SOME DISRUPTION SCENARIOS
Since many people think of terrorism in terms of destruction, with as much loss of life as the terrorists can manage, we have to examine some possibilities of disruption. In the following scenarios, the terrorists are seeking to disrupt, not destroy, and avoid unnecessary destruction. There's little destruction, and almost no loss of life.
ELECTRICAL NETWORK
One spring evening, while there is still enough light to see, a lone individual fires at a high-tension power line with a rifle and severs the cable. A high wind wraps the falling cable around another on the pole, causing a flash and shorting out the line. A circuit breaker at the generating station trips, and another safety shuts down the generator automatically to prevent damage. The entire west side of the city, with one hundred thousand inhabitants, loses electrical power. The people coming home from work find their lights won't go on, and their air conditioning and television sets don't work.
Those with battery-operated radios and TVs find they can't pick up all the stations, because many don't have emergency power supplies.
Traffic lights all go out at once, during the rush hour, and the police don't have enough manpower to direct traffic at any but a few intersections. Even the freeways are stalled, as cars getting off are stopped by the traffic jams in the streets and the pileups back up onto the freeway.
Police, fire stations, and hospitals all have emergency power and, after a short delay in starting up their emergency generators, can continue service.
A power company repair crew reaches the cut cable an hour after the power went off, and they repair the cable after an hour's work. The crew radios to the generating station that the cable is intact once more, and the staff at the station restarts the generators.
Many people had neglected to turn off their appliances when the power went off, and the large demand causes a sudden surge, causing some circuit breakers to trip and shut off power to some sections. These are re-set, and the area has power once again.
Meanwhile, the lone terrorist, having observed the progress of the situation, goes to an unmanned substation and fires a rifle bullet into a transformer, causing a short which results in the power failing again. Travel in the darkened streets is slow, and it takes him another hour to find a transformer at the top of a power pole, although he had earmarked it days before. He fires again, this time with no effect since the power is already off.
When the repair crew replaces the damaged transformer and tests the line, they find there's another interruption from the second damaged transformer. Having had only one spare transformer in stock, they can't replace this one.
Working through the night, the repair crew manages to isolate the area served by the second transformer from the network, and the power is on again, but not in the affected area. There is a delay of several days before a spare transformer is obtainable, and this area remains without power for that time.
...
This is a passage from Disruptive Terrorism by Victor Santoro, published in 1984. (I've owned this copy since 1992.) Since we're on Tumblr right now, I have little doubt that there's somebody around here who knows enough about power plants and grids to confirm or disprove how plausible this is in modern times. I'd love to hear from them so I'd appreciate it if you can help it reach them.
