Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Hey, then,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the
Speaker 1: Tech Area. It's time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published on August third, two thou fifteen.
Speaker 1: It is titled tech in the post Apocalyptic World, Part One,
Speaker 1: and Joe McCormick of Stuff to Blow Your Mind Fame
Speaker 1: joined me for this episode where we talk about what
Speaker 1: tech will look like. Should you know the apocalypse actually happened?
Speaker 1: This was before the pandemic, y'all. We didn't really have
Speaker 1: an idea of what an apocalypse was gonna be. And
Speaker 1: now we all know it mostly involves watching a lot
Speaker 1: of Netflix and trying to, you know, stay home and
Speaker 1: wear masks whenever we have to go out. But back
Speaker 1: then we didn't have any idea. So let's listen in.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on to day, Jonathan, especially
Speaker 1: to talk about this really exciting topic, Clayton Utter breakdown
Speaker 1: of society. Yeah. Okay, So first, Joe, before I get
Speaker 1: into the listener request that prompted this entire episode, I
Speaker 1: should let you know that the previous episodes that went
Speaker 1: up and we're just recorded were with Ben Bolin about
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, so it tells nicely into this one. Um.
Speaker 1: So the this discussion actually comes to us because a listener,
Speaker 1: Benjamin G. McCall on Twitter's wrote to us and said,
Speaker 1: after watching Mad Max, I'm wondering what tech would be
Speaker 1: viable in a post apocalyptic world, what which tech would
Speaker 1: be jerry rigged? So really, this is such a huge topic.
Speaker 1: We could end up having discussions about all sorts of
Speaker 1: different doomsday scenarios. Yeah, I know. One of the options
Speaker 1: we talked about for this episode was just coming up
Speaker 1: with a list of like the maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: weird tech hacks you could make, yeah, in a post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic scenario. But then we realized, like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're not the inventors of the waste land, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There there are so many different science fiction stories out
Speaker 1: there that cover this sort of material that two to
Speaker 1: kind of. I mean, we could have, I guess gone
Speaker 1: through each one and graded it on a plausibility scale,
Speaker 1: but that would have taken forever to sure. But we
Speaker 1: figured maybe a better approach would be to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's imagine there's a scenario that has represented a technological apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Suddenly all of the technology that sustains our lives that
Speaker 1: usually just runs in the background and keeps us happy
Speaker 1: without us even noticing what it does for us. What
Speaker 1: if all that went away? Yeah, so we're not so
Speaker 1: much focusing on specific scenarios. We will some of them
Speaker 1: will come into play because they factor into, uh, the
Speaker 1: contingencies we might we might use in the case of
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure of technology, Like there could be somewhere
Speaker 1: you say, hey, what if we use blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So well, if the reason for the catastrophe he was
Speaker 1: this blah blah blah, would not work. We'll get into that.
Speaker 1: But but just some general catastrophes that that could be
Speaker 1: the ones that lead into this nuclear war would be
Speaker 1: a big one. Right, so that people always want to say,
Speaker 1: zombie attack, zombie attack. Okay, so some sort of pandemic
Speaker 1: would be a possibility, right, The more realistic version of
Speaker 1: and pandemics could end up being something that is directly
Speaker 1: affecting people, or could be indirectly affecting by killing off
Speaker 1: let's say, crops or livestock, anything like that that could
Speaker 1: lead to famine obviously, could also capitulate into technological failures
Speaker 1: sure like is imagined in the movie Interstellar, where they
Speaker 1: talk about the idea that there's like crop blight getting
Speaker 1: all of their food supply. Yea, So in that case,
Speaker 1: you could end up having a vast reduction of the
Speaker 1: population on Earth, which in turn would cause technological issues. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other ones to super Volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption could potentially at least for leading to catastrophic climate change.
Speaker 1: Really anything that leads to catastrophic climate change, So really
Speaker 1: just waiting around right. Sadly, I wish that weren't the case,
Speaker 1: but uh so, there are a lot of different scenarios
Speaker 1: that could lead to this, and and we've got a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different variations of that in literature. And
Speaker 1: at the end of this episode, Joe and I are
Speaker 1: going to talk about our favorite post apocalyptic stories and scenarios. Uh.
Speaker 1: The reason why I'm putting it at the end is
Speaker 1: so that we have something wonderful to look forward to
Speaker 1: on our journey through terror. But honestly, my favorite ones
Speaker 1: are kind of depressing, so so are mine. It's fine,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's kind of hard to have an
Speaker 1: upbeat post apocalyptic scenario. I promise you, folks, you're at
Speaker 1: least gonna hear us talk about Zardas. Yes, Czar does.
Speaker 1: But okay, what's the first thing that we need to
Speaker 1: talk about? The big tune in the basket, as I
Speaker 1: might say from I think I said that recently. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that was a forward thinking but I'm not
Speaker 1: entirely certain. But out of the basket, it's power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the power grid. Yeah, the power grid where our energy
Speaker 1: comes from, because almost everything that sustains their life depends
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, and on some form or another, If
Speaker 1: not directly, then indirectly. Correct. So, yeah, the power grid
Speaker 1: is the big one. Let's say that whatever the catastrophe
Speaker 1: is has hit the power grid, and we're largely going
Speaker 1: to be focusing on the United States because that's where
Speaker 1: Joe and I live. But power grids across the world
Speaker 1: have varying degrees of vulnerability. Many of them are very old.
Speaker 1: There are elements of the United States power grid that
Speaker 1: date back to the late nineteenth century. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: our current power grid is not there. Oh man, I
Speaker 1: hate it when that happens. Our press temporary power grid
Speaker 1: is not necessarily in the best of shape. No, this
Speaker 1: could come as a rude awakening to some people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So here's here's the deal. First of all, the power
Speaker 1: grid is incredibly complex. We talk about it as if
Speaker 1: it's this big, united thing, but really it's a collection
Speaker 1: of lots of smaller things. So, in most basic terms,
Speaker 1: how does it work? All? Right, most basic terms, if
Speaker 1: you want to look at kind of the microcosm, the
Speaker 1: individual element that makes up the power grid, you're looking
Speaker 1: at a power plant, uh, something that is generating electricity
Speaker 1: through some means. There are a lot of different versions
Speaker 1: of this. There are coal fired power plants that use
Speaker 1: coal to generate heat, turns water into steam. Steam turns
Speaker 1: a turbine that's what generates the electricity. Uh. Have a
Speaker 1: hydro electric plant hydro electric that's using the power of
Speaker 1: water moving turbines in a similar fashion, there are wind
Speaker 1: turbines that use wind to do that. Solar generation where
Speaker 1: you're you're you're really just converting solar power into electricity.
Speaker 1: That's one of the few that doesn't require steam or
Speaker 1: or turbine. Yeah. You've got, of course, nuclear power, which
Speaker 1: is really like coal fired on steroids, except it's using
Speaker 1: obviously nuclear fuel, not burning coal. No smoke, No smoke,
Speaker 1: there's lots of steam. Uh. Yeah, if you're if you
Speaker 1: are have designed it properly, it's perfectly safe. At least
Speaker 1: the operation is the nuclear fuel and the waste generated
Speaker 1: is something else that is an issue, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to go into that because it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: a side issue to what we're talking about today. Though,
Speaker 1: if you are interested in that, we did a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes before thinking about that some time last year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those were a lot of fun, So definitely recommend us.
Speaker 1: One might be a word to describe how we h, well,
Speaker 1: it was fun nuclear ways fun in the sense of
Speaker 1: really trying to wrap your brain around something that's truly complicated,
Speaker 1: not just the technology but the political and cultural side
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. Then you also have things like, um not,
Speaker 1: there's there's natural gas uh. And there's also oil power
Speaker 1: power plants, power plants that rely on oil belthough that's
Speaker 1: a very small percentage of the ones that are used
Speaker 1: here in the United States. So you've got these power plants.
Speaker 1: They generate the electricity a the the electricity is sent
Speaker 1: through a transformer which steps up the voltage The reason
Speaker 1: for this is that the higher voltages will transmit over
Speaker 1: a greater distance with less loss of energy. Right, so
Speaker 1: this's going to be alternating current going out through all
Speaker 1: of the wires of the grid to the neighborhood. Direct
Speaker 1: current will not work in a transformer. You have to
Speaker 1: use alternating current. So yeah, it steps up the power
Speaker 1: you have. You have different types of lines. There's a
Speaker 1: distribution power line that is pretty heavy duty. That's what
Speaker 1: carries the super high voltage that gets stepped down by
Speaker 1: a different type of transformer for the power lines that
Speaker 1: you typically see in the neighborhood. So like the telephone
Speaker 1: polls that have the power lines um uh dangling from them,
Speaker 1: particularly on a hot George today. Uh, those are those
Speaker 1: have been stepped down from the major transmission lines. There's
Speaker 1: another transformer that will step that power down again for
Speaker 1: it goes into a building or a home or whatever
Speaker 1: to be the proper voltage for us here. Uh. So
Speaker 1: that's your basic setup, right. That's and the power grid
Speaker 1: is made up of lots of these. By the way,
Speaker 1: these power plants are run by different organizations, different entities,
Speaker 1: so it's not all a unified thing here in the
Speaker 1: United states, and not just like the government or something
Speaker 1: privately owned power generation company. It's not like the monopoly
Speaker 1: board where you just you land on the utility and
Speaker 1: you own it and that's all of it. It's not
Speaker 1: the way it works. So it's the real monopoly. You
Speaker 1: should be able to win monopoly as soon as you
Speaker 1: buy electric, right like exactly like, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: power in your hotel? Guess at buddy, I am it.
Speaker 1: So as it turns out, that's you know, that's not
Speaker 1: the case. There are all these different entities across the
Speaker 1: power grid that and that generate power, and they're doing
Speaker 1: it with different types of hardware and software, which makes
Speaker 1: it even more complicated. And we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit when we get into cybersecurity. So um. Because
Speaker 1: of this complexity, there are lots of potential points of failure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the complexity both cushions the power grid from failure
Speaker 1: and also is vulnerable to to further failure. It all
Speaker 1: depends upon the actual conditions that exist at any given time, right.
Speaker 1: I guess in the best case scenarios, all of the
Speaker 1: interconnectedness of it would mean in some cases you have
Speaker 1: some degree of redundancy. Yeah, It's kind of like if
Speaker 1: you think about the Internet, how if a a single
Speaker 1: computer goes down, traffic can route around it. The power
Speaker 1: grids kind of like that. But depending upon where you are,
Speaker 1: you may, you know, if a power plant goes offline
Speaker 1: for whatever reasons, if it is quote unquote tripped, which
Speaker 1: means that it turns off essentially for any amount of time,
Speaker 1: you may be without power until it's returned to service. Uh.
Speaker 1: Other area as might be able to receive power through
Speaker 1: rerouting or whatever. But the goal, of course, is to
Speaker 1: create a smart grid that can respond to those issues
Speaker 1: in real time. But the reality is we do not
Speaker 1: have a truly smart grid throughout the United States. It's
Speaker 1: not a unified system like that. Here's an interesting fact
Speaker 1: I'm seeing in the notes that I wasn't aware of before.
Speaker 1: So we've got three interconnected grids in the United States.
Speaker 1: That's correct. I didn't know about this. Yeah, the Eastern Interconnection,
Speaker 1: which you would think at first, Oh, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: the East coast, right, Well, yes, it's the East coast
Speaker 1: all the way out to the Rocky Mountains. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Eastern Interconnection. It's a large part of the
Speaker 1: nation and then you've got the Western Interconnection, which is
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. And then you've got
Speaker 1: the Texas Interconnected System which covers Texas. Big shock there.
Speaker 1: So uh, I don't mean that in that electricity sense either,
Speaker 1: So I didn't mean to, but yes, you've got these
Speaker 1: three larger interconnected grids that collectively make the power grid
Speaker 1: of the United States. We'll be back with more of
Speaker 1: this classic episode of tech stuff after this quick break.
Speaker 1: There are two related concepts when it comes to power
Speaker 1: grids that we want to talk about. There's reliability and
Speaker 1: there's resiliency. So reliability is how consistent is that power grid,
Speaker 1: How frequently are there any interruptions in power? The fewer,
Speaker 1: the more reliable, obviously, so if you're having frequent brown outs,
Speaker 1: that's not reliable. No, it's not reliable. It would be
Speaker 1: rough to uh, and obviously we have had periods of
Speaker 1: that in the history of the United States and in
Speaker 1: different regions. Then there's resiliency, which refers to the power
Speaker 1: grid's ability to withstand adverse effects like solar flare activity
Speaker 1: or severe weather or you know, an apocalyptic scenario like
Speaker 1: if an e MP went off. By the way, if
Speaker 1: any MP goes off electromne atic pulse, that's what that
Speaker 1: stands for. Uh, there's not I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: power grid on the world that is resilient enough to
Speaker 1: withstand a truly powerful electromagnetic pulse. UM. Also, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing with those is that you know, you hear about these,
Speaker 1: like especially in movies. You'll see uh like Oceans eleven
Speaker 1: uses an e MP at one point to knock out
Speaker 1: the security system of casino because if you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: this will go a whole long Um. Then they get
Speaker 1: back outside somehow. Yeah. Yeah, at any well, you know, hey,
Speaker 1: it's a movie. But at any way, the the e
Speaker 1: m p s, depending upon how powerful they are, they
Speaker 1: and how close you are to the pulse. Uh, that
Speaker 1: can affect all sorts of levels of electronics. Although generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the larger the system, the more vulnerable it is, because
Speaker 1: the more more likely it will have current running through
Speaker 1: it as a result of this electromagnetic pulse. It's the
Speaker 1: same principle that's affecting the transformers. It's just imagine that
Speaker 1: it's this enormous pulse that isn't a controlled element of
Speaker 1: the power grid. So uh, most e MPs would probably
Speaker 1: affect large systems like the power grid, but leave smaller
Speaker 1: stuff like the The less complicated and smaller it is,
Speaker 1: the less likely it's going to be directly affected by
Speaker 1: the e mph So your battery operated stuff might work
Speaker 1: for a while, at least until the batteries run out,
Speaker 1: even in the face of an MP unless you happen
Speaker 1: to be really close to where the pulse goes off. Alright,
Speaker 1: So resiliency and reliability to very important concepts. I read
Speaker 1: a report and boy was this report card? It was
Speaker 1: a report card. Yeah, The American Society of Civil Engineers
Speaker 1: released a report card that graded the United States on
Speaker 1: various elements of its infrastructure. And this came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. The whole thing is available online. It's
Speaker 1: a very interactive site that will depress you if you
Speaker 1: live in the United States because overall US got a
Speaker 1: D plus and that was for everything. That included things
Speaker 1: like not just electricity and energy, but drinking water bridges,
Speaker 1: Damn's hazardous waste handling, and aviation were also in there. Um,
Speaker 1: none of the grades were great. So what's are like
Speaker 1: GYM class grade that's waiting it up? Oh? Right, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: some of them are a little better than others. Actually,
Speaker 1: D plus being the average the g p A. That's
Speaker 1: also what we got for energy. So it's still a
Speaker 1: failing grade, but it's one of the higher ones. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: it's not a D, like are I think? I think
Speaker 1: Bridges got a D. So like, so what you're telling
Speaker 1: me is I really need to charge my cell phone
Speaker 1: before the zombies attack, and you really need to make
Speaker 1: sure your your your commute home doesn't go over Bridges. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they also, by the way, grade at individual states. Not
Speaker 1: every state got a grade, but Georgia did. We gotta ce.
Speaker 1: Oh so that's better than average, Yeah, we we it's
Speaker 1: better than the average score for the United States. By
Speaker 1: the way, in case you are unfamiliar with this grading score,
Speaker 1: the scale of grading. Uh, the school's not used that anymore,
Speaker 1: not not not universally, and we have listeners from all
Speaker 1: over the world. So this would be a grade system
Speaker 1: that typically goes A, B and C would be the
Speaker 1: passing grades. See being average, B being good, and A
Speaker 1: being superior. Then you have D, which is technically a
Speaker 1: failing grade, and you've got plus and minus as well.
Speaker 1: So on the high side. D plus would be oh,
Speaker 1: you almost passed, but you didn't. Uh. I don't know
Speaker 1: if anyone who has ever used E, but F means fail.
Speaker 1: I thought a D was just a shameful passing grade.
Speaker 1: I always thought of C as well. Maybe, but I
Speaker 1: always thought C was passing, like C minus was the
Speaker 1: for me, the threshold of passing. Essentially, that was the
Speaker 1: equivalent if you looked at it percentiles A seventy. Folks
Speaker 1: right in and let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: D S. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a failing grade,
Speaker 1: but I could be wrong. F is outright fail. D
Speaker 1: is like on the cusp um. So maybe I guess
Speaker 1: if you're a glass half full kind of guy, you
Speaker 1: might say that D is a passing grade D plus
Speaker 1: for energy. Energy, by the way, was not just the
Speaker 1: power grid. It was all the elements of energy in
Speaker 1: the United States, but they did focus quite a bit
Speaker 1: on the power grid. They reported the aging infrastructure of
Speaker 1: the power grid as a huge problem, some of it
Speaker 1: again dating all the way back to the late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: so it's pretty old. Um. And they also said that
Speaker 1: they these older facilities in particular are uh, they're prone
Speaker 1: for failure for things like just the fact that it's
Speaker 1: such an aging infrastructure. Uh, they're not very good at handling, uh,
Speaker 1: adverse conditions like weather events or solar flares, that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And they said that, uh, the significant power
Speaker 1: outages in general are on the rise. They said there
Speaker 1: were seventy six recorded significant power outages. They didn't define
Speaker 1: what significant means in the stuff I was reading, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what that refers to. But seventy
Speaker 1: six of them in two thousand seven and three hundred
Speaker 1: seven of them in two thousand eleven. So it's a
Speaker 1: problem that is getting worse. So that's that's an issue.
Speaker 1: But they also had some less awful news in it.
Speaker 1: So they said that the United States is having a
Speaker 1: very slow growth in population in general. The rate of
Speaker 1: increases is fairly low when it comes to the need
Speaker 1: for electricity. So in other words, our population isn't growing
Speaker 1: so quickly that our need for electricity is outpacing our
Speaker 1: ability to generate electricity. And in fact, there probably won't
Speaker 1: be a significant issue until around And that's that's saying
Speaker 1: that we don't we haven't invested in our ability to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. They of course very strongly advocate that we
Speaker 1: should be investing in that, both in the the power
Speaker 1: generation or the electricity generation and the transmission of electricity.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's look at one particular type of
Speaker 1: threat to our energy infrastructure. How about a cyber attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this on tech stuff quite a few times. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, could foreign hackers just shut down the United
Speaker 1: States with some with some smart malicious computer people, Probably
Speaker 1: not the United States, but certainly elements within the United
Speaker 1: States very targeted ones. Yes, because this is not a
Speaker 1: surprise we have discovered we being people in the United States,
Speaker 1: not myself in particular, UM, that there are elements of code,
Speaker 1: malicious code within several different facilities throughout the United States,
Speaker 1: within our our power grid infrastructure. UM a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of them originating from China, some from Russia. But
Speaker 1: there are elements of code that clear really have been
Speaker 1: planted there, possibly as a way to weed out vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, in the effort to exploit them
Speaker 1: in some potential future. So it's not necessarily the case
Speaker 1: that these are all going to shut off on the
Speaker 1: same day. In fact, that's probably not going to happen.
Speaker 1: And it's largely because of what I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: the fact that the power grid is actually made up
Speaker 1: of all this diverse you know, hardware and software run
Speaker 1: by different organizations. It means that there's not a unified
Speaker 1: means of shutting everything down, so any attacks would probably
Speaker 1: be very specific, and people know to look out for
Speaker 1: this stuff now, So there's there's there might be individual
Speaker 1: utilities that are lagging behind because they're not paying enough
Speaker 1: attention to this problem. But it's not a universal issue.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's kind of patchwork, right. You
Speaker 1: You may be that the target you've selected is really vulnerable,
Speaker 1: but also means that the effects are going to be
Speaker 1: localized to that area. You can't you can't say like, oh,
Speaker 1: he has a big red switch and when we push
Speaker 1: it that lights go out. It's not gonna be like that. Also,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I would, Well, they're actually Austrian,
Speaker 1: but it is just because that's where I go for
Speaker 1: the my mad scientist. It is the best mad scientist
Speaker 1: accent to our German or Austrian listeners, no or to
Speaker 1: our Russian ones who who really agree that the Russian
Speaker 1: mad scientists is the best one. I mean, there's they
Speaker 1: all have their charms, is what I'm getting at. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one possibility that strikes me is you're saying
Speaker 1: that a cyber attack could potentially target a localized facility
Speaker 1: or small subsection of infrastructure, though there's always the possibility
Speaker 1: that by doing so they could trigger chains of larger events. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is where you have to start taking into
Speaker 1: consideration the specific conditions around that localized area. So is
Speaker 1: this the scenario people have actually imagined, like a sort
Speaker 1: of a cascading series of problems that get bigger and
Speaker 1: bigger with infrastructure failure. It absolutely is. Yeah. There have
Speaker 1: been studies that have looked at specific UH systems that
Speaker 1: have centralized critical nodes, which would be very much similar
Speaker 1: to the United States power grid UH. And if you
Speaker 1: were to target one of those important critical nodes and
Speaker 1: take it down, there's the potential to have this cascading
Speaker 1: domino effect where it would the the the loss of
Speaker 1: that part of the power grid would put such a
Speaker 1: burden on the surrounding ones that they too could fail,
Speaker 1: which could potentially cause others to fail as well. It
Speaker 1: might not be a nationwide outage, but it might be
Speaker 1: much more significant than that one utility going down. Um,
Speaker 1: for that to happen, generally speaking, you have to have
Speaker 1: other elements that are at play. It's it's generally understood
Speaker 1: or believe that if it's an average day that probably
Speaker 1: it would just be the localized utility that was affected.
Speaker 1: But if other issues, like if it was at a
Speaker 1: peak demand when other neighboring utilities were working overtime to
Speaker 1: supply power, because just because the way that particular day
Speaker 1: is unfolding, then you might have a different situation on
Speaker 1: your hands. I have to imagine somebody has tried to
Speaker 1: simulate this. There's been a lot of interesting simulations that
Speaker 1: I looked into, most of which we're saying, hey, it's
Speaker 1: not as bad as we think unless and it's always
Speaker 1: that lesson like you're like, I guess, I guess if
Speaker 1: if things are aligned just right or just really really wrong,
Speaker 1: then it could be really bad. In fact, in August
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, there was an article in Nature of
Speaker 1: Physics where scientists from the United States and Israel asserted
Speaker 1: that a cascading failure in the system it ends on
Speaker 1: those few critical elements, but they pretty much guarantee that
Speaker 1: at some point it will happen. And this, by the way,
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that there was an attack. I mean,
Speaker 1: an attack could be the precipitating event that causes us.
Speaker 1: But it could just be a failure. It could be
Speaker 1: a particular power plant in a grid fails and it
Speaker 1: and conditions just happen to be right for other facilities
Speaker 1: to fail as a result of that, and then you
Speaker 1: have a rolling blackout that could be pretty huge. Um
Speaker 1: or it could be a failure due to some other event,
Speaker 1: like a solar flare, which causes a similar event to
Speaker 1: an e MP going off. It's not good. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should get back into the possibility of an MP
Speaker 1: solar flare, you know, any one of these high energy
Speaker 1: events that can sort of fry the components of our
Speaker 1: electricity infrastructure. Yeah, this is super bad news. Like, this
Speaker 1: is stuff where it's not just that it shuts down
Speaker 1: the power, it does damage to the infrast structure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, one of the other issues about this complexity
Speaker 1: we were talking about is you don't always necessarily know
Speaker 1: where the problem is ultimately or which elements of your
Speaker 1: infrastructure are the ones that were damaged by this activity.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this text stuff
Speaker 1: classic episode right after we take this break. So, if
Speaker 1: it's a significant solar flare that shuts down power in
Speaker 1: an area, you may have to do some really extensive
Speaker 1: testing to figure out which elements need to be repaired
Speaker 1: or replaced. In the meantime, you've got people who are
Speaker 1: without power. Not only are they without power, that a
Speaker 1: lot of them are going to be without any means
Speaker 1: of receiving communication to hear what the status is. And
Speaker 1: the longer that goes, the worst things are going to get.
Speaker 1: Right Like like people, some people will react, all right,
Speaker 1: you they might hunker down or whatever. Some people might panic. Uh.
Speaker 1: You also have other elements at play that are going
Speaker 1: to continue whether you've been able to communicate or not,
Speaker 1: things like hospitals having to treat patients. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are some major issues that have to be addressed. And
Speaker 1: meanwhile you're scrambling to try and fix a broken system
Speaker 1: and you don't necessarily know where the problem is. That's
Speaker 1: the real danger with these these uh events that would
Speaker 1: overload a power of grid by putting a huge amount
Speaker 1: of electricity through a system that wasn't prepared to handle it.
Speaker 1: Um and there's not a whole lot you can do
Speaker 1: to prevent that. I mean, like the these are events
Speaker 1: that are outside of our control. The best you can
Speaker 1: do is is make your system as robust as possible
Speaker 1: so that it can resist electromagnetic interference, but actually involved
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean really mostly in all of
Speaker 1: separating UH elements out into micro grids, that's right. One
Speaker 1: of the things we could do is instead of having
Speaker 1: these giant interconnected power grids UH, concentrate and create an
Speaker 1: infrastructure that has more micro grids that are only serving
Speaker 1: a small region. They can be interconnected with other systems still,
Speaker 1: but they're not dependent upon them. They're not as interconnected
Speaker 1: as the current systems are. That way, if a local
Speaker 1: event knocks out a few systems, they are not going
Speaker 1: to pull down surrounding neighboring systems. In this cascading effect,
Speaker 1: it isolates the problem, which means that you can devote
Speaker 1: more attention to solving a localized issue than you would
Speaker 1: if it were a general nationwide problem. A nationwide blackout
Speaker 1: would be catastrophic. Like you want to talk about post apocalyptic. Sure,
Speaker 1: you might argue that it's not an apocalypse, but a
Speaker 1: nationwide blackout would cause enormous problems. Well, yeah, we can
Speaker 1: I guess talk more about the projected consequences of that
Speaker 1: in a bit. But yeah, how about the zombie attack scenario?
Speaker 1: People always want to know about this. I have to
Speaker 1: kind of remind people sometimes that like, that's not gonna
Speaker 1: happen because zombies are sort of physically impossible. But you
Speaker 1: could have something like a zombie sort of problem. You
Speaker 1: could just basically have a pandemic, really really bad uh
Speaker 1: infection that spreads throughout the population. So in this case,
Speaker 1: we're looking at a scenario where it's not necessarily physical
Speaker 1: damage to the infrastructure, right, It's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: dramatic reduction and human population where you just don't have
Speaker 1: the people to run the systems anymore. Right. So, so
Speaker 1: let's say that you've got um really terrible conditions where
Speaker 1: the people who would be running the power plants and
Speaker 1: the various utilities mostly have been wiped out, so there
Speaker 1: are very few of them left, um, along with giant
Speaker 1: swaths of the population in general. So how long would
Speaker 1: you have electricity? You are one of the lucky survivors
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse. Yeah, Rick Grimes has not made it over
Speaker 1: to your house yet, so you're still on your own.
Speaker 1: How long could you expect to continue to have electricity? Well,
Speaker 1: this largely depends upon what style of power plant is
Speaker 1: providing electricity to your home and whether or not your
Speaker 1: home is on the grid. Now I'm assuming your home
Speaker 1: is on the grid. If you have managed to create
Speaker 1: an off the grid power scenario, you are in way
Speaker 1: better shape as far as how long your electricity is
Speaker 1: gonna last, but at least for the short term. But
Speaker 1: let's say that you are connected to the grid. Well,
Speaker 1: if you are getting your electricity from a coal fired
Speaker 1: power plant, which by the way, makes up the vast
Speaker 1: majority of power plants in the United States, more than
Speaker 1: sixty percent, I believe our coal fired power plants, Uh,
Speaker 1: you would probably have electricity for the event has happened
Speaker 1: people have been wiped out. For maybe well to eighteen
Speaker 1: hours after that event, you would have electricity. That's That's
Speaker 1: about how long the coal firing power plants would probably
Speaker 1: operate at their best before tripping before shutting down. Automatically. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's no, and that's because there's no there are no
Speaker 1: humans there to keep the operation moving. Because even with automation,
Speaker 1: there are things that require human attention. An alarm will
Speaker 1: go off and you'll look, and it may not be
Speaker 1: that it's like a catastrophic failure. It could be something
Speaker 1: like you need to vent some ash out of the system,
Speaker 1: and if you don't do it, then ah, it'll trip.
Speaker 1: It'll say all right, well this will get to unsafe levels,
Speaker 1: so we're shutting down. Um, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: I need an adult. Yeah, and all it would take
Speaker 1: is to vent it. It's not a it's not otherwise
Speaker 1: a huge deal. It's not like it's leading to a
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure. But it's one of those systems that's put
Speaker 1: in place for safety that if it's not monitored and
Speaker 1: acted upon, the plant will shut off. We need get
Speaker 1: some robots in those plans. Yeah, and well, there's actually
Speaker 1: been some people who have suggested that if this were
Speaker 1: an event where it was more gradual, like it's not
Speaker 1: a sudden thing where humanity disappears. If it were more gradual,
Speaker 1: then you might be able to alter the system so
Speaker 1: that some alerts don't trigger an automatic shutdown anymore. Because
Speaker 1: you prioritize what what is the most important of the alerts,
Speaker 1: and which ones can we absolutely not ignore and we
Speaker 1: have to respond to anything else. The power plant just
Speaker 1: keeps on going until it can't go anymore. Okay, so
Speaker 1: is natural gas is going to be pretty much along
Speaker 1: the same lines as coal kind of um so, Cole,
Speaker 1: here's the other issue with coal. You only have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of coal stored ray to go, and once
Speaker 1: that's gone, if you don't have people pushing bulldozers to
Speaker 1: push more coal into the system, you're out of fuel.
Speaker 1: So even if somehow magically the coal power plant works perfectly,
Speaker 1: you burn out of coal within a day. Natural gas
Speaker 1: is a little better. UH. You will essentially continue to
Speaker 1: get natural gas to feed into the power plant as
Speaker 1: long as the pressure inside the pipelines remains constant. But
Speaker 1: that's a big if. I mean, any any problem that
Speaker 1: would trigger one of those UH systems to go into
Speaker 1: shut down mode would stop a natural gas power plant
Speaker 1: from operating. So you might go a couple of days
Speaker 1: maybe if if everything went well, like if there were
Speaker 1: no nothing was messing with the lines and no errors happened. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that Part one. Next week we
Speaker 1: will continue with part two, and clearly at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, I was joking about the pandemic
Speaker 1: being close to an apocalypse. It was bad, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, but I don't think we can go so
Speaker 1: far as to call it a true apocalypse. UM thankfully,
Speaker 1: but you know, keep staying safe out there, be healthy,
Speaker 1: be well. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again.
Speaker 1: Release it Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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