{"id":10454,"date":"2016-03-28T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=10454"},"modified":"2016-03-28T00:31:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T06:31:22","slug":"lights-out-by-ted-koppel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/lights-out-by-ted-koppel\/","title":{"rendered":"Lights Out by Ted Koppel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, while doing research for prepper-type stuff, I came across this interview of Ted Koppel, discussing his book\u00a0<em>Lights Out.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TN8AscHzeFQ\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It piqued my interest, especially\u00a0since Ted Koppel is not the kind of person I&#8217;d peg as much of a prepper\/survivalist. The part about the Mormons sounded interesting too, so I reserved the book from my local library and checked it out.<\/p>\n<p>I was not disappointed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lights-Out-Cyberattack-Unprepared-Surviving\/dp\/055341996X\/ref=as_li_ss_il?_encoding=UTF8&amp;qid=1459137843&amp;sr=1-1&amp;linkCode=li3&amp;tag=1001parsec-20&amp;linkId=6ba67c05256f94484c03ac5c8daf1cc1\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?_encoding=UTF8&amp;ASIN=055341996X&amp;Format=_SL250_&amp;ID=AsinImage&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;WS=1&amp;tag=1001parsec-20\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;\" src=\"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=1001parsec-20&amp;l=li3&amp;o=1&amp;a=055341996X\" alt=\"\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" \/><em><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/1RvNQXX\" target=\"_blank\">Lights Out<\/a><\/em> is a fascinating examination of the possibility and ramifications of an attack on\u00a0the US power grid, written by a veteran journalist with dozens of high-level connections across both the government and the private sector. It starts with a tour of the system&#8217;s vulnerabilities, quickly moves on to the government&#8217;s contingency plan (or lack thereof),\u00a0then assesses the general preparedness of the rest of the country and what we could expect to happen if the power grid went down.\u00a0Ted Koppel makes a compelling case that:<\/p>\n<p>The infrastructure of the power grid is highly dependent on the internet.<\/p>\n<p>This dependence\u00a0has created a series of vulnerabilities that could destroy large portions of this\u00a0infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>The private sector has\u00a0failed to reliably safeguard against these vulnerabilities,\u00a0mainly because the companies at the failure points have little incentive to develop the safeguards.<\/p>\n<p>State and Federal agencies cannot impose sufficient safeguards because of lobbying efforts and privacy concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Because most of the infrastructure is generations old and not standardized, it would take months or even years to replace key components in the event of a successful attack.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Russians and the Chinese already\u00a0have the capability to bring down our power grid, and with the proper expertise it is fully within the capability of rogue states like Iran or North Korea, or non-state actors like ISIS, to do so as well.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal government fully expects an attack on our power grid in the mid to near future, but\u00a0the various agencies do not have a clear\u00a0plan for how to deal with such\u00a0a contingency.<\/p>\n<p>The general US populace is woefully unprepared for such an attack,\u00a0except for certain communities such as the Mormons. They would not be able to provide for everyone, however, and would probably use force to defend themselves in the event of a collapse.<\/p>\n<p>The only way our society could survive an attack is if everyone who can afford it would store three to six months of food, water, and emergency supplies. Otherwise, if the power grid went down, a collapse would be swift and catastrophic.<\/p>\n<p>Freaky stuff. What was really freaky was the way that people who should have been taking more responsibility, such as the CEOs of major power companies or the directors of Federal agencies such as the DOD or DHS, all seemed content to pass the buck and give Ted Koppel the run-around. He described in detail some of his interviews, and the way in which various officials\u00a0passed him off to one another like a hot potato.<\/p>\n<p>And then he got to the Mormons.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say, the chapters about the Mormons were some of the more fascinating parts of the book. Ted Koppel only expected to get a phone interview, but instead, Elder Henry B. Eyring flew him out to Utah and gave him a personal tour, including the welfare farms, the distribution centers, the canneries and home storage centers\u2014they even found a local Utah family to cook him a food storage dinner! The gold-ticket treatment definitely impressed him, and that shines through in the book.<\/p>\n<p>Of all the books about Mormons written by non-Mormons, I have to say that\u00a0<em>Lights Out<\/em> gives one of the fairest treatments I&#8217;ve ever seen. Ted Koppel touches only lightly on church history and doctrine, but he makes it clear how these things tie into our emphasis on self-sufficiency and preparedness. While his impressions are quite favorable, he doesn&#8217;t shy away from asking the difficult questions, such as\u00a0whether we would take up arms to defend our\u00a0supplies if roving hordes threatened to\u00a0take them from us by force. As he points out,\u00a0there&#8217;s a great deal of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Constructive_ambiguity\" target=\"_blank\">constructive ambiguity<\/a>\u00a0from our leaders\u00a0on that point.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re as interested in potential doomsday scenarios as I am, or in emergency preparedness and self-sufficiency, this is a great book. It raises some frightening concerns without being too alarmist or devolving into sensationalism. For those who are concerned about this sort of thing but don&#8217;t have much experience with preppers or prepper culture, the book offers a fascinating look at this growing subculture and the motivations that drive it. Definitely worth a read!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About a year ago, while doing research for prepper-type stuff, I came across this interview of Ted Koppel, discussing his book\u00a0Lights Out. It piqued my interest, especially\u00a0since Ted Koppel is not the kind of person I&#8217;d peg as much of a prepper\/survivalist. The part about the Mormons sounded interesting too, so I reserved the book&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/lights-out-by-ted-koppel\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Lights Out by Ted Koppel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1043,684,1044,1016,989,1042,189],"class_list":["post-10454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-collapse","tag-mormon-culture","tag-non-fiction","tag-prepper","tag-self-sufficiency","tag-ted-koppel","tag-utah","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2IC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10454"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10461,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10454\/revisions\/10461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}