The terrible consequences of the electric power failure in Venezuela are substantially less than those from the nationwide U.S. power grid blackout that would most likely result from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack from high-altitude nuclear explosions over the United States, such as is in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

Click here for an early draft from Tom Popik discussing his initial assessment of the well-reported disastrous electric power blackout in Venezuela. He will update it as more is learned. Moreover, the terrible consequences of this power failure have been further elaborated by others. For example, click here for Clare Lopez’s graphic discussion.

I put Clare’s discussion together with some elaboration from an exchange with Tom to draft my following Newsmax article published yesterday. I’m sure that more will be learned that should concern all American’s about the possibility, indeed I would argue the probability, that a U.S. grid blackout could be even greater disaster for us than currently being experienced in Venezuela. Click here for that article, repeated below.

Lessons From Venezuela’s Power Failure

By Henry F. Cooper
Newsmax Monday, 18 March 2019 10:29 AM

Clare Lopez’s excellent discussion of the consequences of the March 7, 2019 cascading collapse of Venezuela’s electric grid cascading heralded the inevitable collapse of Venezuela’s disastrous socialist experiment and described how Venezuela’s long-suffering population is increasingly desperate for the most basic necessities of life, most especially water.

Given the loss of electricity in 22 of 23 Venezuelan states, she reports that, “people are jostling to fill containers from the filthy, contaminated water coming out of a leaking pipeline along the Guaire River. Those needing regular or urgent hospital or medical care are simply out of luck and dying. Food, what little of it there is, is spoiling. Cell phones don’t work. Vehicles sit where they ran out of gas, while others limp or are pushed into the few remaining gas stations with their own generators. Looting is widespread.”

A man fills containers with water flowing down from the Wuaraira Repano mountain, also called ‘El Avila’, in Caracas on March 13, 2019. The blackout has left millions without running water. (Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images)

Clare’s sobering report is complemented by Thomas Popik’s pithy assessment of the implications of the well reported disastrous blackout, particularly its associated painfully slow restoration activities and continuing persistent blackout pockets. Moreover, he reports that this crisis is far from over and likely will cause further stress on Venezuela’s economic, social, and political systems.

There are lessons to be learned in considering the possible consequence of a major electric power grid loss in the United States. And it is well worth your time to read and contemplate the implications of both these reports.

Clare is an expert on worldwide intelligence matters and Tom is an expert on our vulnerabilities to various threats to our electric power grid from physical, cyber, and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. And he has long labored to rectify the dysfunctional nature of the federal government in addressing these vulnerabilities, especially associated with the regulatory regime.

His analysis makes clear that we need to learn lessons from Venezuela before an even worse blackout hits the United States.

Consider the following implications from his analysis that are absolutely clear to me:

Nearly all of Venezuela’s electric power is generated by hydroelectric power plants — the most resilient sources of electricity and the easiest to restart on their own following a blackout. In contrast, the majority of large less resilient U.S. generation plants require outside power to restart.
In Venezuela, a localized failure cascaded into a nationwide blackout. Each of the three U.S. grid interconnection — Eastern, Western, and Texas — is vulnerable to cascading collapse as well. In fact, the U.S. Eastern Interconnection has already been hit by cascades in 1965 and 2003. The Western connection was hit by a cascade in 2011.
When electric grids collapse, critical equipment can be damaged — such as generator turbines and high voltage transformers. In Venezuela, transformers have been exploding, and there are multiple reports of damage to turbines at their largest hydroelectric dam. This damaged equipment will take months or years to replace. Ditto for the USA.
When grid equipment is damaged, power restoration is difficult; full power restoration in the near-term may be impossible. We see this happening in Venezuela and should expect the same or worse if a large blackout were to hit the United States.
Consequently, much of the population of Venezuela will likely be without electricity for many months to come. Because the U.S. has less resilient generation sources, our situation could, probably would, be even worse.
If current efforts to restart the Venezuelan grid fail, outside humanitarian support for Venezuela will probably be massive. But if the U.S. utilities fail to restart our grid, there likely would be little if any outside help and no practical way to support an American population ten times larger than Venezuela’s.

Just imagine what it would be like following a major EMP attack that shuts down the entire U.S. grid. Or a naturally-occurring solar storm, which could cause major unprotected grid shutdowns around the world? Or a combined cyber and physical attack? Any would be a human catastrophe of unprecedented proportion.

We should contemplate what has happened in Venezuela and take immediate action to prevent an even worse situation for the United States.

So . . . when will the President’s Executive Order on EMP direct the Federal Government to wake up?

As argued for over a year, that order should establish executive leadership in the White House with a mandate to rectify the current dysfunctional federal establishment, when it comes to rectifying the vulnerability of the nation’s electric power grid.

Stay tuned.

Click here for a very informative recent article by Bill Gertz, who gives China equal billing with Russia, long recognized as posing an existential threat to all Americans. His important article also makes clear that our leaders have long ignored the existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat — even though we have known for a half-century of that threat and how to counter it.

I also agree with Michael Pillsbury that China actually “constitutes, by far, the biggest national security challenge to America’s positions in the world today,” and strongly recommend that all read his most informative book, The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America and the Global Superpower, which is based on his decades of related study.

But I would add that possibly even more troubling is that we face an existential EMP threat not only from Russia and China. North Korea, Iran and even terrorists also pose the same threat if they can get their hands on a few nuclear weapons and can launch them to be detonated over the United States to shut-down our electric power grid for an indefinite period.

Kim Jong Un declared openly some time ago that achieving an EMP attack capability was his “strategic goal.” And whatever is the capability of North Korea, we should assume their ally, Iran, also has or can buy the same capability.

As noted by the EMP Commission, an EMP attack strategy in included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Click here for all the important reports of the EMP Commission, that, after its service for over 17 years, Congress disbanded in an act of absolute stupidity a couple of years ago.

As most graphically illustrated by the experience in Venezuela, such an attack would return us to a 19^th century existence without the food and water that then sustained a population of about a tenth of Americans alive today. Without electricity, most Americans would undoubtedly die from starvation, disease and societal collapse.

Bottom Lines.

It is long past time when our leaders should take the needed steps to “provide for the common defense” as they swore to do when taking their vows to enter office.

And we all should do our part to avoid such a catastrophe.

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing 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. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

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