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Things That Go Bump in the Night
12/14/2007
Just when I thought we had business continuity and disaster recovery figured out, along comes something new. Last fall I attended a presentation by Joe St. Sauver, security program manager for Internet2. His topic was "Planning for Certain High Risk Security Incidents." His focus was not on the more traditional regional threats such as hurricane or wildfire, but on national scale threats. In particular, he talked about high altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects and pandemic flu. His presentation was both timely and important, so this month's column is about EMP; next month's will be about preparing for pandemic flu.What's an Electromagnetic Pulse?
Many of us have lived through a prolonged power outage. Perhaps it was a freak ice storm that left a city-sized area without power for a few days. If it was winter, perhaps we fled to a hotel in an area that still had power. But imagine if the power went out across the entire continent ... and didn't come back on for six months or a year! And what if all our modern semiconductor electronics and computers stopped working at the same time?
Black Friday: A Fictional Story
It was early Friday afternoon in mid-December. I was working at my computer to complete an article that was due that afternoon. Plans for the weekend included hanging Christmas lights and shopping for gifts. Even through the curtains in my office I noticed a bright flash on the horizon just as the lights went out. Where I live in Montana, that's not unusual. What was unusual was that my computer went dead even though it is attached to a robust battery backup system. When I tried to report the power outage I found that my phone was dead as well. When you can't fix it, feature it. My wife and I built a fire in the fireplace, and had a romantic candlelight dinner that night cooked on our charcoal grill.
The next day when the power was still out and we found that our car wouldn't start, we knew there was a big problem. As news slowly trickled into our small community we learned that the continental electric power grid was down and most electronic devices using sophisticated transistors and integrated circuits as well as almost all computers were inoperable. A small atomic bomb explosion 250 miles above Kansas was the cause.
Winter was hell, and we were among the lucky ones. We had a small electric generator that we used to power our propane-fueled furnace a couple of hours a day. There was a free running stream less than a mile away when the village water tanks ran dry because there was no electricity to run the well pumps. Because our pantry was well stocked we made it through the winter and avoided the famines and food riots common to some urban areas.
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