And Death Fell From the Skies...

In my "Serb Mumbai" thread, Snake brought up the fact that if there was increased tension with Yugoslavia, the U.S. intelligence apparatus would be paying closer attention to matters pertaining to Serbia.

So how are these Serbs getting here?
 
It is extremely doubtfull wether the Serbs would resort into something like suicidal attacks on various targets outside their own territorial lands, they claimed. Their only motivation was nationalism and not a religeous ideology, which later one was more worldwide spread, making this more addaptable for this sort of international terrorism.
 
Where did this come from?

Lowest budget, highest return terrorist attack for a group that can field a decent number of agents with intelligence around one standard deviation above the mean and whose agents don't particularly stand out in the US. The power grid is nearly impossible to defend, and the high voltage transformers in question don't really have any spares to speak of and the lead time for new ones (they're not made in the US) is very long. I know a fair number of Serbs, and if you didn't know they were Serbs or have a lot of familiarity with the area, you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from any other Southern or Eastern Europeans.
 
Lowest budget, highest return terrorist attack for a group that can field a decent number of agents with intelligence around one standard deviation above the mean and whose agents don't particularly stand out in the US. The power grid is nearly impossible to defend, and the high voltage transformers in question don't really have any spares to speak of and the lead time for new ones (they're not made in the US) is very long. I know a fair number of Serbs, and if you didn't know they were Serbs or have a lot of familiarity with the area, you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from any other Southern or Eastern Europeans.

Ah, got it. I thought it was somehow supposed to fit in with the timeline DirtyCommie was writing.

Out of curiosity, how many of these transformers would need to be destroyed to truly kill the grid? Wondering if I should invest in that generator after all...
 
Argh, guys, I'm sorry to admit this, but I just don't have the time to do this. I've got three massive tests next week and a research project due on Monday. Besides that, I'm already juggling a bunch of TLs. Someone wanna take over? Gridley?
 
Ah, got it. I thought it was somehow supposed to fit in with the timeline DirtyCommie was writing.

Out of curiosity, how many of these transformers would need to be destroyed to truly kill the grid? Wondering if I should invest in that generator after all...

I was suggesting it as something his Serbian terrorists might do. It'd be a way softer target than nuclear power plants. On your question, I don't think the answer is very high, there aren't any spares to my knowledge (I presumed the existence of a few hidden spares in the little vignette I wrote though because having absolutely no spares is an appalling failure of civil defense). There was a bill up in Congress earlier this year that would have purchased a bunch of such spares (EMP and Solar Storms like, say, the Carrington Event could also whack a large number of them) but it died in the Senate after passing the House. Basically, if you lose any real number of them you have to start doing triage until the spares become available---e.g., cutting regions totally out of power, particularly net power consuming ones and rolling blackouts in various others. My father in law works for the Corps of Engineers in power and confirms that this is a significant source of worry among the greybeards in that organization.

On the generator thing---if you've got a house and any significant amount of perishables (e.g., a chest freezer with a lot of goodies in it), a generator makes a ton of sense. Do learn how to hook it up properly before you try to use it though, it's apparently also very easy to fry a poor unsuspecting lineman who is trying to restore your neighborhood's power if you don't :) I'm told also that a Toyota Prius makes an exceptionally good field expedient generator if you connect an inverter to it---it's quite efficient in transforming gasoline into electricity, very quiet by generator standards, and has way better emissions control than most generators also.
 
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Argh, guys, I'm sorry to admit this, but I just don't have the time to do this. I've got three massive tests next week and a research project due on Monday. Besides that, I'm already juggling a bunch of TLs. Someone wanna take over? Gridley?

I vote for EWHM; he could convert to the transformer attack. :)

Having myself zero knowledge about LNG tankers (other than the obvious that they carry lots of liquefied natural gas and therefore would, I assume, make a rather big boom), and no special knowledge of the time period (I lived through it but I've never studied it), I don't think I could contribute much to the thread.

Besides, I still lived in Winchester, MA in 1993 - did the fire make it that far before it burned out? :)
 
On the generator thing---if you've got a house and any significant amount of perishables (e.g., a chest freezer with a lot of goodies in it), a generator makes a ton of sense. Do learn how to hook it up properly before you try to use it though, it's apparently also very easy to fry a poor unsuspecting lineman who is trying to restore your neighborhood's power if you don't :) I'm told also that a Toyota Prius makes an exceptionally good field expedient generator if you connect an inverter to it---it's quite efficient in transforming gasoline into electricity, very quiet by generator standards, and has way better emissions control than most generators also.

Yes, I understand it is quite important to disconnect your house from the grid before connecting the generator, and later to disconnect the generator before reconnecting to the grid. Otherwise Bad Things tend to happen.

Nice tip on the Prius - my carpool drives one, maybe I should just invest in an inverter. :)
 
Most likely the Serbians would launch a bunch of different types of attacks if they decided to do anything at all. As the old saying goes, you never try to wound a king. The LNG explosion is a good one, as would be attacks on oil refineries (if I recall there aren't that many of them). I vaguely recall some massive accident with a ship carrying fertilizer that made an enormous kaboom sometime in the 20th century also---anyone recall the specifics? Perhaps they read 'Debt of Honor' and decided to do an early 9/11?
 
Yes, I understand it is quite important to disconnect your house from the grid before connecting the generator, and later to disconnect the generator before reconnecting to the grid. Otherwise Bad Things tend to happen.

Nice tip on the Prius - my carpool drives one, maybe I should just invest in an inverter. :)

I've seen inverters for sale at Costco, they're not really all the expensive---you can probably just google the instructions and specs for what a Prius can sustainably power and for how much gasoline. You might want to also consider investing in some stabilizing agents and storing some extra gasoline if that's your route, and having extremely energy efficient freezers also helps a lot. I've done some of the calculations for solar, and the first thing, in terms of bang for your buck, is to squeeze down the KW hours you need each day. One of my cousins in Florida told me that his generator paid for itself several times over in just one hurricane---basically the meat, ice cream, et al that didn't go bad in his freezers was worth more than the price of the generator and the preparations needed to use it.
 
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