New Book- 'Lights Out', by Ted Koppel

[superduty]

Thought you folks might want to know of a new book that just came out a couple weeks ago-
'Lights Out', by Ted Koppel.

http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Cyberattack-Unprepared-Surviving/dp/055341996X

This is not a work of fiction, but an investigation into the likelihood of hackers or foreign nations
targeting the power grid of the US in an act of cyber warfare, and what might happen if they were to succeed. It's timely- we've all heard about the hacking into of various banks, Target, Sony Pictures, and OPM- not a stretch to think it could happen to the power companies.

He interviews members of our govt., from Homeland Security, to congress, various business leaders, etc. as well as people from the church of LDS
and others.

I enjoyed reading One Second After, so I was interested in this book- I had some 'airplane time' last week, and powered through it. It is well written, well researched, and worrisome. You'll see just how vulnerable the grid is, and how ill-prepared the .gov and power companies are if it were to ever happen - if you didn't already know. It's creepy going from a work of fiction like One Second After to a work of 'investigative non-fiction' like this, and finding them so eerily similar. Koppel does reference One Second After in a few places in this book.

I don't remember what kind of politics Ted had while on the news, but this book is very objective and middle-of-the-road politically, which I appreciated.

It's worth the $20- I recommend checking it out. Edited November 14, 2015 by superduty

[KaNuckles]

I'll have to pick that up. I loved one second after. I actually got it on audible. Some kind of mass attack on the power grid is what I am afraid of. Thanks for the recommendation. BTW One Year After, the sequel to One Second After, is out

[SupaRice]

Granted it's been about 8 years since I was involved... but my experience in IT security around power companies is that there isn't a really credible threat of a major blackout. There can be temporary outages for sure, but not really on any large scale. The power pool brokers are the major weakness, and they are mainly billing aggregates. I think this stuff is mainly hyped up a lot. You're not going to see anything like the whole southeast blacked out, maybe like a city here and there for a day or two worse case scenario. And I had full access to power broker network environments at the time, so i wasn't doing "help desk" nonsense.

And I do know that since then they have stepped up security quite a bit. As in like truly offline systems. Edited December 12, 2015 by SupaRice

[Ranger431]

If you liked One Second After, there is a book, also called Lights Out, by David Crawford that is kind of similar. A little less dark, but a very good read. Those two, plus Patriots are amongst my favorite SHTF books.

[Trekbike]

If you liked One Second After, there is a book, also called Lights Out, by David Crawford that is kind of similar. A little less dark, but a very good read. Those two, plus Patriots are amongst my favorite SHTF books.

I also read David Crawford's Lights Out and agree it is lighter than One Second After and some of the similar books. I enjoyed the book but after reading several books of this genre, many of the story lines and outcomes are similar.

[Moped]

I would agree with your alls assessment of David Crawford's Lights Out.

 

Last week the Israeli's reported that they had a cyber attack on their power grid system but were able to successfully fight it off.  This was during the coldest time in the winter their power plants were working at full capacity.

 

TVA is taking steps to insure a Cyber attack is not likely to succeed. With each passing month, their systems are getting stronger and stronger.

[Spiffy]

I hope they get the movie based on "Lights Out" done. I'm wanting to see Gunny and the Karate Man in action!