UPDATE: BY AN ELECTRICIAN/ USA TODAY obtained news about our Nation's power grid. If this information is true, how have we avoided a blackout?

My question is: if all of this is true, then why has this Country kept from having a Nationwide blackout?

The power grid is not as vulnerable as you might think. Not anymore.

[link to www.ferc.gov]

[link to www.usatoday.com]

USA TODAY has obtained through the Freedom of Information Act dire news about ongoing cyber attacks within the Department of Energy.

The cyber attacks have enabled a breach of information, but most dire of all is the hacker obtains the ability to do anything within the Department of Energy.

The Power Grid is a sitting duck, and we have to accept we could lose everything due to this fact. It could happen anytime, and we can only imagine what our world will be like. For those of you off the grid, you should be proud of yourselves, and please pray for those of us still in the system.

What I do not understand is how have we avoided a Nationwide blackout thus far...that is if it can happen so easily?

LINK: Cyber attackers successfully compromised the security of U.S. Department of Energy computer systems more than 150 times between 2010 and 2014, according to a review of federal records obtained by USA TODAY.

Incident reports submitted by federal officials and contractors since late 2010 to the Energy Department's Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center shows a near-consistent barrage of attempts to breach the security of critical information systems that contain sensitive data about the nation's power grid, nuclear weapons stockpile and energy labs.

The records, obtained by USA TODAY through the Freedom of Information Act, show DOE components reported a total of 1,131 cyberattacks over a 48-month period ending in October 2014. Of those attempted cyber intrusions, 159 were successful

This makes me so mad...they don't care. They will go into seclusion and come out when everyone else is dead.

My question is: if all of this is true, then why has this Country kept from having a Nationwide blackout?

That was one of the best videos on TEOTWAWKI I have seen. Thanks for posting it Mountain Woman.
By the way preppercamp.com check that out for a line up of speakers this month.

I would like to know why the power grid is open to the internet?

Whoever made the video added extra drama, I sense a drama queen at work.

My question is: if all of this is true, then why has this Country kept from having a Nationwide blackout?

The one fortunate reality is that most of the electrical infrastructure is decades old and and has very poorly integrated network connectivity at best.

Perhaps we should applaud the obsolescence as the Commander Adama solution. ;-)

Just a little bit about me. I started out my career. 40 years ago working in the transmission, distribution, construction, part of a very large company I worked my way all the way up to superintendent.

I was there when they started changing out the breakers and the switching gear From Oil circuit breakersTo vacuum breakers, starting at 300 A up to 1200 A.

I do not think that getting onto the web and getting into a switching yard center will totally screw everything up. So let's say they get into the power grid through the web and turn things off. If that happens, it can be just for a day or two. I do not know how to say this, but there's other ways, shutting down the grid for weeks may be even months, but I do not think the Internet would be that big problem because you can clear it and bypass it and man all the substations With switchman.

Something to think about.

You all live on the end of the extension cord.

You need electricity to make gasoline and diesel, without it, you will not have any.

98% of all water is pumped With electric motors

Those are three things, and you can go on and on.

I don't think you can hack the inner workings of the power grid. I read somewhere(that I wish I could find again) that all the main components are offline and you cannot gain remote access.

It maid sense since the lights are still on.
If it could be hacked...it would've been hacked already.
Think of all the people out there that would get in line to shut off the power in the US.

It is still very vulnerable to a ton of other things and still worth having some prep for.

There is a pretty easy fix for that.

Seems to me to be a no-brainer.

If this is any problem at all especially at nuclear plants...

WHY are the systems connected to the internet in the first place?

Can't hack it from the internet if it isn't hooked up to the internet.

Apparently most of the people that run anything important in this country are idiots!

They need to have these systems completely stand alone and heavily shielded from EMP.

And I say that because anyone with half a brain knows that a Carrington-like event is going to happen sooner or later.

Unless it's because they full well know that if another Carrington-like event happens we are all doomed anyway.

Think about it, all the nuke plants will melt down, hundreds of Fukushima-like events.

Sure, many will survive such an event short term and possibly long term. But what will fail at a relatively low threshold is the human races ability to reproduce. And just about everything else on the planet.

UPDATE: THIS IS AN UPDATE FROM AN ELECTRICAL SUPERINTENDENT OF A BIG MILL:
What people call the GRID is a collaboration of all power companies tied to each other that forms a National Grid.

If one power company for instance is doing maintenance on one of their generation plants, they will be buying power from another power company.

Consumers don't realize that their power could be coming from a thousand miles away. The power companies also have the ability to disconnect from the GRID.

If you say one of CON-ED'S main power producers has a major fault and goes down, they will pull a lot of power from say DUKE ENERGY or GEORGIA POWER, which will then put a strain on those two. So they have to have a way to disconnect that major power puller before their voltage drops too low.
This is called a BROWN-OUT.

The power companies have the means to disconnect from the GRID before they, too, experience a black-out due to excess pull.

These breakers that can disconnect or connect to the GRID are now automated where it used to be human operators had to watch the power pull constantly and had to manually disconnect.

That could be either good or bad depending on who has access to the programs that operate these main breakers now.

It is possible that a hacker could get into the big power companies' logic controllers and cause havoc.