If the current Duke Energy Outage Map is current, and to be believed

[Otto_Harper]

Then this incident has demonstrated loudly and clearly how a small group of dedicated terrorists can disable large swaths of the US quickly and readily. It demonstrates that the availability of spare parts and skilled workers is so limited that they can't get one county in NC back up and running. Imagine a more sophisticated and disseminated attack plan.

Link to current outage map (now Tuesday evening, this started Saturday evening):
https://outagemap.duke-energy.com/#/current-outages/ncsc

[zuul]

1. And here we were worried about a Russian cyber attack.

[Otto_Harper]

2. Or other bad eventualities

I just this past week retired one of my remaining ZTE Smart phones. You never know when they could wake up in the middle of the night and claim my house as a part of China.

[Renew Deal]

5. Cyberattack is overall a bigger threat

Because anyone with the appropriate level of capability can perform it from anywhere. There are defenses but you never know.

I think most countries are scared to go down this road because they know they can't secure their own infrastructure.

[Renew Deal]

3. I doubt skill is an issue but parts probably are

[RKP5637]

4. And that was without any explosives. I imagine it could be far worse. n/t

[sarisataka]

6. I spent a few months

On a Red Team. Our job was to come up with terrorist scenarios for Special Forces and Federal anti-terror organizations to train their responses. Our worst nightmare plots included interrupting the power grid. Often that was a prelude to much worse follow attacks.

I doubt this is any organized group with a plan but hope they are being treated as a serious threat.

[Girard442]

7. Much of this country's infrastructure is unguarded and vulnerable.

What kept things going is that most capable people have been fairly sane.

Up til now, anyway.

[BComplex]

8. This isn't too far from where I live. We're going to look into solar panels.

We need to convert to solar and get off the grid before these terrorists get any closer to home.

[localroger]

9. I have seen literature about how to do this sort of thing dating to the 1980's

Of course, that was all directed more at a Red Dawn type scenario where the US had been invaded by Russia. And until now it was just the fantasies of people who thought it would be a really cool thing but didn't dare do it.