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You seem to be assuming some sort of terrorist event. I would have thought the most likely reason for the whole grid to go down is another Carrington event.

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I'm not assuming anything/anyone specifically but lean towards nation-state, anarchist, terror, etc. A natural disaster such as a flare, earthquake, fire, etc. are a different story. The radiation and electrical magnetic pulse from a solar flare could hamper equipment. However recent studies in the last few years by EPRI, INL, and ORNL actually show that much equipment would survive and equipment that did not would be localized.

Do we stress test our grid(s) core components with inputs that would be similar to that of a solar flare to write any of this off?

I feel like 5 months ago we’d be sitting here dismissing the notion that a face mask shortage is a trivial problem, all countries can just suddenly ramp up production. But we couldn’t.

Care to link to any of those studies? I'd love to read them.

Here is EPRI report - https://www.epri.com/#/pages/product/3002014979/?lang=en-US

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