Last week on the Salcedo Storm podcast, Chris Salcedo discussed the biggest issues with the United States power grid with “Grid Down, Power Up” movie director and producer David Tice.
In Tice’s movie, he exposes the vulnerability of the United States power grid and the seriousness of this threat to the United States security.
Tice’s film discusses four major threats that the US power grid faces: “Physical attack… electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack… a geomagnetic disturbance, which is essentially a solar flare, and cyber attack,” Tice explained.
“And essentially, if we have as few as nine substations that are at critical nodes go out across the country, you could bring down the grid nationally,” Tice said. This would cause a mass blackout throughout the country and prevent the people from being able to complete simple tasks: no water pressure, no heat, to light, no electricity.
“If we have an electromagnetic pulse attack, or a massive geomagnetic disturbance, it could wipe out key electronics for all our transformers and essentially knock the grid down, such that there’s no electricity in America for as long as a year, potentially a couple years. And as many as 90 percent of Americans could die,” Tice explained.
Just something as simple as an EMP attack could bring the United States to its knees, destroying electronics, debilitating millions, and leaving almost as many to die.
Tice’s movie notes that, while most Americans fear a nuclear war with nukes being launched into cities, the more likely and far more terrifying possibility would be a nuclear missile sent into orbit and detonated above the US, causing far more damage with less resources.
Tice says that this is absolutely a threat, and that the US military has known about this threat for more than 40 years.
Tice outlined the attack: “detonate (a nuclear missile) at about 200 nautical miles above the United States of America, in the middle of the country. It essentially generates these gamma waves, and they would play havoc with electronics, and essentially would wipe out the electronics in our transformers in our critical substations.
When asked about the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill for solar panels and turbines, Tice argued that a percentage of this money should be going towards strengthening the infrastructure.
“This miniscule percentage of that ($1.2 trillion), we’ve a couple different estimates in this film. As far as hardening the system, it could be between $10 billion, or some estimates as much as $150 billion. But the numbers are not that massive, given the consequence of this, and we need to start spending money because there is equipment out there available.”
Although Texas is on a different power grid than the East and the West parts of the United States, the people are no safer from these attacks. There are no backup plans, no backup generators, and no one near plans to fix that.
“And I’ve been to a water treatment facility in Dallas,” Tice recounted, “and they said, ‘We’re 100% reliant on the power grid.’ ‘Is there any backup for that?’ I asked. ‘No, we don’t really have any backup.’ And therefore, the treatment facility won’t work.”
Despite the upsetting revelations of his movie, Tice ends on a high note:
“But if the American people rise up… we can get this done. We’ve overcome a lot of obstacles in the past and America… We can create a movement here. This needs to be a tea party movement, or Contract with America.”
To learn more about the power grid’s flaws, Tice’s move “Grid Down, Power Up” is available for free to watch on his website griddownpowerup.com.
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