Conspiracy Theory
The lights are on again in the East - stable power apparently returning as mysteriously and elusively as it disappeared in the first place. A certain amount of cursory finger pointing was almost immediately on tap. Problem is there just doesn't seem to be one single source (that anyone can find) for this, the single largest electrical outage since we started using electricity in this country.
Given a few hours of careful CYA-motivated cogitation, the powers that be who are supposed to be the experts on the complex power distribution grids in America seemed to cohesively decide that the problem stemmed from the antiquated power distribution itself. Seems that demand, the abettors quickly offered far outpaced the growth and maintenance of the grid itself.
There's nothing political about their argument and explanation. This has, after all, been a developing problem for decades. A disaster waiting for its inevitable provenience of inception.
But wait just a minute here. Do I agree that the power grid is antiquated? Absolutely. How could it not be? Estimates for revamping the system are running about 100 billion dollars. I can understand how any one administration would have liked to pretend the problem didn't exist - at least for another four years. (Don't even get me started on our national flight control network which for the most part is finally being revamped in isolated locations simply because radio transistor tubes are all but unobtainable anymore.) But all this hardly explains the latest meltdown as it were.
The company [First Energy] said its data and reports from other utilities showed "unusual voltage and frequency fluctuations and load swings" before the blackout.
"Contrary to speculation, these unexplained conditions were detected as early as noon on Thursday in the broad region, not just within our system," the utility said.
David Nevius, senior vice president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC, said it was shortsighted this early in the investigation to point blame at FirstEnergy or the MISO.
"This is much more complicated than just a few lines in Ohio or the control system at that utility," he said.
Yeah, I'll concede that. Increasingly incoming information seems to support the idea that this blackout didn't happen instantaneously. In fact, operators had been noticing all sorts of weird things occurring that morning/afternoon prior to the actual event. But we also know that the power grid was only at 75% capacity on that day. In other words, nominal conditions for an August afternoon.
As I recall the events of that Thursday afternoon, officials were way too quick to rule out the possibility of terrorist activity as a cause of the blackout. How did they know? How was this conclusion reached so quickly? Oh, and by the way, wasn't that MS-Blaster Worm thingy - possibly reaching the pinnacle of its strength - floating about in the virtual hereabouts that day? And what about the worm? Know what? It didn't do anything. The various computer expert flatfoots had explained to we mere mortals that they had analyzed the code and come to the conclusion that it would "target" the Microsoft corporation the following Saturday(8/16) possibly disabling Microsoft's own Worm patch-update page. It simply didn't happen. Microsoft reported no unusual traffic to its sight (other than from the likes of me who checked the page just to see if it was still up....)
Hackers are a peculiar bunch. (I have some historical first-hand knowledge of this) But dumb, hackers, generally are not. I concede that many a criminal has met his end while harboring the idea that all cops are stupid. A simple analogy is in order. If you were a bank robber would you call the cops three days ahead of your next heist and announce to the police that you'll be robbing American Savings bank this Saturday? I didn't think so. Call me crazy but is it possible that the Eastern power grid just got hacked? Coincidences frighten me. I can't get the picture out of my head - somewhere a group of decidedly irresponsible teeny-boppers having the laugh of their puerile lives. Been there. Done that. The beauty of it all is, if they're good<'i> we'll never know....
4:34:37 PM 
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