'Grid Down, Power Up:' Warning About What the U.S. Is Not Prepared For

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

Imagine a world where you couldn’t call or text anyone, you couldn’t put gas in your car, you could pay for things, and there was no tap in your water. A nightmare, right? 

Hollywood actor Dennis Quaid is warning that such a scenario isn’t a foreign possibility. 

During an interview with Tucker Carlson, Quaid highlighted the dangers of a solar storm that could kill more than 90 percent of the population within a year. 

“Basically, there is a 100 percent probability that our sun, generating what they call a GMD, which is a solar storm, that hits hard, hits our Earth, and the magnetic field we have around the Earth, and can fry everything that is electric above the ground, including our entire grid,” Quaid said. 

Everything from transportation, our finance system, phones, internet, food delivery, and other aspects of modern life would become obsolete. 

“There wouldn’t be water in your tap. You couldn’t get gas for your car because the whole system is broken down. Everything we rely upon would be gone,” Quaid told Carlson, noting that China and Russia have done more than the U.S. to protect their infrastructure. 

The Hollywood actor said that those who live in the country would have far more resources and chances at survival than city dwellers. However, Quaid stressed that our society is so heavily reliant on the grid that such catastrophic damage would be expensive and nearly impossible. 

During the Trump Administration, the former president tried implementing measures to protect the grid. However, his efforts were halted by regulatory agencies that energy company lobbyists control. Quaid explained that many power companies are privately owned and unwilling to spend the money needed for proper protection of our power grid. 

He told Carlson that it would take roughly $100 billion to install protection relays— similar to surge protectors— that could stop transformers from being fried. 

This is close to about the same amount of money the U.S. has given Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. 

Carlson also pointed out that the U.S.’s power grid could be targeted by terrorists from an EMP attack that would have similar effects to a geothermal event from the sun. A nationwide power outage could take months, or even years, to fix. 

“It’s something we don’t like to think about, but it’s whether from the Sun or a bad actor, this is something that 100 percent risk it’s going to occur, and we are just in no way prepared for it,” Quaid concluded.