backorder 3 years. If this happened ande toasted enough of those babies, The Swamp would do what? "Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste" Partisan Hacks and Left Right, Dem/Rep Pimps, Race Baiters, Fill in the name of your Favorite and Least Favorite Politician / Bureaucrat and ask yourself "What would Coumo Do in the following situations to "Save The Day", Nursing Homes? Order up some Mercy Ships and Never Use Them? Point Fingers and Wave Their Hands in The Air? BINGO! Cept Nobody'd HAVE TO HEAR THEM Cause There's No Electricity. Thank You Very Much. Think of the Ramifications based on Past Behavior of The Swamp to the expected scenarios below: Good Times! Food would begin to rot, and stores that weren't looted would run out of anything fresh in "20 to 25 days," Forstchen suggested. At that point, he predicted, people would begin to die from diseases from spoiled food and a lack of clean, readily available water. Those who needed prescription drugs would panic, and pharmacies would "become a zoo in 24 hours." (Wide swaths of those zoned out denizens of the USA are on a steady stream of psychotropic drogs, the same stuff that so many mass shooters would cycle on and off of prior to acting out. Imagine that times a million. Good Times. Now were bridgin'. Electricity would be off for weeks or months as the infrastructure that keeps it running would be destroyed, he continued. You know very well what they would do. People can prepare for this eventuality by obtaining water filters and portable generators, as well as storable food. Yep, you're covered now, food, generators and water. Well, guess that's all taken care of. Uh, Yeah. How Bout we Prepare The Grid At Least Some? WTF! Put a Tril in it ya Clowns! Develop a Transformer Manufacturing Sector. Get Off Ya Asses over There. Fortschen admitted that he was at a loss to explain why world governments have not made more of an effort to harden systems against this eventuality, which he said is "inevitable, sooner or later," although some power companies have been moving at a "glacial pace" to do so. Social Justice Warriors? Ya Got A Minute Over There? https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials How to Contact Your Elected Officials Learn how to contact your federal, state, and local elected leaders. Federal Elected Officials Contact President Joe Biden online, or call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 or the comments line at 202-456-1111 during business hours. Locate your U.S. senators' contact information. Find your U.S. representative's website and contact information. State Elected Officials Get in touch with your state governor. Find the names and current activities of your state legislators. Local Elected Officials Locate your mayor by name, city, or population size. Find your county executive (the head of the executive branch of government in your county) by map search or your ZIP Code. The county executive may be an elected or an appointed position. Get contact information for your city, county, and town officials.
[LOUD sigh] Fellas. That's what we in the biz - back when I was in US Army MI, doing this kind of infrastructure attack scenarios - call "security theater" (focusing on just one possible threat, then expending a hugely-inappropriate amount of resources on it.) Let me clue you in: There are literally 10s to 100s of thousands of attacks/infrastructure failures that would paralyze the civilian population. And there's not a single damn direct response that we could mount, and NO possible method of direct prevention of the kind suggested here that would be effective. Because of the kind of society we have - wide-open, individualistic, and very trusting/welcoming to strangers - we have, to use a term of the art, an infinitely-large attack surface. So direct methods are not applicable. In fact, there is no perfect solution... but what we have, from both the military and commercial perspective - a crude-as-hell version of MAD (and you really don't want to know just how deep that rabbit-hole goes...) - works, and has for quite a long time now. Civilized society is, by its nature, fragile. There's a whole invisible layer of people "chopping wood and carrying water" every day so the rest of us can live our lives in fat, dumb, happy ignorance and comfort... there are a lot of SPOFs (single points of failure) involved. And yet, we've somehow managed this far. Let's hope it stays that way. (Re the HV transformers - if we have some sort of a real emergency, we can repair, rewind, or retool some similar production capacity. It is a weak point, but not an ultimately critical one.)
Hell, I know what to do, What was I Thinkin. Let's all go uber to 1234's house. He freakin' LOVES loves loves freeloaders on his property mashin down the schrubs looking for handouts. His family won't mind a bit. What's a few months to a year or three. He's probably got a Huge Back Yard. Bring your favorite dish and we'll put it on the Buffet Table and just have a nice get-together. And Put The Seat Down! Have some manners for krikes sakes. Oh, I hope it happens in the Summer. It'll be like a Vacation. Cool.
I'd go even further by suggesting that coupling is safer than decoupling, that the intermix of social, cultural, economic and politics reduces the threat of war. Europe is the perfect example; after millennia of wars, we are now so intertwined that war amongst ourselves seems preposterous (although not impossible).
Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Proof. Considering the stakes of a Carrington Event, you War Gamed That Right? Ok Prove the capacity of the Current Knowhow and Ability ready to be marshalled. Might take more than an Engineering squad or two. Show Me HVT, In Planning, In Testing and Implementation, Under the Gun, In conditions expected for such an event in Today's Technology Dependent Civilization. I Loves Ya Man. I think it'll take more than some (when was that) gov funded project to convince a reasonably dubious informed public of that ability to Deliver The Goods. Based on Past performance Delivery is not in the Cards. Electricity is not a perk. It's a Requirement for Civilized behavior in the USA. Mostly peaceful Looting and Arson aside of course. Stakes are High Claims are worthless Show me the money/ HVT. What are we getting instead? Where did that last 20 Tril go? Trust but Verify. Prove the Performance Ahead of the Need. Games are for Chillins' This is insurance, not a game. Will the claim be paid? By the Swamp? Hmmmm, let me cogitate on that based on past promised performance of Politicians..... Magic 8-Ball Says,... WOW, I had no idea THAT was in there. M8B! You are a Bad Bad 8-Ball! Tell it Gretta! Seen Hansel around?
Would you classify a Carrington Event Class EMP as some sort of a real emergency. Yeah, me too. We agree. We should all research this for at least enough time to understand the loss involved in shipping mass quantities of trons from place to place to be bled off as heat in transit. The Vig is Enormous. There are outages NOW for krikes sakes, lol. Can we all spell normalization Bias. No. Would you Bluewater resist the development of HVT production capacity in the Continental USA?
@easymon1 it appears to me like you have enough strength as a horse to stampede through one hundred men, Is your character to equal borat v. gladiator?