508 FBF: American Blackout by Dr Robert Bristow

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Robert Bristow to the show. He is the medical director of Emergency Management at New York Presbyterian Hospital, the director of Disaster medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a faculty member of the national center for Disaster Preparedness in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. And he's also a consultant to National Geographic's movie or documentary, I don't know what the appropriate term is, American Blackout, which has got a really amazing website, survivetheblackout.com and it's a pleasure to have him here today. Robert, how are you?

I'm good, thank you. And I'm very excited to be on your show.

Good, good. And I'm glad the power is working. So let's kind of dive into this very ugly scenario and just people, I guess, Robert, really need to understand that how integral electricity is to the entire planet nowadays. I mean, it is, it's everything. You know, without electricity, the water won't run, the sewers won't work. Nothing really works without power. Your thoughts?

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I think we're very dependent on electricity. Certainly there are places in the world and places in our country that are less dependent on electricity. There are places like New York, for example. A lot of our water actually comes from upstate. The reservoir system so will continue to flow for some time after the power goes out. But on the west coast, when the power goes out, they lose water immediately. So there are places where there's more resilience we like to speak about in emergency management where they actually have the Capacity to absorb a certain amount of loss of power with minimal consequences. But you're right, most of the country is very vulnerable and if we lose power, are going to have significant problems.

Right.

Fair to mention. Although this isn't the plot of the movie that you consulted for. But if it. Depending on how power is lost, I mean, if it's a solar flare, if it's an emp, some sort of electrical magnetic issue like that, that fries basically every electronic device, that's a lot worse than just having the power grid not work. So, you know, like you mentioned with New York, because of the topography that your water will flow, but if people's radios don't work and things like that, it's wor.

Right, yeah, that's definitely a different scenario and a more difficult one to sort of plan for and respond to. So the scenario depicted in the movie is basically a cyber attack where our electrical grid is compromised. So there is some sense, even early on, if people have the right information, that we do have some capacity to recover as soon as we can work out how the system was attacked and determine what the problem is and then reboot the system. So it's a little bit different than a doomsday scenario where there is a situation that disrupts part of the entire world and then all communications go out and fry our systems, as you put it, and then there's very little capacity to recover quickly. It's basically essentially rebuilding everything that we have. So that's a different scenario and a quite complicated one.

Right, right. That's the worst case scenario. That's the Stone Age scenario, as I call it.

Yeah, it's interesting. As I was watching the movie, I was thinking this is actually the worst case scenario. But you're actually describing something that's actually much worse.

It's worse than the movie, actually. Absolutely. Well, tell us more about the movie again. It's entitled American Blackout. Give us the general plot, if you would.

Well, so the general plot is a cyber attack on the electrical grid of the United States. And because of technology and because of the way the grid actually developed, there are some intrinsic vulnerabilities to our system. It's a big system. It's sort of controlled by three grids. An Eastern, a Western and a Texas grid that are interconnected and sort of depend on each other to function optimally. So when one or two of the grids actually go down, we lose all three grids. And from a cyber attack, it would take quite a bit of time. And I think the scenario accurately predicts about the amount of time it would take us to sort of fix the problem and reboot the system. So we basically lose power in the entire country at a time when we're at one of the times when we're most vulnerable in July. So it's a very hot time of year in most of the country, and a lot of people are dependent on air conditioning as well as other things to optimize their health. Obviously, losing electricity in July and January is different than losing electricity at other times of the year.

Yeah, yeah, that's a very good point. Well, how does the cyber attack work? And I don't know if you. This is not your field. You're a doctor, you deal on the emergency management side. But I mean, I don't understand. I mean, how can someone in, say, the Ukraine initiate a cyber attack against the U.S. i mean, what do they do to do that? Do they go to a website for a utility, you know, an electric utility company, and hack it somehow or what? What really happens? I don't understand the mechanics of that.

Yeah, I'm an expert. Yeah, I'm an expert in emergency management. So that might be a better question to someone that actually better understands the systems that actually drive our electrical grids. But what I do understand and know is that all of the grids are run by computers, right? So it's a very complicated system that's based in three specific areas that are run by computers. And so what, what happened is, and they also vary, there are enormous security systems in place that don't allow people to access the actual computer technology that's running the grids or the computer program that's running the grid. So the scenario actually is some very smart, gifted computer person that has determined a way or come up with a way to actually penetrate all of those securities in place and, and inject something like a virus or a worm into the computer program that's running the grid. And then what that would do is it would cause an automatic shutdown of the actual grid. Right. Once the system is aware that it's been violated, that the securities have been violated, and that the systems aren't functioning optimally, it sort of triggers a shutdown of the grid. So there are a lot of unknowns. Does that technology exist? Is there someone that's enough to be able to penetrate the safeguards we have in place? We sort of call this scenario a low risk, high impact. Because what we think we know is that it's very unlikely that someone can do that, particularly from a place like the Ukraine. But if, in fact Someone does develop the capability to do that, it will certainly have a tremendous impact on the country. If someone actually has that much information, knowledge and technology, they can penetrate our the computers that run our grid and then cause them to malfunction and shut down.

Very scary scenario, Very scary scenario. Well, what would happen in a national power failure scenario? Tell us about how that works and of course all the emergency services would be massively impacted. Give us sort of the details on how that unfolds.

Well, so interestingly enough, this is something that we think about a lot, emergency management, and particularly in New York. We've had a couple of power outages in 1977 and 2003. And then we had significant challenges with Superstorm Sandy where we lost power for several days in part of the city. And several of our major hospitals were impacted by the flooding and lost not only main power, but their backup power. So this is something we've been thinking about for a long time. And what we've done is sort of develop the ability to sort of sustain our services from a hospital and city perspective to the best of our ability for a minimum of 96 hours and possibly longer. Hospitals actually are now required to the Joint Commission, which is a body that regulates hospitals and accredits them to demonstrate that they have that in a blackout scenario, other major scenarios that would impact the community. We have the ability to be self sufficient for up to 96 hours, meaning we can generate our own electricity, our food, our water, our medical supplies to continue to take care of our patients and staff and respond to the event. And most of us have actually tried to go beyond that 96 hour mark, particularly in areas that have been affected by disasters, to sort of optimize our services. So the city again we work very closely with the Office of Emergency Management in New York City, the New York City Department of Health, Greater New York Hospital association, which represents the interests of the majority of hospitals in the New York City area and the government, that state Department of Health as well as the federal government, primarily the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response. So we do joint planning, money flows in the system to sort of help us prepare and meet some of our identified goals. So at least a few days into the blackout, you know, things we would probably have enough support based on our pre planning, pre positioning of resources to sort of maintain most of the services and to provide people with what they need. You know, if we go into week two, then most of our planning hasn't reached quite that far. So we would have significant challenges thinking about how to provide People with again, just basic things like food and water and a cool place to rest. So on some levels we're really prepared and some would argue that we may be over prepared as we're thinking about these catastrophic events that could impact us.

But my real concern is that I think hospitals and governments are really doing their best. My concern is that the community and individuals aren't doing what they could be doing. I think there needs to be some awareness within the community and I hope this will come through in the movie that in a catastrophic event like a national blackout, obviously there will be some resources that are available for people, but there are limitations on their resources, particularly as time progresses. So to the extent that individuals and families can do some preplanning, come up with their own plans of how they would take care of themselves and their loved ones and even more importantly, communities. How communities could sort of come together and do some joint planning, identify resources they have in their community that would support them so they could build some resilience within the individuals, the families and communities that would allow them to, to actually better weather the storm without needing outside assistance. The more people that can sort of be self sufficient during a 10 day blackout, the less strain and demand there is on the system that's trying to respond.

Yeah, that's an absolutely important point that I just want to reiterate. Some might say, although they'd be way off base, that the concept of survivalism is a selfish concept. No, it's actually a very, very selfless concept. Because if you can take care of yourself and you won't become a strain on the system, you leave an opening for other people to get help. And if everybody just adopts that mentality, I mean, God, you look at the Mormons and if you were in Utah in a disaster, gosh, you'd probably fare pretty darn well. Hardly be any inconvenience at all because everybody's so prepared, you know, and they're not a strain on the system. And the best thing you can, you know, it's kind of like the old the best thing you can do for the poor is to not be one of them.

Or to help them not be one of them.

That's the second best thing. That's the second best thing. But the first thing you got to do is just take care of your own needs so you don't take from the collective and the collective can afford to serve somebody else.

There's actually a very interesting, I think my favorite plot and character arc in the movie that revolves around a prepper in Colorado, who's obviously done everything he needs to do to prepare for exactly the event at hand. The problem is he's done it independently, in isolation, without involving the community. And as you see as the move progresses, even though he's well prepared, since he hasn't involved the community, the community begins to encroach on him and actually compromise the resources that he's. That he actually has available. And he creates a lot of movie drama where there's a lot of tension and conflict and violence. So, again, it's good to be individually prepared, but there needs to be a real sense of community, like people are working together with the resources that they have, because if that's not in place, then there's a real tendency to move toward anger and frustration and even violence as the scenario continues to develop. I had the opportunity to travel to Japan right after that enormous disaster that we wouldn't have thought possible in the modern era, where they had an earthquake, tsunami, and a nuclear disaster happening at the same time. And I got there about day seven, and we went into some of these communities that had been dramatically affected, that had essentially been cut off from the rest of the country and the world, and they were actually doing okay. There was enough sense of community. They had been anticipating a similar type of disaster that are not quite the proportion that they were experiencing. And they had identified places where they could house the survivors. They had identified water and food in the community, and they were working together in a very cohesive way to actually take care of their needs without needing additional government assistance. So that was a beautiful example of actually what's possible. And I think we need more of that in this country. We need people to sort of think about that. And we need, particularly in cities like New York, where often it's hard to identify community. Right. That's what I think we need more of. And I hope that the movie will sort of move the needle a little bit so that people begin to think, wow, this might be possible. And what can I do, individual, family, community level, to protect myself and my community?

Tell us what happens with the emergency medical people. I mean, how do you staff for disasters? How do you prepare? I mean, what goes on in the. Give us some insight here as to the internal workings of your training and what happens at the hospitals. I mean, you mentioned 96 hours for self sufficiency, which in the overall scheme of things isn't much, but it's certainly better than nothing and probably better than a lot of countries. But what happens in your training? What else do you guys Learn. That would be interesting to know for the listeners.

Well, there's been a lot of work on staffing, right. Because hospitals can't run without staff. So we've done some research trying to better understand who would come to work and what would be some of the barriers to coming to work. So one of the things we've done is we've really encouraged our staff to have their own emergency preparedness plans with their family so that they feel comfortable coming to work and that their family's okay. So they've actually thought through scenarios. They have supplies on hand so they feel comfortable leaving their family and coming into the hospital to actually work. The other thing that's been really interesting, hospitals in the southeast that have had recurrent weather events, hurricanes particularly, have developed things called ride out and recovery games. So they've pre identified people that either have uncomplicated lives or a willingness to sort of be in the hospital during an event to actually that will come in prepared to stay for a few days or longer. Obviously, this would be a scenario where they would actually come into the hospital prepared to actually stay for a few days. They would be part of the rideout team and then another group of people that would be identified as a recovery team that would then come in at some point and relieve those people. And at a hospital level, we've done a lot of planning making sure that we can house and feed and provide what those staff members need to allow them to do their work.

Yeah, that's a good point. And it's a good point that there's a focus on making sure they have their own plan so that they're willing to leave their families and come in and help others. Yeah, very good point. So, Robert, very interesting topic here. When will the movie be out or how can people see it?

The movie will actually come out this Sunday on National geographic channel at 9pm Eastern Standard Time. It's going to be a national premiere so they can watch it on the National Geographic Channel. There's a website you've mentioned that's a lot of useful information.

Survivetheblackout.com and Robert Bristow, thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thank you.

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