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What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

practical.engineering

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Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#41

Post by mc32 »

LarryMullins wrote: post #38
kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".

He's right about this much at least: > white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos I've seen such advocacy posted many times on 4chan. That doesn't prove much, but I think it validates that line of speculation.

But so do some people who fantasize about getting rid of fossil fuels --and they typically are polar opposites to the ones you are referring to... which goes to show extreme right and extreme left are like the head and tails of ouroboroses.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#43

Post by htag »

jfengel wrote: post #24
NavinF wrote: post #18

Last para is pretty relevant: "But it’s important to put this event in context as well. Attacks on the power grid are relatively rare, and they fall pretty low on the list of threats, even behind cybersecurity and supply chain issues. The number one threat to the grid in nearly every place in the US? The weather. If you experience an outage of any length, it's many times more likely to be mother nature than a bad act…

They're rare because nobody is doing them. If some group decides that it's a thing to do, it will increase rapidly in frequency. I don't know what the limitations are, and maybe natural disasters will continue to dominate. But I wouldn't extrapolate just because it hadn't been the mechanism of choice so far.

> it will increase rapidly in frequency

There's what, 1000-10000x the number of law enforcement personal, national guard, and active military than electrical substations? If these attacks were to rapidly increase over a few days we'd just post guards with guns and cameras at every substation while we pour a thick and tall wall of concrete around all the sensitive bits.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#44

Post by XorNot »

baby wrote: post #36

This just makes me think of chaos monkey. Without these we’re not prepared for a real attack one day.

The chaos monkey doesn't simulate an attack, it simulates system failures.

For substations these are rare, for computers these are common.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#45

Post by BLanen »

mc32 wrote: post #5

"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been…

He's literally saying what you want him to say and still you're triggered because it doesn't mention "BOTH SIDES" or "NO SIDES" enough? What even is the point of your post?

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#46

Post by jefftk »

Animats wrote: post #39

This has happened before, in 2013, near San Jose, CA.[1] Utilities were supposed to upgrade security by building concrete walls around major transformers. There aren't that many of them. Did that happen? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

Why do you say there aren't that many major transformers? This one covered 45k people, so I'd guess there are 5k-10k similar ones nationally.

(And that ignores that there are likely lots of other points of infrastructure that are similarly vulnerable.)

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#47

Post by nightpool »

Animats wrote: post #39

This has happened before, in 2013, near San Jose, CA.[1] Utilities were supposed to upgrade security by building concrete walls around major transformers. There aren't that many of them. Did that happen? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

There's actually a comment about this on the YouTube video—it seems like upgrades happened extensively throughout California, including concrete walls, armed patrols and automated gunshot locators, but not in other states.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#48

Post by LarryMullins »

mc32 wrote: post #41
LarryMullins wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's right about this much at least: > white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos I've seen such advocacy posted many times on 4chan. That doesn't prove much, but I think it validates that line of speculation.

But so do some people who fantasize about getting rid of fossil fuels --and they typically are polar opposites to the ones you are referring to... which goes to show extreme right and extreme left are like the head and tails of ouroboroses.

Heck, it might even be both. Ecofascist acolytes of Ted K, they exist too. We won't really know until they're caught.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#49

Post by MisterTea »

I wonder if the perpetrators are thinking about the people they are blacking out. Because if they are trying to incite something it will most likely be their hanging.

I highly doubt the populous are going to rally behind their cause when their heat and lights are out. Even worse if there are people who depend of refrigeration for diabetes medication or oxygen generators, etc.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#50

Post by LarryMullins »

BLanen wrote: post #45
mc32 wrote: post #5

"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been…

He's literally saying what you want him to say and still you're triggered because it doesn't mention "BOTH SIDES" or "NO SIDES" enough? What even is the point of your post?

I don't think mc32 was 'triggered' by Grady's article, but rather by other online commentary that does speculate about who it might have been.
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