House bill seeks to mitigate doomsday EMP outages

The emergence of the sun's most powerful solar flare in six years back on Dec. 14 saw several parts of the United States impacted by shortwave radio blackouts. The incident was followed two months later by an X-class solar flare that barely missed colliding with the Earth.

Also known as CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections), solar flares, according to NASA, can spark extended radiation storms that can potentially harm satellites, communications systems and ground-based technologies — most notably power grids.

With the current 11-year solar cycle picking up steam, Rep. Kathy Landing submitted an Electromagnetic Pulse Protection (EPP) Bill (HB 4954) in mid-February. The legislative proposal was presented after two years of research and meetings to determine the validity of the risks, what had been done so far to address it and what still needs to be accomplished, per Landing.

"EMP can be caused naturally by a solar flare — and we are experiencing the final peak years of the current 11-year solar cycle — or a nuclear device as small as a suitcase deployed from a 'weather balloon.' The effects could be as severe as destroying all electronics and silicon chips in the area. A solar flare could take out massive areas of the globe, while a nuclear device set off in the atmosphere could be more directly targeted to certain regions of the country," said Landing in an email to fellow House members.

While examining the matter with her legal team, the Mount Pleasant-based State Representative concluded that very little action has been taken to this point to safeguard South Carolina's critical infrastructure from solar flares.

"I met with General [Van] McCarty along with Major General Brad Owens in my office. My first question to them was, 'Is this matter a clear and present danger, or am I at risk of sounding like Chicken Little?' They both emphatically responded that I was not overstating the potential for disaster at all, and were very grateful to have a legislator listening and willing to take the next steps. I also met with 10 leadership and engineers from the team at SC Electric Cooperative last summer. I have had a discussion with both Dominion and Duke Energy on this. Their biggest concerns have been the thought that they would have to pay for it all on their own."

The bill goes on to assert that the State House would collaborate with the power companies and municipalities to coordinate efforts and get it done "asap," Landing confirmed. Gov. Henry McMaster has reportedly voiced his concern on the topic and has asked to be kept informed. To date, the bill reportedly has 63 co-sponsors, with ample bipartisan support.?

Prior attempts to enact this type of legislation included when former President Donald Trump signed an executive order to address EMPs in 2019. A subsequent bill was passed into law in 2020 by Congress, but the efforts "were stalled over the last three years," continued Landing.

The local lawmaker clarified that federal officials were indeed aware of the heightened risks of a 9/11-type attack on the country. However, the lack of communication between the intelligence community and government members stood in the way of implementing preventive measures.

Landing advised her colleagues to view a documentary titled Grid Down, Power Up, which details the urgency with which elected officials must act in terms of shoring up infrastructure against a mass power outage impacting the entire country.

In the 56-minute video (available through YouTube), narrator Dennis Quaid highlights the vulnerability of an aging US power grid that is struggling to meet current demand.

With more residents driving electric cars and using electric furnaces to heat their homes, American electric companies haven't kept up in adding adequate precautions to protect a transmission grid consisting of 120,000 miles of lines operated by 500 companies.

Grid Down, Power Up Producer David Tice further indicated that a shutdown of a mere nine substations could wipe out power across the entire country. In projecting a doomsday scenario, the documentary suggests that a prolonged outage could potentially lead to the demise of 90 percent of the US population.

In addition to people not having access to ventilation, oxygenation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation devices to help keep them alive, ATMs would be affected as well, preventing individuals to withdraw or transfer funds.?

The film presents grid failure as a "real" and "imminent" threat by referencing Texas' three-day "Snowmageddon" of 2021 in which at least 223 people were reported dead.

A similar widespread outage over the course of one to two years could spark a death toll of 10 million plus, noted Quaid in his narration.

As one of the subjects interviewed in the film, Texas State Senator Bob Hall recounted that he's been aware of EMPs for more than 50 years and has fought for more than a decade for protective legislation.?

Based on his research and conversations with defectors from the old USSR, The Citadel grad affirmed that the Russians, Chinese and Iranians have war plans that call for the "take out" of the US electrical power system with an EMP attack. "It's not speculation?— we know that," said Hall.?

What an attack could look like is the detonation of a nuclear weapon 200 kilometers of higher in outer space that individuals on the ground may not even notice. But Quaid reported that a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere can, within a fraction of a second, unleash a burst of invisible electric energy that could wash over the whole country.?

Every light, every computer and every cell phone would shut off instantly.?

When asked to weigh in on the presence and recurrence of solar flares, Central Electric Power Cooperative VP of Engineering & Engineering Services Chris Ware described the eruptions of electromagnetic radiation as a "low-probability, high-impact event."

The Cooperative — which buys and distributes power to South Carolina's 19 co-ops — is actively involved in the research and mitigation of such occurrences, stated Ware.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), in fact, has rules in place for geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs). During such a threat, utilities will determine whether or not to disconnect to other substations, said the senior staff member. Similarly, software apps allow utilities to track GMDs and the danger they pose to their assets.

The GMDs, he noted, can make their presence felt through power lines along steel/metallic objects, railways and gas pipelines.

During a three-way conference call with the Moultrie News, Electrical Cooperatives of South Carolina VP of Communications Avery Wilks pointedly asked Ware about how a utility goes about hardening itself from cyber attacks. NERC, replied Ware, has established several cyber-related rules that go into the supply chain.

"You are validating and verifying that the firmware on the devices is not prone to vulnerabilities," specified Ware. "There are a whole plethora of standards that [NERC] has put in place for the industry."

Outside of NERC protocols, he added, government agencies recommend the employment of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) requirements to ensure the country's electric infrastructure is as well secured as could be from cyber threats.

The electric engineering expert further mentioned NERC vegetation management standards that utilities abide by as a fallout of the 2003 Northeast Blackout caused by overgrown foliage weighing down an overhead powerline.

As for Tice's warning of 90 percent of the population being possibly obliterated by a cyber attack, Wilks observed that it would be near impossible to envision the magnitude of such an invasion.

"As humans, our nature is that our minds and our imaginations kind of fixate on the worst possible thing. I don't think anybody, any of us, can know exactly what a major cyber attack on the grid can look like or what it will affect," offered Wilks. "You know, we talk about it all the time here that people nowadays are just used to their lights being on all the time."

If and when the EPP Act does pass, Ware assured that the electric co-ops would act as good neighbors in guiding municipalities — and in particular emergency management departments — on how to proceed in light of new grid protections. The Town of Mount Pleasant is one community that's eager to absorb what may potentially lie ahead.

"We have had the opportunity to meet with Rep. Kathy Landing to discuss the proposed legislation with her. We have been researching EMPs and the potential impact on our Town and look forward to learning," stated the Town's Emergency Management & Resilience Officer Shannon Whitehead.