FBI Joins Investigation Into North Carolina Power Outage Caused By 'Intentional'...
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FBI Joins Investigation Into North Carolina Power Outage Caused By 'Intentional' Attacks on Substations
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"The person, or persons, who did this knew exactly what they were doing," Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said during a Sunday news conference. "We don't have a clue why Moore County." Fields said multiple rounds were fired at the two substations. "It was targeted, it wasn't random," he said. The sheriff would not say whether the criminal activity was domestic terrorism but noted "no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they're the ones who [did] it." In addition to the FBI, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation has joined the investigation, officials said. More than 33,000 customers were still in the dark across the county Sunday evening, the Duke Energy outage map showed. For some, the outage may stretch into Thursday, officials said, upending life for tens of thousands. All schools in the county will be closed Monday and authorities have opened a shelter running on a generator. Traffic lights are also out, and while a few stores with generators were able to open their doors, several businesses and churches in Moore County were closed Sunday, CNN affiliate WRAL reported.
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Not sure how long it's been since this sheriff fell off the back of the turnip truck, but I kinda doubt some international terrorist organization is going to claim an attack on Moore county in North Carolina.
That'd be some weird-ass ISIS bragging rights.
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The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.
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The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.
I'd more say it's a problem of motive. The hell does even "friends" have to gain from something like this? Kickbacks split 10 ways from a service station repair?
Sadly, this smells more like a proof of concept attack. If anyone had doubts that you could take out almost half a million customers with very small targeted attacks using common tools, that doubt is gone now.
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I also think this looks like a proof of concept"attack. The folks that did this defiantly understood how to make this have significant impact.
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Didn't this happen out west a number of years ago...maybe it was California?
It was thought to be a proof of concept there too I thought.
Here we go, it was an attack in CA on power substation in 2014 [npr.org].
I thought this sounded familiar.
They took out a number of transformers with rifle fire.
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Yeah. I referred to it in October in that story [slashdot.org] about the French internet sabotage. There has been a lot of that sort of thing going around.
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Some rural transformer is probably taken out by gun fire every day in the South. Seen them doing it. The only thing that I could imagine would make them think that this is more than some teenagers out cutting up is if they only hit some specific transformers that were guaranteed to take out an area for a while due to replacement time or something without hitting others at the same sites. I'm sure the electric companies in the region have a pretty large budget for replacing equipment hit by gunfire.
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The motive was stopping a drag queen show from happening. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.
Everyone knows each other in these southern towns. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the sheriff knew the suspects. Hell they probably go out for beers after work.
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It's also worth mentioning that this drag event they were protesting was for adults. When it comes to the anti-LGBTQ+ folks, "think of the children" is just a shiny veneer they put on their agenda to make it palatable to the masses (and also to be able to conveniently accuse their opposition of being "groomers"), but their ultimate goal is to restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ adults.
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Exactly. Religion is like as penis. It's fine to have one. You can even talk about it in the appropriate company. Displaying it in public or forcing it on children is just wrong.
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So bringing your kids to a pageant is the purview of the theocratic state but church is the purview of parents?
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Why would it not be the discretion of the parents to take their kids to a drag show?
Because you disagree? I'm pretty sure that gets filed under "too fucking bad" due to the same reasoning that some atheist twat wouldn't like parents taking their kids to church.
If we're all about parents getting to raise their children in the manner which they see as being the "right way" why is someone else's way "wrong" if it doesn't affect you or your children at all?
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Cite a source.
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It's also equally probable that some high school kids got drunk and decided to use the substation as target practice because they heard that equipment has flammable shit inside and could really blow up in an impressive way if shot with a rifle. And then when they got the shower of sparks and electrical arcing they wanted, they decided to do it again for the lulz.
Nobody ever went broke betting on redneck rube kids doing stupid shit.
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It's NC, so I'm throwing "drunk hillbillies" into the hat.
Probably heard the equipment humming and thought it was "aliens"...:-)(If it had been FL, I would have just guessed, "It was Saturday.")
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If it wasn't intended as a proof of concept attack originally, it is one now.
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Obviously, the substations were, as Uncle Jimbo on South Park would say, "Comin' right for us" [youtube.com] and they fired in self-defense.
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What's to be gained from an entire summer of rioting, looting, burning, causing 2 billion in insurance payouts, and nobody going to jail and no National Guard being employed to stop it?
Its the same rationale. The pepetrators are attempting to institute anarchy, which they believe will force "the people" to 1) conclude the this country doesn't work, and 2) instead allow these perpetrators to be voted into office (Democrats) and set up a communist dictatorship while abolishing the Constitution. For a desc
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Honestly I think what we're going to find when they catch the guys, and they will catch the guys, is that it's just a bunch of lunatics hopped up on too much Fox News.
One of the really scary things after that last gay nightclub shooting was that the right wing didn't go quiet. Usually after one of the crazies goes off and kills a bunch of minorities the right wing backs off of the rhetoric for a little while. At least a month or two.
After the last shooting they'd say thoughts and prayers in one brea -
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Don't you think a pair of bolt cutters and some very thick insulating gloves on the pole outside the facility would be easier and less dramatic?
One building loses power due to vandalism, and someone just calls the power company. An entire county loses power due to vandalism and someone calls the FBI.
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Thereâ(TM)s a corner of my brain that wonders if thereâ(TM)s some sensitive govt site in the county thatâ(TM)s classified, that would explain a terrorist attack
But yeah, the likely answer is rednecks shooting up the substations on a bender who happen to be friends with the sheriff
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2 different substations?
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"Dude, did you see the way that thing exploded with showers of sparks and shit! That was awesome! Let's do it again over at the other one of these things by the river! Oh, and let's stop for more beers on the way!"
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They can have terrorists locally born and bred. If it was the anti-drag-people doing it (which I'm not saying it was, because I don't know), then that is an INTENTIONAL ACT OF TERRORISM, right there. And those people do have an organization. Which would make it a terrorist organization.
I know you have trouble imagining any terrorists who don't fit your stereotypes, but terrorists are gloriously diverse.
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I went to a highschool with a water tower. A few times a year somebody would shoot a hole in the water tower and we'd all be off school for a couple days while they drained the tank and welded up the hole. My last year there the school installed a buried tank to stop it, but one of the pipes was above ground and kids would just shoot that instead.
So I'd guess somebody wanted a day off school or work. Probably not ISIS.
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We're getting into the world of Hollywood script writing here, but I suppose it's plausible that fucking up two substations that feed power to some facility that they actually want to rob shit from might be a thing - knock out all possible power feeds and then fuck up the on-site generator which is probably easier to access than whatever it is that is being protected.
I have no reason to think this is what actually happened. But I could see some hillbilly dumbasses coming up with it, in aid of some other he
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Now that morons have discovered they can cause a city wide blackout over a drag queen show, wait until the 2024 election when blackouts hit areas that vote heavily democrat. The Fuck your feelings crowd sure feels threatened by some people who dress differently.
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poling places must stay open and curfews can not be used to keep people form voteing.
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Now that voting is done electronically how does that work without electricity?
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Generators. If need be.
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Yeah polling places are overflowing with generators.
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Don't most states use paper ballots that are scanned by machine? If the machines are down, they can still collect the paper ballots and either hand-count them or scan later.
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Not sure how it works anywhere else, but here in Florida we use paper ballots that could presumably be scanned later, after the power returns. Of course, you still have to trust that no black magic fuckery is going on once things do enter the digital realm, but there's still an actual paper trail at least.
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Now that voting is done electronically . ..
I have always and still vote using paper ballots. Only the scanning and counting is now electronic. So if electricity is lost, voting will still go on, but the counting will be slow.
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Or they can use the same procedures they use for transferring the paper ballots to the county's election processing center exactly the same way they already do, and count the votes there. Presumably at such a central facility they would have backup generation in case some shit does go sideways in November in the northern hemisphere - not exactly out of question - and the county elections management and Secretary of State don't want to look like fucking clowns on the national news for not being prepared for
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The backup paper ballots that they have, by law, available by request.
Then, the ballots are driven somewhere else that has power and fed through counting machines there, with careful chain-of-custody rules being followed during the transfer. You know, exactly how it's done today.
You think there was never a power outage at a voting precinct since the introduction of electronic voting equipment? You think nobody ever thought about this until right now?
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Let's hold off on awarding the glory of bearing persecution until a motive is actually determined by something other than internet speculation.
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You know that might have an ounce of credibility... if anyone had actually stepped up admitted responsibility as a person or as a group. However...nobody has. But of course the media and news are gung ho to run with this narrative... even those there is no basis for it.
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Because it's gonna give your kids teh gay!. *eye roll*
A drag show has about as much chance of making your kid gay as a gun show does of making your kid get shot. Oh wait, they sell guns at gun shows, don't they? Oops, bad analogy then.
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So the thing is there's been a huge spike in the number of trans and gay people in the last 20 years.
This Spike just so happens to mirror the exact same Spike we saw when schools stopped trying to teach left-handed people to write with their right hand.
What do you know when you don't force people to behave a certain way the rate of certain behaviors increases.
Incidentally in every place where gender-affirming care is available and where gay and trans people have civil rights and acceptance in the -
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I'm pretty sure the parents who are overly concerned about their kids turning out gay aren't bringing them to drag shows in the first place (and a lot of shows are 18+ to be admitted anyway), so the supposed fear is that knowing a drag show is transpiring in your town might somehow infect your kids or some such nonsense.
Whereas some crazy nut actually could buy a gun at a gun show and then... yeah.
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Go ahead. Democrats vote early and take advantage of vote-by-mail.
The rubes that try it would just be fucking over the Republicans that wait until election day because vote-by-mail is OMG ELECTION FRAUD!!!1!!one11!
Except for when they win, then they're super double-plus good with vote-by-mail.
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"Hey, Cletus, watch me ricochet offa one substation an' hit thet other one clean over t'other side a town! Yeehaw!"
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They weren't there to take the insulators. They just shot them off. It was very clear they were trying to shut down power. And they hit three stations so it's very clear it was coordinated.
On the plus side they've done hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage and it would have taken multiple people to pull this off. Meaning you've got a good old-fashioned conspiracy that's going to be heavily investigated. It's virtually impossible for a conspiracy like this to stay secret because it's too hard for th -
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I guess 'coordinated redneckery' is a bit of an oxymoron....
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This was just some good old boys having fun.
Anyone adult in NC can buy and own a rifle, like an AR15. Some kid got a gun for their 18th birthday, maybe early Christmas, and went out to play with it.
I never would have thought taking pot shots at a substation would disable the whole grid. I would have thought that Duke Energy would have hardened against this, as it must be a common occurrence
Hopefully lawsuits will encourage them to so do.
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some one takeing an gate off it's posts seems more then some kids just takeing pot shots.
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Well, you have to get close if you are not yet a good shot. And like I said, hardened against attack. Not just some cheap gates.
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It was done in response to stopping a drag queen show. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]
The sheriff said the motive in the case was still unknown. Asked if there was any connection to a 7 p.m. LGBTQ+ drag show in the city of Southern Pines on Saturday, Fields said, "It is possible, yes."
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I see someone has purchased their jump-to-conclusions mat.
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She has seen this work for her idol Trump, so why shouldn't it work for her? Overtly commit crimes and blab about it on social media. Unfortunately for her she forgot that she doesn't have an army of lawyers to delay trials for literally a lifetime.
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I suppose if you shoot a transformer causing the coolant to leak out, the problem will escalate and it will be difficult and expensive to fix.
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Hopefully, the transformers have safety devices that cause them to shut down gracefully in case of low coolant or high temp? If they don't, why not? Also, isn't transformer coolant moderately toxic and environmentally hazardous (PCBs)?
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Hopefully, the transformers have safety devices that cause them to shut down gracefully in case of low coolant or high temp?
Gracefully?
It'll shut down if it's temperature is too high, but that's not graceful.-
Gracefully, as in shedding load before something melts or arcs out.
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I never would have thought taking pot shots at a substation would disable the whole grid.
You're so close to seeing the problem with the "just shootin' stuff" theory.
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Remember, it's not terrorism when Righty Whitey does it.
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I never would have thought taking pot shots at a substation would disable the whole grid
From the summary: With no suspects or motive announced, the FBI is joining the investigation into power outages in a North Carolina county believed to have been caused by "intentional" and "targeted" attacks on substations that left around 40,000 customers in the dark Saturday night
Substations. Plural.
Why the fuck half the people here are speculating this is some drunk rednecks thing is leaving me completely baffle
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Just about any rifle would accomplish the same task, no matter its action or magazine capacity.
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Ok then we ban those too? Like, duh. Problem X has cause Y, Solution ban Y.
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Post 9/11 all the water tanks got better fences, cameras and motion detectors due to malicious water contamination fears. Now its going to be the same for electrical substations.
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Let me see, just who makes attacking others domestic power plants / grids a normal part of their international operations ??? This is either a shot across the bow and/or a practice run. As I understand it TAO has many of our adversaries already set up for more that and on a much grander scale.:)
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The suspicion was that the act of domestic terrorism (I'm calling it what it is) is related to protests over a drag show. [googleusercontent.com]
Knocking own your own power to "own the libs" is certainly a new one. Not a lot of bright bulbs in that part of NC, for more than one reason.
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There seems not to be any evidence pointing to that.
Although the people making the Facebook posts - and the media talking about those posts - were successful in immediately associating the attack with drag queens.
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The authorities really won't have an idea until they have some suspects and start doing the usual digging through their social media accounts. Color me not surprised if it turns out the original suspicion was correct. Anti-LGBTQ+ violence certainly seems to be on the rise thanks to inflammatory remarks by certain prominent political figures.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.
Total coincidence that it happens just before the show and it's a coordinated attack.
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If someone is nutty enough to get themselves arrested for a crime that could put them away for 20 years, I'd think they'd have better alternatives. Whoever did this is in for some serious ass-fucking.
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These morons cost Duke Energy big money. You can bet there will be repercussions.
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I doubt the drag show was the only thing happening in South Carolina on a Saturday night. People at the show seeing the power go out and concluding it must be an attack on the show, is not evidence.
Besides, these kind of substation attacks have been trialled over the past few years in the US. Different states. Whatever is animating these groups, it's not this particular event. They probably aren't even local to North Carolina. It's just as likely to be a foreign operation as it is antifa or the redhats.
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People get upset about drag shows, gays, and pretty much anything LGBTQ all the time in this country. I'm not sure why in this case that all of a sudden means "we know they attacked the power stations". I mean if these people who did this were the locals that were upset about the drag show why on earth would they shut off their own power for multiple days? Especially during Winter.
It still could have been them I guess, I just havent heard about us having anything on them beyond sheer circumstance and conjec
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It is like Antifa and BLM destroying their own cities. Guess they must all be Trump supporters.
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Now all we need is a liberal version of Kyle Rittenhouse to defend the power grid with a "borrowed" gun and the cycle will be complete. Preferably somebody who does drag. I mean come on, a 17 year old boy in a dress holding an assault rifle? The conservatives would shit a brick.
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in an mass power outage we may Kyle Rittenhouse to defend property.
and the owners of Car Source lied like the used car sales men there are in court.
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You're assuming these guys didn't come from out-of-state.
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It was only a matter of time before this happened. No, none of this infrastructure is "hardened," WTF are people smoking? Everything would need buried underground with substations in bunkers.
This is definitely a warmup session. Though it would be nice (?) if these incels moved on to substations instead of schools, I don't predict a rosy future in this regard as the number of disaffected males continue to accumulate in this country.
I think this activity will increase, especially given the impact that this ep
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Yeah, no. If the country were to be riled by a popular uprising, trying to make everything impervious to sabotage is about the last thing that would help.
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And I can't understand how science fiction and Russia are getting this right, and before most others. And my guess is China has noticed, and they're all getting it right before western democracies are forced to take measures due to climate change (because the current external threat does not seem to be enough to induce change, but climate eventually will through public opinion towards renewables and micro-generation).
Russia may very well win the war out of a lack of backup infrastructure that can withstand targetted electrical grid attacks. I am, unfortunately, somewhat confident about this. While you can move people and smaller infrastructure, you can only keep a fight going if your country doesn't become unlivable and undefendable out of lack of basic conditions. Electricity now drives most basic living conditions such as, but not limited to, heating, health, food, communication but also the economy. Take electricity away, eventually Russia will be able to swat out the Ukrainians willing to fight. And if not swat them out, they will bend their will through public opinion that the war cannot be fought. If you can't feed your children, you will eventually have to accept rule of this aggressor state.
There's this new Amazon show called The Peripheral, and they casually dropped a new armaggedon scenario that not only, but centrally, involves a US blackout triggering it. It did sound silly at first glance, but it clicked just minutes after they may be getting it right, as soon as I connected the dots on current Russian offensive actions - killing the electrical grid infrastructure. It is so simple, so effective, and cheap, now imagine it becomes even cheaper through the use of our own common internet which every grid pretty much relies upon these days. Europe isn't prepared for this for sure, and I fear we western Europeans may have to find this the hard way, and without much time to prepare for it now.
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Even with micro-generation, we still need a centralized grid to power things like hospitals, factories, electric public transportation, streetlights, and roadside EV charging stations. (And even homes, since it's not practical to have sufficient battery backup to survive a few weeks' worth of dark, snowy weather.)
Micro-generation isn't the full answer -- the answer is dealing with terrorism of that type. That requires more than putting whoever did this in prison. It requires shutting down the media outle
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The answer is to build robust systems with appropriate security so that it's not trivial to make these attacks remotely, for starters. That's cheaper than any other option. By all means, do some other things, but start doing that immediately.
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You act as if this is some kind of revolutionary idea when it’s as old as warfare. It’s more proof Putin wanted to steal the country and when he realized he wasn’t going to get it he is breaking it like a toddler who didn’t get his way with a new toy. Putin is a hero, he has United Europe and expanded NATO, gotten the entire EU to swear off fossil fuels decades ahead of plans, and has exposed what was once perceived to be one of the top threats in the world to be just a rotted corr
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I have to suspect a significant number of the vandals who felt so strongly about a silly drag show that they were compelled to leave thousands of people without electricity must themselves be hiding a secret longing for a visit to the Ram Ranch.
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Interesting that this happened in a state that tried to pass a law that would effectively ban free electric vehicle charging stations. https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com]
I could see somebody trying to "own the libs" by shooting up the power grid, then saying, "See - you can't count on EVs, but my truck will still work cuz it runs on gas!"
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What do they have against drag racing [carthrottle.com]?
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I'm surprised that I haven't been hearing suggestions that this was an disgruntled employee. I'm under the impression that there is evidence that this was someone who understood exactly what to hit and where. The anti-drag show story seems to be a stretch. If this were some sort of terrorism, then they would have probably gone farther north and hit during an extreme cold spell or blizzard. A foreign attack would be more likely to try to shut things down through hacking into the systems online.
I see one report saying that this was only two substations. I suspect the timing allowed for the perpetrator to drive from one to the other between the attacks, which would allow for this to have been done by one person.
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About time the high priest took a day off...oh, wait --it's just "priest"
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There was a drag queen story hour at one of the libraries and it's theorized that some Jokers decided to cause a power outage at the library to disrupt it. This seems the likely explanation given that the transformers were shot up meaning it wasn't likely to be copper thieves. And there aren't a lot of other motives why someone would try to temporarily shut down power.
It is possible it's an even stupider reason but whatever is the case we're going to find out when they catch these guys. And they will ca-
Now, now, enough with the crazy talk!
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Don't ban deer rifles.
I'd bet this was tannerite set off by a high powered deer rifle. https://www.dailymotion.com/vi... [dailymotion.com]
Have to be far enough away not to get hit by scrapnel, but close enough to detonate it (2000 fps). -
There was a very similar attack on a power station [yahoo.com] in California back in 2013. It failed to bring down the power station though.
One wonders if the North Carolina attack is related, or just the modus operandi is the only similarity.
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"We don't have a clue why Moore County."
Practice. You'd better prepare for something bigger to happen soon.
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Since M16's are already heavily-regulated Class 3 firearms that cost about $30k and take 1-2 years to process a tax stamp for it shouldn't be hard to track him down very quickly! Right?
Or are you another opponent of the 2nd Amendment who knows absolutely nothing about the thing you want to ban?
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You got âim! Pointing out M-16 is a military weapon not likely to be in the hands of a civilian, and that they were more likely to use a.30 or higher caliber rifle, since ARs arenâ(TM)t usually powerful enough to penetrate the equipment theyâ(TM)re looking for without a whole lot of shots.
So that point, obviously shows how the gun debate is over because the poster here couldnâ(TM)t be bothered to know about rifles beyond the danger associated.
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Don't bother with facts and figures. Other than a precious few legit posters,/. has nothing left but 3 or 4 ardent leftists and their legion of sockpuppets for mod manipulation and self-promotion. Only they are correct, everyone else is wrong. Only they are allowed to speak, everyone else gets the modhammer.
I truly wonder what value bis-x gets from this site, and what are they doing with our info. Compiling a list of wrong-thinkers? That's about the only value I see in this, since AC traffic is no
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Does it really matter if one is an expert in killer robots to know, well they are against killer robots? Like the x92724 Model is obviously one one responsible for the attack on the moon base not the y92724 model you idiots! It doesn't fucking matter. Like ban them all and let Asimov sort it out.
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Trump says we can tear up all the amendments, if it's in a good cause!
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So instead of dealing with the substance of his "argument" (drunk rural firearms enthusiasts shooting at random shit with complete disregard for safety or property rights), you instead decided to split hairs about the firearm type and completely ignore the very plausible scenario of drunk rubes shooting at shit they should not be shooting at.
That's a very convincing argumentative strategy you are employing!/sarcasm
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M16 $30k, long wait time, fire rate up to 950 RPM, 20 round mag emptied in 1.25 seconds.
AR15 with bump stock $1k, no wait time, fire rate up to 450 RPM, 20 round mag emptied in 2.67 seconds
Your M16 facts seem to be purely for injecting confusion-by-fact. Once you factor in the ability of the user to change mags, the weapons become even more similar. -
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Let's apply that to the first amendment too.
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A sober Trump fan.
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