Our Modern, High Tech Lifestyle Is a Huge House of Cards

It's rather amazing if you compare it to most of human history. Indeed, it's amazing for me to contemplate how different it is from my own youth, half a century ago, when so much of this was unheard of.

There's a downside, though. It's all a huge house of cards, and it could be brought tumbling down with shocking ease. Only this last week, we learned of a massive plot to bring down the New York/New Jersey cellular phone network through a "SIM farm" operation, and we do not yet know the extent of that operation. Might there be a similar effort elsewhere? Say, the nation's capital?

Read More: New: 'Nation-State Actors' SIM Farm Threatens The American Cellular Phone Network

Shock: New York Cell Service Disruption Plot Now Much Larger Than We Thought

We've seen how communications could be disrupted, and we should note that this SIM farm incident would not permanently damage the physical infrastructure, although it can mess up emergency services, 911 call responses, local government services, business, and much more. 

No, what's of much greater concern is the electrical grid, without which none of this could exist. And our electrical grid is, make no mistake about it, vulnerable. 

Local Effects

The weak link in the provision of electricity is the transformer. These range widely in size; we have one on the power pole outside our office building and house, which is about the size of a kitchen trash can. Others are the size of railroad cars. And a lot of them could conceivably be disabled by a small improvised explosive, or even a few guys with rifles. A 2024 Department of Energy report states in part:

Large power transformers (LPTs) are essential components of the electric power transmission and distribution grid.  The susceptibility of LPTs to emerging threats and hazards, combined with their extended replacement lead times, presents significant challenges to grid reliability and resilience.  These challenges include not only localized outages due to physical attacks but also more severe incidents with the potential for widespread consequences.

The Nationwide Grid

On a larger scale, there is the issue of a possible EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack, which could be initiated by the detonation of one or more thermonuclear devices just above the atmosphere, just over the target nation. While estimates vary widely, with some proposing only minor damage, easily repaired, the worst-case scenarios are dire, destroying much of, for instance, North America's electrical production and transmission capacity. This worst-case would result in damage that would take years, maybe decades, to repair. A severe solar storm could have much the same effect, mind; see the Carrington Event in 1859. The electrical grid then consisted only of the telegraph system, and it was badly damaged, but in 1859, that was all that was affected.

It may be worse than that, though. Such an attack, at its worst, presents the possibility of never being repaired, due to the collapse of our modern lifestyle, our modern economy, our modern way of doing business. If this worst-case scenario were to come to pass, it would plunge our lifestyles back to the pre-Civil War era.

The Consequences

If the electrical grid goes down, so does everything else that our modern society depends on.

No more carriage of food and other supplies into our major cities. As the cities begin to starve, governmental systems collapse or are simply overwhelmed. Law enforcement and other emergency service workers, many concerned for their own families, would likely give up and walk away. Armed gangs would seize remaining food supplies, and when those run out, they would flee the cities, into the suburbs, into the countryside, but with no knowledge of how to survive in those environments. And worse, as the year goes on in its inevitable seasonal cycle, over much of North America winter will set in, and millions may well die of exposure.

Health care systems will collapse. There will be no more medicines delivered. Hospitals' generators would run dry, plunging them into darkness. Any remaining health-care workers would see patients that could have been saved start to die; diabetics, patients requiring dialysis, patients undergoing cancer treatments, and even patients with conditions such as appendicitis would simply die. Patients requiring specialty medications, as my wife does for a heart-lung condition, would also die. The system would be overrun with corpses, with little or no way to deal with them.

In the countryside, people living in remote areas may find themselves overwhelmed by the hordes fleeing the cities. Some may be consumed. Others will form groups, militias, or simply armed gangs, to counter the people fleeing the cities. Desperate for food, the survivors of the urban collapses may well be willing to kill to gain food, and the rural people, willing to kill to protect it. And there won't be enough food in any case, because our modern systems of agriculture, essential to feed our population, will also collapse. There will be no fuel to power the equipment, no fertilizer, no modern hybrid seed. 

In the end, the population of the United States, in such a worst-case, could plunge from 330 million to less than 10 million in a year. We're talking about a major collapse of our society, likely irreversible.

Things may not be that bad. But can we afford to take that chance?

The Secret Service is investigating the SIM farm incident. But we need to be looking at the security of our electrical grid, of our generation capacity, of reserves, of alternatives, and we need to be doing it now. The possible consequences are too dire to do otherwise. Things may not approach that horrible level I've described here, but then again, they might - and "plan for the worst, hope for the best" would seem to apply.