Navy SEAL claims real cause of 2003 Eastern Seaboard blackout was a "dumbass in a military intelligence aircraft."

147  2015-02-07 by oyon4

Chris Heben, in an ignored 2012 NPR podcast (at time ~6.08, with a little more at 12.24) offhandedly says that the 2003 Eastern Seaboard blackout involved "Some dumb-ass in a military intelligence aircraft" who "hit the wrong switch."

Nothing like this shows up on other sources. Its either grid problems or aliens.

This might be Chris

The way I see it best chance this guy is pulling a story out of his ass to sound cool on the media, with which he has worked closely for a while. Or it's some SEAL myth he thinks is true. But I am hoping to crowd source some research on this to find out if the story has plausibility.

Let me know if this sub is not well suited to that, thank you for your interest otherwise.

22 comments

Fucking Kevin.

Kind of interesting, but a recent snowdon interview with bramford, snowdon mentions this i think. Hints very strongly at it anyways...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/military/snowden-transcript/

Long article, about a third of the way through he talks aboit "mistakes" we made that hurt us internally, e.g. powergrid iirc.

Hmm interesting

It was a PBS or NPR link from this week...three parts into the article. i know I saved it on reddit, but on mobile its a hastle to find, but i will try for you. in case I fail "James bramford NPR PBS Snowdon" should get you close....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/spy-factory.html

Not sure if this is link you are looking.

I'm not finding it in the transcript but that could be mb. Thanks for the effort.

Not sure about the Seal angel.....but I do know from reading about NERC and how it was giving the teeth it has today, is because of that blackout. I had heard it was because of poor breaker maintenance that things when bad after the original feeder tripped. But that is just hear say from people.

Why is it that SEAL members are looked upon as honest and righteous? Honestly as a retired Gunny, and this just does not apply to only SEAL, bu through th entire military from enlisted through officers. Not all but there is a percentage that are lying two face sociopaths that would stab their buddy in the back to save their ass. Even though they would look you in the eye and not blink and tell you they would die for you.

I doubt this MFer knows jack shit what was going on and is just spouting off to look like he is important. Just fucking drunk talk that got out of hand.

That assumes..

  • The entire NE power grid can be turned off in one switch
  • The entire NE power grid can be turned off accidentally
  • The entire NE power grid can be remotely controlled in an aircraft

I don't believe any of that. No infrastructure of that size and scale would be setup to be that easily taken down.

The implication is that it was an electronic disruption weapon, ie. an EMP, but I don't disagree with you.

so an EMP was set off in the area of the power facility? That's way more plausible, still iffy for me though. That raises a lot of questions

Tbh i dont even k how that would work. But i do know that an emp causes an intense surge of -e's in metals, and due to our grid set up this could maybe effect equipment a significant distance from the epicenter.

But this would have to be picked up on, like, a ton of stuff right? Who (non-gov) would notice an emp?

All airplanes in the area would have crashed. And cars. Everything. This is stupid and didnt happen.

It almost certainly would have been picked up that everyone's electronics in the area were fried.

An emp that didn't disrupt the plane?

You can shield circuits from power surges using chokes and baluns, I would venture to guess that most if not all military aircraft have emp shielding. The a-bombs didn't drop the enola gay, and it was within distance to suffer catastrophic failure from the emp generated. I shield my circuits from stepper motor emp interference, I know it's small scale, but shielding is possible, the story on the other hand seems implausible at best

Nukes dont work that way, an EMP is caused when a nuke kis detonated in the upper atmosphere and reacts with the earth magnetic field. Nukes that are detonated at or near surface level do not produce an EMP therefore don't interfere with electronic systems.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

On mobile sorry about the mobile link

For future reference, all you have to do is delete the "m." in the link to convert from mobile. It takes less effort than saying you're on your phone.

Did not know that, thank you.

I digress, the gamma rays emitted by the blast are absorbed by anything conductive and cause a surge of electrons that travels through the conductor. For instance, a power line that has 600 volts traveling through it, is hit with gamma radiation, the radiation causes more electron excitement which increases the electromotive force (amperage). What you are referring to is a HEMP where the nuke is used as an EMP device and is more effective at a higher altitude.

It may not have been set up that way, but it may have been an Unintended side effect. From what I understand there's essentially 3 power grids spanning the nation and the right surge in the right spot can knock out huge areas in a single go