December 08, 2020—Lake Wylie Pilot Study Video

“It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.” ~ Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Click here for a six-minute video about the existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat and views of leaders of York County and especially Rock Hill, the fourth largest South Carolina city, affirming their support for the Lake Wylie Pilot Study. This comprehensive “Bottom-Up” effort demonstrated the electric grid can be quite affordably protected by well-known methods used for decades to protect our most important military systems.

These efforts met Senator Johnson’s above challenge by engaging South Carolina citizens, their local leaders, representatives and key state officials to accomplish this objective in an important demonstration completed two years ago. But Washington has not taken advantage of that conclusion to extend it to protect the nation against the existential threat posed by a high-altitude nuclear explosion over the United States.

Russia, China, North Korea and Iran all include such an attack strategy in their military doctrine. An existential threat also would result when a major solar emission passes through the Earth’s orbit when we are present; and that event will one day surely occur, only when is uncertain. The intercontinental loss of electricity in either case would lead to the death of most Americans from the resulting starvation, disease and societal collapse.

To help get our Lake Wylie good news message out, we are working with David Tice and Petraea Patrick in to produce an important film, called Grid Down—No Second Chance. Click here for a brief discussion of their initiative and a link to a brief trailer video. It extends an initiative that Petraea began several years ago to warn Americans of the existential EMP threat, a major High Frontier concern.

This new effort demonstrates hope for affordable, cost-effective steps to deal with this threat by working from the “bottom-up,” beginning with the public and local and state authorities. The Lake Wylie Pilot Study is an important example of such an effort — that is definitely responsive to Senator Johnson’s challenge above.

Click here to consider the June 19, 2020 High Frontier message that reports in detail on this important effort, including a link to Dr. George Baker’s briefing on his assessment and estimates of the cost to protect the key components of the York County Distribution Grid — that turns out to be less than $100 per York County citizen. Dr. Baker, a staff member of the past EMP Commission, once oversaw development and application of the assessment and hardening methods for protecting our most important military systems.

Duke Energy engineers have cooperated fully with us as have all the key authorities of York County and in particular Rock Hill, a suburb of Charlotte that is home of Duke’s corporate headquarters. South Carolina’s Adjutant General and several of our Congressmen are on board with our effort. But Washington has not provided needed funding to validate the Lake Wylie Pilot Study findings and provide a plan for exporting the lessons learned throughout the Nation.

We need Washington’s support to take the obvious next steps. To illustrate the current Washington lethargy, note that Duke Energy gave a large transformer worth well over a million dollars to Clemson University and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for testing…and it has sat idle for over two years in North Charleston for lack of Washington funding to move it to a long ago prepared SRNL site for the needed testing.

Bottom Line: The one-time cost to harden the key components of the York County/Rock Hill Distribution Grid is less than $100 per York County citizen. There would be additional annual maintenance costs, including for a “Red Team,” potentially led by the National Guard, to regularly assess the hardened grid to make sure that hardness is maintained. But those costs also should be modest.

I hope you find this video of interest and encourage you to support David and Petraea’s effort to build support for all our efforts to protect our grid…based on the DoD efforts for a half century, we know how and, thanks to the Lake Wylie Pilot Study, we know that protection is quite affordable.

Pass this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter. Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift to help us continue our important work. If you prefer to mail a check, please send it to: High Frontier, 20 F Street, 7th Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

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