Electricity infrastructure key to preventing extinction and societal collapse

Societies and nations are examples of large-scale, complex social-physical systems. Thus, societal resilience can be defined as the ability of a nation, population, or society to anticipate and prepare for major stressors or calamities and then to absorb, adapt to, recover from, and restore normal functions in the wake of such events when they occur. A nation’s dependence on its Critical Infrastructure systems, and the resilience of those systems, are therefore major components of national and societal resilience.

There are a variety of events that could deal crippling blows to a nation’s Grid, Critical Infrastructure, and social fabric. The types of catastrophes under consideration here are “very bad day” scenarios that might result from severe GMDs induced by solar CMEs, HEMP attacks, cyber attacks, etc.5

As briefly discussed in Sec. III.C, the probability of a GMD of the magnitude of the 1859 Carrington Event is now believed to be on the order of 1%/year. The Earth narrowly missed (by only several days) intercepting a CME stream in July 2012 that would have created a GMD equal to or larger than the Carrington Event.41 Lloyd’s, in its 2013 report, “Solar Storm Risk to the North American Electric Grid,” 42 stated the following: “A Carrington-level, extreme geomagnetic storm is almost inevitable in the future…The total U.S. population at risk of extended power outage from a Carrington-level storm is between 20-40 million, with durations of 16 days to 1-2 years…The total economic cost for such a scenario is estimated at $0.6-2.6 trillion USD.” Analyses conducted subsequent to the Lloyd’s assessment indicated the geographical area impacted by the CME would be larger than that estimated in Lloyd’s analysis (extending farther northward along the New England coast of the United States and in the state of Minnesota),43 and that the actual consequences of such an event could actually be greater than estimated by Lloyd’s.

Based on “Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack: Critical National Infrastructures” to Congress in 2008 (Ref. 39), a HEMP attack over the Central U.S. could impact virtually the entire North American continent. The consequences of such an event are difficult to quantify with confidence. Experts affiliated with the aforementioned Commission and others familiar with the details of the Commission’s work have stated in Congressional testimony that such an event could “kill up to 90 percent of the national population through starvation, disease, and societal collapse.” 44,45 Most of these consequences are either direct or indirect impacts of the predicted collapse of virtually the entire U.S. Critical Infrastructure system in the wake of the attack.

Last, recent analyses by both the U.S. Department of Energy46 and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine47 have concluded that cyber threats to the U.S. Grid from both state-level and substatelevel entities are likely to grow in number and sophistication in the coming years, posing a growing threat to the U.S. Grid.

These three “very bad day” scenarios are not creations of overzealous science fiction writers. A variety of mitigating actions to reduce both the vulnerability and the consequences of these events has been identified, and some are being implemented. However, the fact remains that events such as those described here have the potential to change life as we know it in the United States and other developed nations in the 21st century, whether the events occur individually, or simultaneously, and with or without coordinated physical attacks on Critical Infrastructure assets.