From Peter Gutmann Re: So what *does* happen to a city without power

I wrote: 
> 
>>A part of Aukland is finding out.
>>
>>http://www.tampabayonline.net/news/news101l.htm

Peter G replies: 
>It's pretty serious, so far it's affected (at various times) a number of 
>banking data centres (the first day the power went out was on the Thursday 
>when everyones pay is supposed to be processed - the data centres themselves 
>have generators, but the sources feeding them information don't), the stock 
>exchange, some (unidentified) central city post office buildings, customs
and 
>immigration, inland revenue, internal affairs, social welfare, the Auckland 
>City Council, the central police station, Aucklands main hospital and
medical 
>school complex (they have generators, but one of them failed, leaving the 
>childrens hospital without power for awhile), the city campus of the 
>university and technical institute (affecting 30,000 students in the
middle of 
>enrolment), several TV and radio stations, and God knows what else (the 
>government departments have tentacles all over the city, so it's not so bad 
>for them).  Although many of these places have generators, there were
various 
>glitches in switching over and one or two breakdowns which have caused 
>problems, and most of the generators can't handle anywhere near the load
being 
>placed on them but were designed to power only essential services.  One 
>comment I've heard is that the power company may not survive the lawsuits 
>which follow this (taking out some suburb is serious enough, but taking out 
>the central business district with its cluster of multinational accounting
and 
>legal firms, banks, government departments, and whatnot is really bad).
> 
>There's fairly detailed coverage of what's going on at 
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/power.txt, with a temporary
copy at 
>http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/peterg/power.txt (the Auckland site doesn't
have 
>power at the moment, the other one is located outside the city centre, I'll 
>move things to the first site once power is restored).
> 
>Peter (usually pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz when we have power).
>
------------------------------------------------------------
      David Honig                   Orbit Technology
     honig@otc.net                  Intaanetto Jigyoubu

 The Internet Protocol's only guarantee is that your packets will not clog
the net.

On 26 Feb 98 at 9:34, David Honig wrote:

> I wrote: 
> > 
> >>A part of Aukland is finding out.
> >>
> >>http://www.tampabayonline.net/news/news101l.htm
> 
> Peter G replies: 
> >It's pretty serious, so far it's affected (at various times) a number of 

Strangely enough (Auckland is just a 3 hour flight ESE of here) at
almost the same time Aucklands power went down Brisbane in
Queensland Australia had its own power problems from last Sunday
through to approx Thursday. Our situation was nowhere near as bad as
Aucklands but it was unusual. The government claimed that all 4 of
our power stations (insert particular fault of the day...I heard
boilers blowing up, pipes getting clogged etc) had an incredibly
unlucky act of god perpetrated on them all at the exact same time
resulting in controlled blackouts to SE Queensland and Brisbane
(excepting the CBD which was not subject to power rationing). The
minister responible claims that it was not due to lack of
maintenance (which would be my guess) but just a one in a billion
chance. I guess we don't have a national power grid here to draw on
during such times.

If anyone has found out what really happened here I'd love to know as 
the pollies usual lies are getting so bad its embaressing.

-- 
   .////.   .//    Charles Senescall           bear@gargoyle.apana.org.au
 o:::::::::///                                   apache@bear.apana.org.au
>::::::::::\\\     Finger me for PGP PUBKEY            Brisbane AUSTRALIA
   '\\\\\'   \\    Apache

At 05:26 AM 2/27/98 +1000, Charles wrote:
>
 The government claimed that all 4 of
>our power stations (insert particular fault of the day...I heard
>boilers blowing up, pipes getting clogged etc) had an incredibly
>unlucky act of god perpetrated on them all at the exact same time

Several extremely unlikely faults at the same time is what
often causes the great disasters (e.g., Three mi. is.), as is
well-documented in the
comp.risks arena.


------------------------------------------------------------
      David Honig                   Orbit Technology
     honig@otc.net                  Intaanetto Jigyoubu

 The Internet Protocol's only guarantee is that your packets will not clog
the net.

In the New York Times yesterday there was an article about a hacker "game"
where the pentagon said that most unclassified computers were breeched, and
supposedly none of the classified ones were hit, according to the
spokesman. I don't know how much validity my idea has, probably very
little, but if there was a "contest" going on like the article implied,
perhaps it wasn't limited to government computers. AOL went down recently,
along with alot of other power outages, if some computers had been
breeched, how difficult would it have been for someone to cause something
to overload and cause a power outage? But then again, perhaps I have a
vivid imagination.

PS: The article from the NY Times could probably still be accessed from the
archive there at www.nytimes.com

-E.

At 05:26 AM 2/27/98 +1000, Charles wrote:
>On 26 Feb 98 at 9:34, David Honig wrote:
>
>> I wrote: 
>> > 
>> >>A part of Aukland is finding out.
>> >>
>> >>http://www.tampabayonline.net/news/news101l.htm
>> 
>> Peter G replies: 
>> >It's pretty serious, so far it's affected (at various times) a number of 
>
>Strangely enough (Auckland is just a 3 hour flight ESE of here) at
>almost the same time Aucklands power went down Brisbane in
>Queensland Australia had its own power problems from last Sunday
>through to approx Thursday. Our situation was nowhere near as bad as
>Aucklands but it was unusual. The government claimed that all 4 of
>our power stations (insert particular fault of the day...I heard
>boilers blowing up, pipes getting clogged etc) had an incredibly
>unlucky act of god perpetrated on them all at the exact same time
>resulting in controlled blackouts to SE Queensland and Brisbane
>(excepting the CBD which was not subject to power rationing). The
>minister responible claims that it was not due to lack of
>maintenance (which would be my guess) but just a one in a billion
>chance. I guess we don't have a national power grid here to draw on
>during such times.
>
>If anyone has found out what really happened here I'd love to know as 
>the pollies usual lies are getting so bad its embaressing.
>
>-- 
>   .////.   .//    Charles Senescall           bear@gargoyle.apana.org.au
> o:::::::::///                                   apache@bear.apana.org.au
>>::::::::::\\\     Finger me for PGP PUBKEY            Brisbane AUSTRALIA
>   '\\\\\'   \\    Apache
>