Dr. Richard Andres, National Defense University, talks about the difficulty of preparing for high-impact grid threats. (Time: 28:31)
From the Dupont Summit December 7, 2012: Dr. Richard Andres, Energy Security Program Chair of NDU, was the lead host of the first comprehensive contingency planning on a nationwide collapse of infrastructure in October 2011 with InfraGard, the Maryland Emergency Management Agency and the US House Congressional EMP Caucus. The consensus from those in these workshops and exercise was that in the event of a long term nationwide collapse, outside help would not be available in a timely manner. Therefore, local communities must be more capable of providing essential services such as power, communications, food, water and sanitation locally to the greatest extent possible. This creates an urgent and strong perceived need for local power generation and storage. He shared his experience in leading these conversations and noted why it was complicated. He also answered questions about how next steps might be encouraged without provoking resistance to the conversation by sounding either “too alarmist” or extreme on the issues.
