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Satellite Views Of The Blackout
An anonymous reader writes "These Before and After satellite views of the blackout, from the NOAA, show the geographic extent and intensity of the outage. Toronto, Ottawa, and Detroit seem the worst hit. Currently, a cnn article mentions that a reverse of power flow around Lake Erie may have caused an overload that triggered the programmed shutdown of the power grid. Would be interesting to know how the system and software works, but then again, that information could be dangerous in the wrong hands."
Nearly any information, used incorrectly, maliciously, or by evil people can be devestating. Making information secret in the interest of "security" is a bad move. This is why many people advocate full disclosure, and why most security experts think that "security through obscurity" is a bad idea. Security should come because systems are strong, not because those systems are "secret".
If a map with so little detail can be used to bring down the power grid, we've got bigger problems. There isn't even a scale on that map.
Come on. 'Sensitive' information can be found in any street map you buy from the corner store. Did you know, for example, that JFK airport is in New York City? Keeping power plants secure, and airports for that matter, doesn't rely on keeping them hidden. It means using more than a chain link fence and a rent-a-cop to keep people out. If you think you'll be able to keep terrorist from finding power plants you're crazy. You can see them from the highway!
or large parts of Africa, or the interior of South America, or even parts of USA (whatever the hell state is next to California).
Oh wait, I get it. North Korea is communist, so they don't have power.
I don't think the 'after' picture is accurate at all. I live in columbus where we were *not* affected by the outage. however, the after picture clearly shows that columbus was 'dark'. We were just fine. Most of our power comes from the Ohio River IIRC. Sure, the picture is 'neat' to see parts of NY state and other areas under darkness via satellite, but I am treating it more as an 'artist's rendering', not a legitimate photo. I would expect more from NOAA.
Anyone else notice the same thing?
-John
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and hoping for different results"
North Korea is dark because they have major power problems, due mostly to their horrifically inefficient government.
Nevada is dark because most of it is unpopulated. There's a big difference there.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA they used to "hide" whole cites such as the "Atomic City" full of nuclear bomb workers; they weren't on any maps. Of course, the CIA knew exactly where they were -- by satellites if not otherwise. So who were they keeping it secret from? Their own citizens.
The power grid is composed of enormous power stations, with thousands of workers, the power lines are either huge pylons you can see for miles, or if underground, emblazoned with warning signs. If they tried to hide these, the first thing you'd notice would be a large increase in outages due to lines being cut by backhoes, etc.
As for whether "terrorists" would target the power grid, I don't see it. Not much bang for the buck. How many died in this, the biggest outage in the US for decades? A half-dozen. It'll be forgotten in a few weeks. Blowing stuff up and killing lots of people is much simpler and does a much better job of terrorising the population. Cutting the power off for a few hours just pisses them off. (With apologies to anyone on a heart-lung machine.)
Actually, this is very unlikely. Systems like the American power grid are highly resilient.
Blow up a transformer? So what, there goes a neighborhood.
Blow up a substation? Big deal, so a town or small city is messed up for a little while.
Blow up a power plant? A shame, but other production facilities on the grid can pick up the slack for a while.
Catastrophic power failures are rare, because minor failures are common, expected, planned for, and almost always isolated to a small area. By definition, terrorist groups do not have the resources to do any more than minor damage. In attacking the airline system, "minor" damage can be effective, as September 11 showed, but the power system takes more damage from a little summer thunderstorm than al-Qaeda could ever do -- and for the most part life goes on unaffected.
This is why I find all the bleating on by the newscasters & politicians that "the power outage was not the result of terrorism." Well of course it wasn't, this isn't the sort of attack that a small malicious party can pull off. It just isn't. Power stations go out all the time, but normally nobody ever notices. Indeed, it is very, very hard to deliberately bring down a power system: NATO spent a month bombing the power grid & computer networks in Yugoslavia, but they never managed to do much more than bring a city like Belgrade down for a few hours before power was restored. If NATO couldn't do it, then I doubt terrorists could either.
If you want to bring down a whole grid, the best way to do it is by plain dumb luck (or an overwhelming lack of luck, depending on your point of view :-). It was a random fluke that caused yesterday's outage, just as it was random flukes that brought down the grid in the last two major outages, in 1977 & 1965. On the bright side, that suggests that the mean time between power grid failures may have doubled, and the next event like this may happen in 50 years... :-). (Incidently, the Presidential Report on the 1965 outage makes for fascinating -- and newly relevant -- reading material).
Resist the culture of fear! Most of the fears that the government and media have been pushing on us for the past couple of years are way overblown. The news this week wasn't that the power system is unstable, or that terrorists could have done this. No! The news is that the system is remarkably robust, and that our system is so good that we can go for decades at a time without glitches like this. That's a very good record, when you put things in perspective.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
>>As for whether "terrorists" would target the power grid, I don't see it. Not much bang for the buck. How many died in this, the biggest outage in the US for decades? A half-dozen. It'll be forgotten in a few weeks. Blowing stuff up and killing lots of people is much simpler and does a much better job of terrorising the population. Cutting the power off for a few hours just pisses them off. (With apologies to anyone on a heart-lung machine.)
OTOH, cutting off power immediately before an "actual" attack could cripple the response.
" the after picture clearly shows that columbus was 'dark'."
If you look at both pictures, you'll see that Columbus is closer to the edge of the picture in the "dark" photo than in the "light." Which means that during the "dark" picture, the satellite saw Columbus almost eddge-on, reducing the amount of light the camera could see coming from Columbus as well as putting more atmosphere between the two. Columbus got "darker" because of the same reasons the sun gets "darker" near sunset.
Hmm, I'd have to disagree. For just the two days that we were out, it's not a big deal... it's actually kind of novel, an adventure. But it sounds like you weren't here:
- You can't cook anything if you have an electric stove. Sure, you can live off peanut butter & jelly, and canned tuna for a few days; but that's going to get old really quick. Lunch meats & cheese spoil. Some people are lucky enough to have charcoal or gas grill, but you can't store it for more than a day or two, and neither can stores.
- It's really tough to buy gasoline. There were only a handful of places with power to run the pumps or the credit card machines, and at some point everyone realized, "Hey, I have only about a 1/4 tank of gas, and this may last more than a day..." and rushed to the gas stations to wait in long lines.
- You can't access your e-mail, the internet, watch TV, listen to the radio (unless you have battery-powered radio, or in your car; but remember, gas is hard to come by, and batteries only last so long). Even if you can listen to the radio, most of the radio stations are out; those that are on are talking about the power outage. Now, I don't really watch that much TV or play many games, so I have many ways of seeking entertainment that don't require electricity; but how many Americans are used to doing that?
- There is no A/C, no fans, no ice, and after a day the water from the tap wasn't potable: it was pretty hot and humid, with no relief.
In the winter, because most heating systems have electronic switches, there would be no heat either (though that's easier to deal with: everybody has coats and blankets).
- Think of all the economic havoc that's going to be wreaked. The entire production of the city of Detroit was shut down for at least a day! This is going to reverberate through the stock markets and financial things pretty soon.
Anyway, the point of terrorism isn't to kill people; the point of terrorism is to make large amounts of people live in fear of something, and through this to put pressure on the goverment. Imagine that Al Qaida managed to do this once a month without being caught, each time demanding, "Pull US troops out of the Holy Land of Mecca!" How many months do you think it would be before popular demand to remove troops from Mecca would be deafening?TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.