Category Archives: Terrorism

Domestic terrorists are threatening their desire to “blow up the capitol”

February 28, 2021 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Domestic terrorists are ready and willing to blow up the capitol and kill politicians:

Police chief says militia groups ‘want to blow up’ Capitol building at Biden State of the Union

“US Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman argued to maintain increased law enforcement presence at the Capitol ahead of Joe Biden’s first address to Congress, following warnings from militia groups that she says want to “blow up the Capitol and kill as many members as possible” in connection with the president’s upcoming State of the Union address.”

Who are these “militia groups”? Several lists are readily available:

The armed militia making their voices heard in the last days of Trump’s presidency

US Election: The Heavily-Armed Militia Groups Who Could Take Over the Streets

Hurricanes & Cyclones, Nuclear Bombs, Power Grid, Terrorism

Is battery backup a viable option in a grid failure?

January 16, 2021 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Several chapters in The Doomsday Book talk about power grid failures, because there are multiple ways for the grid to fail, including:

Coronal Mass Ejections
Terrorist attacks
EMP attacks by foreign countries
Bad weather, like hurricanes

Hardening the grid against these problems can limit the duration of grid failures, but we will probably never have a grid with 100% uptime. I have personally been in a grid failure, caused by a hurricane, that lasted a week, and one caused by an ice storm that lasted several days.

What are the options for people when the grid fails. It is possible, with enough money, to create a whole-house backup system that can provide power for a long time. A large generator running on natural gas or propane can do it. So can a big battery bank with a large solar array.

The problem is that whole-house can mean a lot of power. Things like air conditioning, deep well pumps, electric hot water heaters, refrigerators, freezers, and electric car recharging require lots of power. You might need a 20 kw generator to handle the entire load of a typical suburban home. A battery bank need 100 kilowatt-hours of capacity plus a huge inverter to handle the full load of a house for any reasonable period of time. Both options get expensive.

This is why the book advocates a much smaller approach, understanding that if the goal is to provide only the essentials, the equipment needs are radically smaller and therefore affordable. For example, Keeping an internet modem plus router up, along with the ability to recharge devices like laptops and phones, takes relatively little power. Building a backup system to supply just these needs costs a few hundred dollars. The size of the battery is a few kilowatt hours and the inverter is small. A single solar panel could extend the duration significantly, perhaps indefinitely. At this low price point, every home or apartment could have this facility and then, in the case of a power grid failure, everyone would be able to communicate and use the internet.

This article talks about some of the issues with trying to build a whole-house system, rather than a small targeted system for backup power:

The Myth of Whole-Home Battery Backup

Lots of insights in here about backup power.

“The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Terrorism

The unbelievable, unimaginable seige on the U.S. Capital

January 7, 2021 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Yesterday (January 6, 2021) a real doomsday scenario came to life. At the behest of a U.S. president, a mob of thousands of his supporters stormed the U.S. capitol building. Both the house and senate were in session to certify the election results from the Electoral College. The mob was able to overwhelm security forces, break into the capitol building itself and enter the congressional chambers.

Only by several strokes of luck was a catastrophe averted:

The representatives and senators were escorted to bunkers and safe spaces before the mob got to them.
No one was able to find and breach these safe spaces.
There was very little gunfire, so only a few people died.
None of the representatives or senators, nor the vice president, were captured or killed.

This event is being currently written up in a thousand news sources, and it is likely to be something historians are still discussing a hundred years from now. The event is unprecedented, nearly impossible to believe. The amount of corruption represented in the event is something that (hopefully) will become the subjects of a dozen investigations. The corruption includes:

The lies the president and supporters have repeatedly told about a “stolen” election.
The people in power (including over a hundred representatives, a dozen senators, multiple attorneys general, major news organizations like Fox news, etc.) who supported and amplified these lies.
The obvious failure of capitol security forces, perhaps because of insider interference
The lack of a military response (ditto)
The background of the rally that immediately preceded the attack.
And so on….

It is quite possible that the American democracy could have been lost in this event had things gone differently. Conjecture is that, had there been enough deaths, or had the vice president and others been captured or killed, the president would have declared martial law, invalidated the election, and seized essentially dictatorial power. A doomsday scenario indeed.

Chemical Attack, Government, Terrorism

Transporting natural gas by rail through cities – a doomsday scenario

January 1, 2021 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

If you have read The Doomsday Book, you know that one thing terrorists look for is places that store potential energy. They especially like to release potential energy in crowded areas. This proposal brings big concentrations of potential energy right through the heart of many cities:

‘That Terrifies Me’: Trump Rule Allows Natural Gas Transport By Rail In Dense Areas

What makes it terrifying?

In an effort to boost natural gas exports, the Trump administration has reversed longstanding federal policy and approved transport of gas by rail anywhere in the country. Opposition has come from Hollywood stars, state attorneys general and local residents who worry about the danger this poses. But plans are moving ahead for a New Jersey project that calls for one of the longest such transport routes in the country: 200 miles through densely populated areas of the East Coast.
The gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale would first be sent by pipeline to a new liquefaction plant in the rural northeast part of the state. Refrigeration units would chill it to negative-260 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it becomes liquid and easier to ship. The part of the plan that scares a lot of people is the next step — transporting the gas by truck or rail down the busy I-95 corridor to a planned export terminal along the Delaware River in Gloucester County, New Jersey.

Generally speaking we do not ship gasoline – another flammable liquid – this way. Gasoline is flowing in underground pipelines, which is much safer.

What could go wrong? It is easy to imagine a 50-car train of liquified natural gas. Each car has 30,000 gallons say of LNG, or about 100,000 kilograms of LNG . That is 1.5 million gallons of LNG total, or 5 million kilograms. And now a bomb blows up a part of the train. If all of the LNG ignites, that’s the energy equivalent of about 50,000 tons of TNT (ref). That is 3 times more energy than the energy released by the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. Even if only a few cars ignite, it is still a huge explosion. It is a doomsday scenario in the making. This video shows the potential problems:

Communities at Risk: Hazards of LNG

Power Grid, Terrorism

The Nashville Christmas Day RV Bombing – Police had plenty of warning and did nothing

December 28, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Early on December 25, 2020 in downtown Nashville, TN, a huge bomb inside an RV exploded. This is what the blast looked like:

Nashville explosion: CCTV captures moment of blast – BBC News

Thousands of articles have already been written about the day of the blast because it was so incredible and so unexpected.

But then we find out that the terrorist’s girlfriend and lawyer had reported his bombmaking activities to police, and nothing was done to stop him:

Anthony Warner’s girlfriend warned police he was building bombs in his RV last year

Police were warned Anthony Warner was making bombs in his RV more than a year before his Christmas morning attack in downtown Nashville. The tip came from Warner’s distraught girlfriend in August of 2019…. The police report states that an attorney who was also there and represented both the woman and Warner – told police that Warner “frequently talks about the military and bomb making.”

And then we find out the intent of the bomb:

Nashville bombing froze wireless communications, exposed ‘Achilles’ heel’ in regional network

The vulnerability of the telecommunications system in Nashville and beyond became clear Christmas Day when AT&T’s central office in downtown became the site of a bombing. Mayor John Cooper called the blast on Second Avenue an attack on infrastructure. The effects of that attack are sure to ripple through the region for weeks, as the telecom giant scrambles to restore services while maintaining the integrity of an active investigation site teeming with federal agents. State and local officials and experts say the fact that a multistate region could be brought to its knees by a single bombing is a “wake-up call,” exposing vulnerabilities many didn’t know existed and predicting it would lead to intense conversations about the future.

Government, Terrorism

The Russian computer Breach is a doomsday sceanrio for the nation’s security

December 22, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

This article tells the tale of the massive Russian computer attack:

Why the Russian hack is so significant, and why it’s close to a worst-case scenario

From the article:

Around the world, at least hundreds, but more likely thousands or tens of thousands of organizations — including companies, schools, think tanks and, notably, every major government agency — have been working frantically to see whether they’ve been affected by the suspected Russian hacking campaign and, if so, how much access the hackers had.

And:

The hackers’ lead time and extraordinary access mean victim organizations will have to choose between two unpleasant options: spending significant resources hunting through their computers in the hope that they can eradicate the hackers’ footholds or rebuilding their networks from scratch, said Suzanne Spaulding, the former head of what is now CISA and currently the director of the Defending Democratic Institutions project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

Plus we don’t yet know the full scale of what data was stolen, or how important/valuable it is.

Government, Power Grid, Terrorism

Nuclear weapons agency (and many others) attacked by massive computer breach

December 17, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Terrorism often comes in the form of bombs and poisons, but it can also come in the form of cyber attacks. There has been a massive attack in the United States stretching up to some of the most secure sites in the country:

Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

The breach is so bad and so far reaching, it is thought that entire computer networks will need to be “burned to the ground” in order to lock them down again:

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow… The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

An unbelievable situation for a country as advanced and powerful as the United States.

Terrorism

Domestic Terrorism Threats surging in wake of United States Elections

December 14, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

The Proud Boys are using YouTube to organize violence at Joe Biden’s inauguration

In the last few years, the Proud Boys have been involved in one violent clash after another. The extremist far-right group with ties to white nationalism doesn’t just relish violence, it encourages it. And lately, Proud Boys leadership has been using a show on InfoWars alum Joe Biggs’ YouTube channel for recruiting, fundraising, promoting events, and urging violence up to and including revolution.

Watch what happened when CNN reporter went to Proud Boys rally

What Goes on at A Proud Boys Rally | NowThis

Drones, Terrorism

Imagine a world where remote-control robots are shooting and killing people. That world is now…

December 7, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Iranian nuclear scientist was killed using ‘satellite-controlled machine gun’ – The gun was so accurate that the scientist’s wife, who was sitting in the same car, was not injured, reports say.

From the article:

Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as saying: “The machine gun was equipped with artificial intelligence to target Martyr Fakhrizadeh.” He said that the gun fired 13 shots at Mr Fakhrizadeh but was so accurate that the scientist’s wife, who was sitting in the same car, was not injured. “The gun was focused only on Martyr Fakhrizadeh, and his wife was not shot, despite being a few centimetres away,” he said.
“The head of the protection team was also shot four times because he threw himself on Fakhrizadeh, and no enemy was on the scene to shoot the guards.”

Between this technology and high-flying drones killing people, it seems like soon no high-ranking official will be safe. See for example Drone Attacks.

Add robot soldiers and robot armies into the mix and things get frightening fast:

10 BEST MILITARY ROBOTS IN THE WORLD

Automation economy, Global Warming, Mass Extinction, Rainforest Collapse, Sea Level Rise, Terrorism

Some people are so negative about the future that they stop having babies

November 29, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

This article contains a shocking statistic:

Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason

The statistic:

The study indicated that climate-related fears for their children’s lives were rooted in a deeply pessimistic view of the future. Of the 400 respondents who offered a vision of the future, 92.3% were negative, 5.6% were mixed or neutral, and just 0.6% were positive.

92% of people surveyed have a negative view of the future. Less than 1% are positive! Unbelievable. But it makes sense when you start adding up the imminent doomsday scenarios that humanity is facing: The many facets of climate change, the economic effects of robots, the destructive power of inequality, terrorism, etc.

Meanwhile, the babies that are born grow up to become terrified young people as described here.

The doomsday book describes all of these problems, and also offers solutions for many of them, if humanity can get organized and unified enough to implement the solutions.

Doomsday Now