Will the Apocalypse arrive online?

By Karen J Greenberg

First the financial system collapses and it's impossible to access one's money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning. Within days, society has begun to break down. In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food. The country finds itself fractured and fragmented - hardly recognizable. It may sound like a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie or the first episode of the National Broadcasting Co's popular new show Revolution, but it could be your life - a nationwide cyber-version of Ground Zero.

Think of it as September 11, 2015. It's US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's vision of the future - and if he's right (or maybe even if he isn't), you had better wonder what the future holds for erstwhile American civil liberties, privacy, and constitutional protections.

Last week, Panetta addressed the Business Executives for National Security, an
organization devoted to creating a robust public-private partnership in matters
of national security. Standing inside the Intrepid, New York's retired
aircraft-carrier-cum-military-museum, he offered a hair-raising warning about an
imminent and devastating cyber-strike at the sinews of American life and
well-being.

Yes, he did use that old alarm bell of a "cyber-Pearl Harbor", but for anyone interested in US civil liberties and rights, his truly chilling image was far more immediate. "A cyber-attack perpetrated by nation-states or violent extremist groups," he predicted, could be as
destructive as the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.

Panetta is not the first official in the administration of US President Barack Obama to
warn that the nation could be facing a cyber-catastrophe, but he is the
highest-ranking to resort to September 11 imagery in doing so. Going out on a
limb that previous cyber doomsayers had avoided, he mentioned September 11 four
times in his speech, referring to America's current vulnerabilities in
cyberspace as "a pre-9/11 moment".

Read more trivia and commentary: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NJ23Dj06.html

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Permalink Reply by KingofthePaupers on October 25, 2012 at 5:43pm

Karen J Greenberg: First the financial system collapses and it's impossible to access one's money. Then the power and water systems stop functioning. Within days, society has begun to break down. In the cities, mothers and fathers roam the streets, foraging for food...
Jct: Don't worry, when the power and water systems stop functioning, your large nuclear waste piles will blow up and North Americans won't have to worry about foraging for food for another few million years. Sad there's no money to pay the world's unemployed engineers to bury it before it blows. Maybe the Rothschilds could give us a loan to save our planet? Har har har, not a chance, we can't afford their usury. So countries with huge mountains of spent fuel really won't get to worry about foraging for food very long once the power system goes down. Too bad they won't let the banking systems engineer fix the banks to pay the unemployed engineers to save us.

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Permalink Reply by Nathan on October 25, 2012 at 8:53pm

King,

'waste piles' do not 'blow up'. Reactors could melt down given a long enough period without power but, with the redundant bckup power systems in place in ours (unlike Japan) it would have to be a very extended power outage and even if they did, the majority of the U.S. would still be habitable.

There is certainly a danger posed by nuclear power facilities but there's no need to inflate it.

As far as the 'waste' goes..........don't go digging several hundred feet into the ground when you see skull & crossbones signs that say DANGER! KEEP OUT! posted all around and you'll be fine.

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Permalink Reply by KingofthePaupers on October 26, 2012 at 12:24am

Nathan: 'waste piles' do not 'blow up'. don't go digging several hundred feet into the ground
Jct: Sorry but the American model that stores the spent fuel will explode if the water leaks out of the above-ground pool. If it leaks out of Fukushima, bye bye Nathan. If it leaks out of any larger US pile of waste, bye bye nathan. I'm not inflating the threat from Fukushima, I'm inflating the threat from the unburied US spent fuel piles added too!

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Permalink Reply by Nathan on October 26, 2012 at 12:33pm

spent fuel-rod storage...not what I had in mind when I read 'waste piles'. I should have asked you for specifics. My mistake.

While Fukushima is built on the A. model it was not built to the specs ours are. No U.S. facility would fail as Fuku has. Not under the circumstances theirs failed under, anyhow. Case in point, had their bckup power supply been inside a 12ft reinforced waterproof concrete wall sitting 15ft above the highest ever recorded flood stage (like our plants in Palacios, TX) they would never have lost power. That's just one example of the many short cuts they took in construction that led to the magnitude of their disaster.

Thnx for the link, Windy. I'm quite familiar with Fairewinds.

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Permalink Reply by KingofthePaupers on October 26, 2012 at 10:37pm

"had their bckup power supply been inside... llike our plants...they would never have lost power.
Jct: I'm not talking about power being cut to US nuclear storage sites by a watery tsunami, I'm talking about the power being cut by a financial one, when the money runs out to pay the power company and it cuts power or it shuts down. When you can't afford the power, then tell me about your redundant back-up.

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Permalink Reply by windy windlan on October 26, 2012 at 1:49am

Waste piles of spent nuke fuel rods can indeed blow up. You need to visit fairewinds.org and get an education. It is impossible to inflate the dangers associated with nuke power.

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Permalink Reply by truth on February 6, 2013 at 11:01am

WARNING! Cybergeddon Imminent - US Government To Launch Pre-emptive Cyber Strikes, Anonymous Has Declared Global Cyber War I, A Pre-emptive Nuclear Strike Against China Is Now Part of US Law. Big Sis Threatens: Cyber 9/11 Could Happen "Imminently"WARNING! Cybergeddon Imminent