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Comment by jkubicek | Hacker News Reader

I think the parent's point was that if oil infrastructure is completely disrupted, consumers won't even be affected for a few days and the short-term consequences will be somewhat minor (some percentage of drivers won't be able to drive, deliveries may be delayed).

If a hospital is shut down, then people will start dying immediately. The consequences are much more direct and severe.

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I think this is simplistic and overlooks logistics and flexibility.

If a hospital closes, patients can be moved. If there's no gas, patients can't get to any hospital.

At least in the cities I've lived in, there tends to be a lot of internetworking in the local hospitals. If my local hospital, CRMC, were to be hit by ransomware or otherwise taken down it's likely that a good chunk of the city's health infra would be out or at least at risk too. Not to mention the damage an attacker could do to the data stored in an EHR system like Epic.

What if you attack the hospital in the middle of, lets say a covid outbreak, where no excess capacity is available. Now you've likely caused a significant number of deaths.

My point (which wasn't well made, admittedly) is that a closed hospital has immediate and material effects. Disrupted petroleum infrastructure isn't going to affect consumers for days.

hospitals without IT don't just kill all their patients and shut down. They slow down and loose capacity and capability while the realtively low-tech business of doctoring continues.

lolwut? this is insane. If oil infrastructure is completely disrupted it would be beyond catastrophic. Oil is completely foundational to our economy

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