County Commissioners Association of Oh Form

(*WARNING: LONG ANSWER*)Part 1: Localised DestructionOoooooh mama here we go!Now this question can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways (In my opinion), being that the world goes through either a.) an event which causes a signNow proportion of the global population to lose access to a functioning power grid, which could be limited to a large country or region or b.) the overwhelming majority of the global population loses access to a functioning power grid, a truly worldwide catastrophe.For both of these scenarios, I’m going to try to delve as deep as I dare and examine how this will not only affect the nation, but you, the average Joe, sitting there reading this on your device to distract you from the fact you’ve actually got a boatload of work waiting for you somewhere (it’s ok, no need to study for that final, Quora is the real priority).In this answer, I’m gonna solely focus on scenario A and save B for later, depending if people can tolerate an answer as long as this!And before we start, here’s the criteria for what stipulates a major blackout as per Dr. Wikipedia;“The power outage must conform to all of the following criteria:The outage must not be planned by the service provider.The outage must affect at least 1,000 people and last at least one hour.There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption”Let’s start with scenario A, and bring in everyone’s favourite apocalypse guinea pig;The Good ol’ US of APopulation: 326,433,373 people (June 2017)Area: 9.834 million km²GDP: 17.95 trillion USD ‎(2015)Per capita: 55,836.79 USD ‎(2015)I think we can all agree a prolonged, sustained nationwide blackout in the States would of course be considered a global event, since we effectively have paralysed the majority of the nation which so happens to be the undisputed military and economic superpower of the 21st Century (sorry China).Of course city, state even region-wide major power outages are all too common in the United States, with Hurricane Sandy in 2012 knocking out pylons and transformers leaving over 8 million people without energy across 9 states, them being New Jersey (2.7 million), New York (2.2 million), Pennsylvania (1.2 million), Connecticut (620,000), Massachusetts (400,000), Maryland (290,000), West Virginia (268,000), Ohio (250,000), and New Hampshire (210,000). More recently, thanks to severe thunderstorms, we had a taste of that this year. On March 1st, 2017 a thunderstorm with conditions similar to that of a typhoon left over 10 million people without power all across the Eastern Seaboard. That’s 3.1% of the population of the most powerful nation on Earth left without power, all because of a single storm.These massive black outs are more common than you’d think, a quick look on the list on Wikipedia will show that. North America has had a major black out, which affects at least 1 million people at a averaging rate of 1 every other year from 1981 to 1999.There have been four multi-million person black outs on the continental United States in the past five years alone (5 if you want to count Puerto Rico, although it’s not mainland or really a state, yet).The United States has approximately 55,000 power plants throughout but as reported by the Daily Mail, America could plunge into a blackout if NINE power plants are attacked, since the US grid system is interdependent, so if one component fails, the load is placed on the next component, putting it under strain which thereby makes it more likely for the component to fail.But if multiple components fail, then you can get a rolling failure effect, a cascade of power stations going down, and with each station you lose, the more load you put on the ones that are still holding out.This is why a real life scenario with a coast-to-coast blackout is now a real possibility. This become further compounded considering attacks on power stations are frighteningly common.US Power Grid Attacked Every 4 Days; Nationwide BlackoutNew Report: US Power Grid Attacked Every 4 Days; Nationwide Blackout More Likely Than We ThoughtUnited States Power Grid Attacked Every Four Days — Nationwide Blackout Highly Expected To HappenThese statistics are based on Federal Energy records and were analysed by reporters at USA Today.These assaults range from cybernetic attacks on controlling computational systems to good ol’ fashioned physical smash n’ bash of transformers and other critical electrical infrastructure. Between 2011 and 2014, there were 348 physical attacks and 14 cyber attacks on the grid that caused outrages or disturbances, according to electric utility data reported to the US Southern Department of Energy.You’d think Uncle Sam® would respond to these pressing vulnerabilities wouldn’t you?To quote the Inquistr :“…focused more so on the part of the report in which power grid attacks may go unnoticed for several hours. This gives saboteurs plenty of time to cover their tracks and escape. An example of this is when police investigated an attack happening back in April of 2013 on a California substation until several hours after shots were fired. To this day, those attackers have never been found or identified.”With the cyber-warfare capabilities of other nations not so friendly with the US (*cough North Korea cough*) being sufficient to cause widespread havoc and even the threat of domestic cyber-terrorism, it’s a surprise the US hasn’t been sent back to the Stone Age yet.Want a bit more? To quote OfftheGridNews;“Members of the EMP Commission that reported to Congress found that if the grid is down for one year, 70-90 percent of the US — between 200 million and 285 million Americans — would be at severe risk due to starvation, a lack of medical supplies, and civil unrest. One big reason an attack would do so much damage is because there are no backup parts to much of the system; they’re custom made, and it can take weeks or months to replace them.”Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said “Those critical nodes can (electrical power infrastructure), in fact, be attacked in one way or another… You have a very vulnerable system that will continue to be vulnerable until we figure out a way to break it out into more distributed systems.”He described the grid as “too susceptible to a cascading outage”, which is a nice way of saying America’s power grid security systems, they way they are now, couldn’t guard a boiled egg.You could dismiss this all as hooey and scaremongering. Ok sure, I respect that. But not even 11 hours ago (as of writing this answer), thousands of companies and organisations across the United States and Europe were crippled by the massive “Petya” cyber attack, a ransomware strain which affected massive companies like Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world's largest overseas cargo carrier, and Russian oil titan Rosneft. These were among a few of the high-profile corporate victims in at least six countries.It also affected Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and British media company WPP tweeted they had been hit by Petya. Even the behemoth law firm, DLA, was a target of this attack.That sure is a nice way to start the dayWant a bit more? In May 2017, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was rocked by a massive cyber-assault. The ransomware “WannaCry” locked down hospital computers, patient records, pharmaceutical information and caused massive disruption everywhere from GP clinics to full-blown central hospitals. This virus crippled the health service, arguably the most important and under-strain service in the nation, of the United Kingdom, a leading world power in its own right.Wanna guess who launched it? NHS cyber-attack was 'launched from North Korea' - BBC News>TFW you hack the other kids Xbox…and cripple his nations f*cking health serviceWant even more, more? This one is genuinely f*cking crazy.Terror attack plunges 140 million into darknessMassive power failure plunges 80% of Pakistan into darknessPakistan works on power blackout after 'rebel attack' - BBC NewsYou know what put 140 million people, (80% of Pakistan’s population) in darkness, what one event knocked out energy to nearly 2% of the global population in 2015?The bombing of just two goddamn pylonsYeah, these pricksRebels in Naseerabad in Pakistan bombed two pylon towers, which caused a massive backward surge in electricity and forced two nuclear power plants to go offline. This plunged the country into darkness, including the capital, Islamabad and the 25 million strong city of Karachi, not to mention Lahore airport being down, which serviced 4.7 million people in 2016, making it Pakistan’s second busiest airport.Power had to be drawn from other stations, which put enormous strain on the aged and underdeveloped power grid of Pakistan.The following is according to a ministry spokesperson, Zafaryab Khan following the attack;“The blowing up of two power pylons in Naseerabad last night created a backward surge which affected the system. It was an act of sabotage.”Think that’s a big outage? Oh you sweet summer childAllow me introduce to you the 2012 India blackouts, a series of rollings outages over two days that ultimately affected 620 million people or 9% of the world’s population in 2012. It affected 22 states and resulted in 32 gigawatts of power capacity going offline, enough to power roughly 3,200,000,000 light bulbs or roughly 26.7 time travelling DeLorean’s.The event was actually two blackouts, with the first on July 30 affecting 300 million people (the biggest in history at that point) and the second affecting another 320 million people the day after, on July 31st.This is a classic example of how several components failing and straining the rest, can ultimately break the whole system.“But James!” you say “You’re not answering the question! I don’t need more examples, just tell me how would the US react to a massive, nationwide cascading black out?”Alright then. You know how we do it here, gentlemen. Let’s go for the worst case scenario; a prolonged national power failure, with critical components destroyed by attack and a repair time of roughly 18 monthsWell friend, in this case, the American public would do the one thing that God put them on this green earth to do;FLIP THE F*CK OUTIn the event of a massive prolonged outage, especially one caused by deliberate nationwide sabotage (be it cyber or physical), it wouldn’t take long before society would degrade into chaos as people panicked and took to the streets to either demand the government take action (which they undoubtably would be racing to do), get as many supplies as they could by any means necessary (hello, mass looting!) or just to take advantage of the fact that the systems which keep society in order are now gone or at least heavily impaired as they try and organise a strategy to re-affirm order without being able to rely on anything that requires the electrical grid to operate, so bye bye cell towers, internet, Quora, online banking, stock markets, landlines, lights, and anything not backed up by electrical generators.Sure most hospitals, airports and critical government buildings have got their own power sources separate from the grid, but what happens when the diesel powering their generators runs out? How are you going to get more fuel to these places?You expect trucks and tankers full of the stuff to be able to move from refinery to city? And how are you meant to refine the crude oil you pull outta the ground? You got fractional distillers that work on magic? And if you did, could they feed the demand of the millions of cars running, plus the millions more generators you need to run so people don’t freeze? You think other countries have the capacity to send enough oil overseas, to ports that don’t have power to run or place their ships in a country in the midst of total pandemonium? Well, with the streets full of rioters and looters, good luck with that.Get ready to see plenty of these…And just how are you going to co-ordinate this massive re-fueling effort? Most communications infrastructure will be down and even if you could co-ordinate, there isn’t enough oil and generators in the world to compensate for the destruction of the majority of America’s nuclear, coal and hydroelectric plants.Keep in mind, America’s military infrastructure would be largely intact, as they’ve been strengthening and hardening their bases and silos from just about any God and all his angels can throw at them and believe me, they’re gonna be out for vengeance on whoever launched this attack.If it was domestic, expect the government to double down on everyone and play dirty as they launch the biggest manhunt the world has ever seen. And considering they can’t rely on traffic cams, ATM’s or internet tracking to find the culprits, they are going to go after anyone with the slightest whiff of being involved in this attack. Martial law, crackdowns on civil liberties, federalising and mobilising the National Guard, the whole nine yards.They’ll also be tasked with maintaining the order in the Union, contending with looters, rioters, protestors, secessionists, terrorists and just about every other nut job in the country with a gun( s̶o̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶U̶n̶i̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶s̶).Coming to a city near you! And also through your front door at 3 AM…If the attack was from a foreign power well then first, may they rest in peace and second, expect the Stars n’ Stripes to go into a total war mentality, akin to that of the UK and Russia during the Second World War, with the already scarce and dwindling resources on the homefront being rationed and giving priority to said scarce resources to America’s war machine, because making sure the Navy isn’t dry docked is more important than making sure you’re sorry ass has a warm bed to sleep and light to read. Of course, the nuclear option is always open since America’s ICBM and strategic missile forces sure as hell don’t rely on the electricity coming out of the plug. But that all of course depends on what the mood is of the Cheeto in Chief and how much of an atomic erection he’s got.“When I said nuke the Chinese, I meant put the take-out in the microwave!” - El Presidenté 2K17And now aside from that, onto the bad stuffWhat happens in the North, when the winter blizzards set in, bringing mountains of snow. What happens when a hurricane batters the East coast? What about tornado season in the Mid West or when an earthquake hits California while the black out is in effect? A heat wave? Enough folks already die from those now, in a world full of air conditioning. Imagine a whole summer with no AC! (Keep in mind, a coast to coast black out could take up to 18 months to recover from.)Think it’ll be fun trying to last a few weeks, months even years with no heat in a blizzard?I’d like to see you last the South with no air conditioningHow are you meant to warn people of impeding natural disasters, with no TV, phones or internet? How can you supply them, keep them warm and fed? You expect these people to just hide out in the suburbs and cities while government facilities still have lights flickering and radiators humming?If the only place in your city with electricity was restricted because of limited resources, and you and your family have been starving since all the food in the fridge spoiled in the first few days and all the dry food in the city has already been raided, do you think your going to form an orderly queue and wait your turn?And you thought Boxing Day was wild….And let’s say you were smart, or just lucky, and happen to have a source of food/water and reliable, off the grid energy (ie solar), you think your fellow, less prepared compatriots are just gonna roll over and die? When 10 masked, armed guys are banging on your door because you just so happen to have a bathtub full of drinking water or a working solar panel array, who are you gonna call (and with what)?! The police? Sorry, they’re more pre-occupied trying to quell the riots or direct evacuees or perhaps looking after their own families.Better bust one of these out.What happens when the already swamped hospitals are flooded with victims of the violence that spread on the streets? What about the thousands of people of the roads? Even with well lit highways and co-ordinated emergency response systems, thousands still die on our roads every year. How do you imagine how the situation will be on roads with no lighting, no snow plowing, no maintenance?Come on! You can buff that out!Bridge goes down from flooding or a quake? How are you meant to get spare parts or manufacture new ones when the factories are all down since there’s no power? How are you going to feed the populous of millions of starving people when the industrial farming methods we’ve spent the past 50 years perfecting go to sh*t?The chicken and cattle in those temperature regulated factories, what do you think happens to them when the temperature outside hits zero or when the waste pumps in the factory can’t divert the rivers of waste they produce?Yup, they’re all dead and now so are you… cuz you starvedHell, screw the chickens, what happens when the water pressure in the pipes and pumps dies? No latrines, no sanitation. Say goodbye to flushing toilets and clean tap water. No desalination plants either or pumps to bring up water from aquifers. Water treatment plants also go down, so get ready for open, flooded sewers overflowing with human waste and drinking out of polluted, disease-ridden river water.Drink up!Speaking of disease, what happens to those with chronic illness? Those who need to keep their medications refrigerated (ie )? What happens when they can’t buy (or steal) anymore since the supplies are either exhausted or simply spoiled from lack of proper storage? It’s not like they can order some online! This coupled with the lack of distribution of existing medical stores and the rise of unsanitary conditions would lead to epidemics and the return of previously “eradicated” diseases in the US (ie cholera, malaria)What about people in the ICU or on ventilators? Well, their lights go out with the hospitals, when the emergency generators finally run out. People who need radiotherapy, MRI’s, CAT scans, invasive surgeries, transplants? Nope, all dead. People who need dialysis machines? Sorry, buddy no can do. If it needs electricity then you just can’t use it.Your wife who needs a C-Section to deliver the baby? Well I hope the baby doesn’t need an incubator because otherwise…And it’s not like the hospital and medical services will have the time, space or resources to deal with everyone. They’ll try their best but ultimately the demand will just be too much.Hang in their fellasWhat about places like California? Even with the massive monetary, industrial and technological resources the state has they still find themselves in the midst of a water crisis. Now try and imagine that with no electricity and you’ll get a place closer to Mad Max than Orange County.Real of footage of Californians when someone takes a water bottle outIt’s not like Californians can take the highways out (clogged with broken down, gas-less cars), a plane (no fuel and civilian air traffic probably grounded any way) and the train lines? Too busy moving aid and materiel in and out of the state, in a desperate attempt to keep those within sustained with aid, and when the trains fuel runs out, all you’ve got left is a 1000 ton paper weight.The subways? Flooded, no pumps to keep’ em dryAnd we haven’t even gotten to the fire pumps, the ones that keep the hydrants pressurised. Sure they, like hospitals and banks and other public infrastructure, have emergency fallback systems but those are only short term stop-gap measures, designed to fill the role of the main pumps till they’re repaired.They aren’t designed to hold out for the long term, (especially due to the fact during a disaster the load placed on these services increases drastically.) You wanna know what happens when every fire hydrant in the country goes down?Yeah that, x 10,000If that wasn’t bad enough, we couldn’t effectively respond to the massive wildfires that are becoming more and more common place. Uncontrolled fires would cause thousands of death and billions in damages nationwide, razing entire districts and forests to the ground.Smoky needs your help…. TO GET THE F*CK OUTWhat happens when those fires hit chemical warehouses, or fuel repositories? What happens when places dealing with volatile, toxic, temperature sensitive industrial chemicals suddenly lose power and can’t safely contain their materials?It’s like a regular fire, but with extra death®And let’s not forget, a cyber attack on nuclear power stations could disable their safety protocols and lead to, well…*Roblox death noise*Let’s say you decide to (finally) get the hell out of Dodge (literally) and leave the US. How are you gonna do it? Air traffic will no doubt be grounded and suspended until power and order can be restored to the cities. Although they will probably remain open initially, land borders with Canada and Mexico will eventually close as the human tide of refugees from the US overwhelms the countries which, despite their welcoming populations, resilient economies and industrial bases, can’t handle an exodus of this scale.Sea routes will probably remain open, since ports and other deep water shipping facilities will be among the first to have power restored but given that everybody and their mother wants to leave, those seats are gonna be expensive. Oh yeah, and good luck getting a visa or right to reside in another country without access to a phone, internet, online bank or even a functioning consulate/embassy. Besides, the Federal government will no doubt discourage mass exoduses (at least as much as they can) because they don’t want half the country up and leaving when there’s work to be done.Wanna get smuggled? Well that’s gonna be double expensive and risky and of course very illegal. And what are you going to pay your esteemed chauffeur with anyway? Unless you keep you money in a mattress, you’ll need to withdraw the money from a bank which will either be a.) looted, b.) closed due to no power or c.) closed and frozen due to Federal order, so that people like you don’t all withdraw money thereby leaving the bank with no money thereby collapsing the bank thereby further collapsing the no doubt, at this point, free falling US economy.Frozen banks bring a whole new meaning to cold, hard cashEven if you did have the cash, it’s possible (albeit still unlikely but hey, we got for worst case scenarios here) that the dollar’s value will have degraded drastically, so you might not have enough to pay anyway. Not to mention the hundreds of billions lost through stock divestment, shareholder panic and lost trade, as factories, shipping, manufacturing are all paralysed by the power cuts.So you can’t drive, fly or sail out. Looks like your walking. Expect thousands of American’s crossing the northern border and, ironically, illegally immigrating to Mexico by crossing the Rio Grande.The cost of this disaster would be unprecedented, an event unlike any other in human history. The ensuing riots, fighting, civil unrest, crime, famine, drought, fires, flooding, war, blizzards, heat waves and epidemics due to the disappearance of medicines and sanitary conditions would claim millions.The financial toll would be billions if not trillions of dollars and the subsequent clean up would take decades, especially for the chemical, oil and nuclear spills likely to happen without the modern, electricity-driven apparatus we have built to contain them.A true national, monster blackout such as this (caused by massive cyberattacks, physical terrorism, high nuclear EMP’s or even a Coronal Mass Ejection) would send the United States, at least for the most part, back to the Stone Age.TL;DR: A normal week in Detroit*Hey guys, don’t hesitate to tell me if you enjoyed this, what you didn’t like and how to improve or if there’s anything else to add!If you guys like, I’ll make a second part (Global destruction this time guaranteed ), leave a comment to tell me what you think!All the best,-MK

Follow These Great Tips.Saving money is one of the biggest problems in our financial lives. Saving money can solve many of our financial problems. Having a saving fund can also provide you with the means to signNow your financial goals. If you have no savings, it is not the worst problem to have. Here is a plan that can take you from having no savings to saving regularly and change the way you manage your money.Start a BudgetA budget will help you discover your savings problem. You may discover that your income does not cover your basic needs. You may also have a spending problem. Search for overspend in a specific category or across the board. A budget is a great tool to identify your problem areas. It will allow you to devise strategies to make saving money easier. Once you have recorded your expenses and income, you can really begin to evaluate your spending habits.Start an Emergency FundAn emergency fund will shield your savings, it is money set aside to cover unplanned bills and expenses. Since debt is a way of life for most of us, it is a good idea to have about two months of expenses in your emergency account. If this feels like too much, aim for $500 first. This will make it easier to focus on other goals because you know you have some emergencies covered. An emergency account should be your top priority before you pay down debt or purchase other items that you can live without.Start a Debt Reduction PlanSet up a debt reduction strategy and determine how much you are paying in debt payments each month. Determine how long it will take to pay off each debt. Then think about how quickly that could add up if you were paying yourself instead. Make sacrifices in your budget so that you can pay more money for your debt each month. It makes sense to pay off your debt before you start aggressively building your savings account. There are many Apps available for budgeting.Find Ways to Save DailyWhen you want to save money, be creative. Find ways to reduce cost on your utilities and other monthly bills. Shop for cost-effective insurance and cell phones services. Consider less expensive cable packages and select other options to save on all of your expenses. Examine your entertainment cost so that you only purchase what is most important to you. Make a goal to cut back on as many expenses as possible. Try to reduce your overall spending by $50.00 each month. Then you will have saved $500 in ten months. Also, make sure you have an allowance and some fun money to spend on things.Start Saving for a PurposeOnce you are out of revolving debt, and saving money, it is important to have clear goals for your savings. A home or car purchase may be in your plans. Perhaps pay for your vacations and gifts in cash. Some of your savings may be primarily for wealth building or for education expenses. It helps to know where you want the money to go to stay motivated to signNow your goals.Make Saving a HabitI recommend making saving money a lifelong habit. It can help relieve the stress of managing your money. It will open opportunities for you and help make navigating financial hurdles just a little bit easier. As you make saving a priority, you will begin to implement a buying strategy before you go to the store. Make your saving automatic with a monthly transfer of the amount you want to save. You cannot expect your financial situation to change until you make saving a priority.It is important to train yourself to save money regularly. Start today!Additional Reading:The Secrets To Saving Money52 Ways to Save MoneyCreating A BudgetLearn more at Clark on Money