This story post is in response to @thelastsage's Pessimist or Optimist??? Where does your future lie... Contest!!!

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The greatest threat I see facing the United States is the takedown of our electrical grid via Electromagnetic Pulse(EMP) using a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States or a cyber attack. The main culprits I feel to be the perpetrators of this act would be either Russia or North Korea. There are of course other possibilities such as Iran or a rogue actor.

Why Russia and North Korea?

I don't claim to be an international politics guru. I do know the United States is pissing a lot of countries off in the world and it's only a matter of time before one of them responds. I often wonder if a response will be a case of "You can only poke the bear so long before it finally gets angry and mauls you."

“The USA prefers to follow the rule of the strongest and not by the international law. They are convinced that they have been chosen and they are exceptional, that they are allowed to shape the destiny of the world, that it is only them that can be right. They act as they please. Here and there they use force against sovereign states, set up coalitions in accordance with the principle: who is not with us is against us.”
-Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin

"It is not the DPRK but the U.S. and Trump that makes problems. I say this because Trump tweeted that the DPRK, North Korea, is looking for trouble and it's none other than the U.S. that is posing threats toward the DPRK with the largest scale ever military exercises (with South Korea) and the nuclear aircraft carrier Carl Vinson which was bound for Australia is now coming back to the Korean Peninsula...We will go to war if they choose."
- North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol

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Why the concern over EMP or cyber attack?

I've been looking into the possibility of these two scenarios for a while. Recently, EMP Commission Chairman Dr. Vincent Pry wrote an article on The Hill claiming an EMP detonated over the USA could kill "9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse". These are the professionals putting out these numbers, not me. While some argue this number to be way off base, what's considered accurate? 20%? 30%? That's still a lot of damn people.

In regard to cyber attacks, The Department of Energy released a report titled Cyber Threat and Vulnerability Analysis of the U.S. Electric Sector in August of 2016 in which it acknowledges there are "threat actors on multiple fronts continu(ing) to seek to exploit cyber vulnerabilities in the U.S. electrical grid".

Other news in regard to EMP and cyber attack.

• In a 2004 report the EMP Commission warned of “certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.”
• The US-Korea Institute At John Hopkins reports a balloon-lofted warhead detonated at 30 kilometers altitude could black out the Eastern Grid that supports most of the population and generates 75 percent of US electricity.
• An April 2008 report by the EMP Commission regarding critical infrastructure acknowledged "failure within one individual infrastructure may not remain isolated but, instead, induce cascading failures into other infrastructures".
• On December 23, 2015, the Ukranian Power Grid was hacked and left 230,000 residents in the dark. Recent revelations suggest the malware used in the attack "includes swappable, plug-in components that could allow it to be adapted to different electric utilities, easily reused, or even launched simultaneously across multiple targets" and even the United States is at risk.
• The United States had 12 nuclear power sites breached by hackers as recently as Thursday.

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If I believe one of these scenarios can happen in my lifetime what am I doing about it?

Am I running around and thinking "Damn, we're screwed" or am I doing something about it?

I view this dilemma as an opportunity to learn the old ways of life.

For the past few years, I have been learning how to accomplish tasks the way they were accomplished before electricity became mainstream. The Foxfire series is my main "go-to" for learning "back to the land" ways of harvesting and preserving food. Additionally, the books cover a range of topics to achieve overall self-sufficiency.

Living on the edge of Appalachia, I have been increasing my social circle by connecting directly with the "old timers" to learn what life was like when they were younger. Last summer, I had an 80-year-old husband and wife along with their 96-year-old mother teach me how to plow a field for a garden with a manual field plow. Throughout the summer I was taught tricks on how to keep animals away, fight off insects, and how to grow organically.

I could keep writing on what I have been learning and preparing to combat the possible threat of EMP or cyber attack on our electrical grid, but the point of this story post is to identify what I see to be the greatest threat to the United States and whether or not I view my future as an optimist or pessimist.

Overall, I am optimistic that I can take measured responses to counter this possible threat. In the meantime, my family is eating healthier food, investing in real money(as much as I love crypto, it won't be much help if the grid goes down), and getting much-needed exercise by accomplishing tasks the manual way. We don't live in fear, but are actually improving our lives by remembering to take the time to disconnect ourselves from the fast paced life of the grid.

Sources: 1 2 3 4

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