Ken, in any disaster recovery plan, the first thing (after basic essentials of security, shelter, and food) that will have to be resolved is power. That dictates if all of our national resources are required, the grid will have priority.
Correct. I would add as part of all those, emergency local services, i.e., fire, police, 911. Nothing survives without the grid. According to the best accounts I have seen, if the grid is down for about 60 consecutive days, it CANNOT brought back up. It takes power to fix the grid.
I would add as '0' to your priorities, US, Chinese, ex sov states early warning radar, etc., screens giving data, and CORRECT data.
The latest stories re: Russian reaction to the bombings, is that the us/russian monitor programs will be scrapped by the russians. Equally seriously, will we also have a similiar exchange program of monitoring in place with the Chinese, Ukaraine, etc., ?
I would add as '0+', that cyberterrorists and other terrorists attempting to bring down the grid, banking, etc., are all caught in time.
I would add as '0++', that there are no major explosions from non-comp nuke plants or any of the many thousands of non-comp chemical plants, gas line ruptures, etc., close enough to any key vunerable grid points....
I could add some more 'o+'s if you wish to see more crucial areas that can be called 'pre-conditional' emerg prep factors....
Now since the grid essentially existed in its capabilities LONG BEFORE there were computers monitoring and controlling whatever processes that involve embedded systems or date sensitive microchips, that means it can be recreated AT LEAST LOCALLY and in some form of capacity without computers. Even if the authorities have to dictate that all teritary control systems have to be torn out and reinstalled to priority power locations, it will be done. (And I'm not suggesting, NOR HAVE I SEEN ANY DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE that suggests this measure of vulnerabilty for the nationwide grid)
Your statement indicates probably a, and maybe the... potential salvation of the grid, and thus, the entire infrastructure, if it were to occur and possible.....
I expect the govt will make that priority #1, including nationalization of the major utilities outside of rural areas, impounding as many necessary repair workers as possible, providing security personnel to guard them, etc.
Key questions to answer:
if banking is sufficiently disrupted, how many unpaid workers will stay?
with far lower gas imports/refining/delivery to pumps, how many workers will not be able to get to their stations for the fixes, unless they are impounded at their stations?
when the widespead civil unrest occurs, how many key workers will stay/run home to guard the family?
when water delivery does down, how many will have enough stored water to survive? how much water storage will be available at each and every plant?
same question re: food storage?
I could list many more such interelated questions...
Transportation networks will work even if it requires creating the equivalent of the WWII "Red Ball Express" with one line heading solely heading west, and another heading east with centralized distribution points set up along the track for transferring critical material via truck. Some have expressed some concern about digital track switches failing. Well, I would suggest that you tear out the track and even if you have to have a man standing there at major junction points throwing a new manual switch manually, so be it.
I do not agree with the above, re: manual. I have read too many articles indicating 'manual' is a pipe dream only....how many switches are left? how would/can so many thousands of switches be purchased and replaced...is that even possible? are they even made in large quantity? old rr guys all discount that have have discussed this in articles I have seen....if you wish, I will post a couple of those here, and I think you would then forget the notion of 'back to manual for this sector or ANY OTHER major entity!
Your idea would have been appropo maybe up to about 2 decades ago, when the personnel, manuals, know-how, existed in sufficient supply....
Fundamentally, there may be substantial systemic risk. But this is an electronic "system" we have created that replaced a past more inefficient manual one. That manual one can be reinstituted (with effort). The US was a great and strong economic power well before the introduction of computerized systems. The fact that the entire globe will face similiar problems, I suggest that, in comparison, the US will not lose its place.
You are probably correct, but only in a relative sense regarding US global position.
We have gained economies of scale, far greater efficiency, speed, convenience, global accessing, etc., at a cost of virtually total fragility, complexity, and minimal fault tolerance of the entire interdependent global system of modern society, as well as a division of labor that is so vunerable, I except to see quickly degrading and disintergrating. For example, how many different companies make parts for your pc? How many hundreds of thousands of workers combined make those parts? How many of those countries, e.g., China, Korea, Japan, etc., will make it?
Fear is your problem, Ken. You claim you are retired, yet you forget how well this economy functioned before PCs and mainframes, and the Internet.
As before, wrong evaluation of my emotional state to disquality my data, analysises, and predicts!!!!!!!
But, I do remember the old manual days.....the key advantage they had was far greater product storage/local availablity vs. jit, a far lesser interdependent global system, a less fragile system, leading to a society with a far greater overall fault tolerance- too bad it wasn't a y1955problem! We of those years had a much greater chance to have avoided what we of today are facing! (this aside is not serious of course, only to illustrate a point).
Ken "its far too late!"
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