Grid down catastrophe strikes India; half the population stranded with no electricity

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: India, power grid, failure

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(NaturalNews) "Grids supplying electricity to half of India's 1.2 billion people collapsed on Tuesday," reports Reuters. "The outage was the worst to hit India in more than a decade and embarrassed the government, which has failed to build up enough power capacity to meet soaring demand."

More than just a single power failure, this "grid down" catastrophe is a cascading failure that has spanned many days and impacted an ever-expanding set of geographic regions. "More than a dozen states with a population of 670 million people were without power," writes Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/uk...).

It is not yet known how quickly power might be restored, but what's becoming increasingly clear is that India's power grid is in shambles, much like its roads and railways. In fact, there's almost nothing in India's infrastructure that works very well. Even basic items such as traffic lights seem to be impossible to get installed on many of India's roadways.

Watch this astonishing video to see the kind of traffic situation is commonplace in India's cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsPCsW3_aUY

Here's another example of the kind of total traffic chaos that's now commonplace in India's cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZKPnvlx44

And, of course, don't miss the infamous "India train station crossing" video that reveals the stunning risk of fatalities when pedestrians cross railway tracks in India. I call this one 17 seconds of sheer terror!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbSMLa_aE-w

Infrastructure reflects the local culture

The reason I show you these videos is because, having lived and traveled throughout the world, one of the truisms I've learned is that every country's infrastructure reflects the culture of its people. The infrastructure in Germany and Switzerland, for example, is relatively well designed, orderly and robust (compared to other countries, anyway). The infrastructure in Japan is also well-designed and relatively reliable. The infrastructure in South America, on the other hand, is sort of duct-taped together by occasional seizures of motivation among city workers who mostly spend their time figuring out how to avoid actual work.

In India, the infrastructure is a nightmare of shortcuts, quick-fixes and infectious indifference. Somehow, the people muddle through it all, never really getting around to redoing it in a way that would work well. Nothing gets fixed unless it's an absolute emergency, and even then, the fix only buys you a little time before the next failure. That's why the power grid is failing there. And even when it comes back online, it's going to be yet another rigged-up quick fix that makes the next failure even more likely.

America's infrastructure is on the brink, too

In the USA, key infrastructure is failing, too, although not with the colorful chaos of India. In cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, the roads are in a state of near-ruin. Key bridges across America are running out of usable life, and some have even started collapsing.

In 2007, for example, the I-35W bridge collapsed in Minneapolis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQFw0eJoo7k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3S_sDeJEE

This RT video shows how America's power infrastructure is crumbling at many levels:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0R6Suov9u0

These failures include failing levies, bursting water mains, failing bridges, localized power grid failures and more. America's infrastructure received a "D" grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers:
http://www.asce.org/reportcard/

In that report, drinking water infrastructure received a D-, aviation earned a D, energy got a D+ and roads received a D-.

I'm not sure if this grading scale even goes low enough to accurately reflect the state of perpetual imminent failure in India's infrastructure, but it would probably need to be something like FFF-.

What all this means to you

The point in all this is that whether you live in India, America, Canada, Australia or even Europe, sooner or later your local infrastructure will fail. You will experience a "grid down" scenario, perhaps exacerbated by a natural disaster, food shortages, a failure of emergency services and possibly even looting or social unrest.

If you're not equipped to handle these situations by having stored food, stored water, self defense capabilities, extra cash, extra medicine and extra fuel, you're likely to find yourself at the mercy of circumstances gone terribly wrong.

I've been teaching preparedness for over a decade, and I'm still shocked to learn how few people are truly prepared for the unexpected. In India, America and everywhere else, people still live with only 2-3 days of food in the refrigerator, half a tank of gas in the car, no escape plan, no defense plan, and not even a fresh set of batteries in their flashlight. Each day that someone lives like this is a day they put the lives of their family members at risk.

As much as we keep teaching preparedness and self defense, relatively few people have the intelligence and foresight to take action ahead of time. Across the world, most human beings simply wait for things to become an emergency before thinking about solutions. Such is the default mode of human existence almost everywhere. It takes a rare, highly intelligent individual to anticipate a catastrophe and prepare for it ahead of time.

Learn my best preparedness secrets at:
www.HealthRangerLIVE.com

Acquire preparedness gear, including radiation stickers, emergency particle masks, survival seed kits, at:
www.SupplySource.com