Dark Grid (22 page)

“Communication is already on the way back.  We prove that every time we radio the Armory.  How long will centralized power be out?  I have no idea.  Sheri, you can shed some light on that one.  But it won’t be forever, I’m sure.  A lot will change before it comes back on, I’m sure of that too--but come back on it will, have no doubt.”

“So, again, what is it we are really trying to do?  ‘Integrate the civilians with the Guard’ is what we came up with, but that’s not what Mallory asked us to do.  She asked if we could take a concept and general instructions and flesh them out and make them work.  She asked if we could be civilian analogs, and there’s a reason I didn’t say equivalents, to Sergeants under her.”

 “Karen, I think you were more right than you knew when you first said that this had never been done before, because it hasn’t, not really.  Yes, the Romans used the military for police work and guard duty.  Now that I think about it, Knights would have probably served a similar role in England in the 13
^th
and 14
^th
centuries.  They lived among the people as well, although they were nobility, and that system had its own flaws.”

“I’m certain it’s not an insurmountable problem, and I’m just as certain that it isn’t what Mallory set us out to tackle.  I have my suspicions, but I’m not certain, as to why she only put us on this, too.  It’s not as though we’re the only ones who are qualified to set up this new world order--if in fact that’s what we’re going to do.”

Sheri looked at Rachael sideways for a few seconds before she said anything but was still the first to respond, “You, ma’am, are a little frightening.  You just get all clinical and detached and matter of fact, like you’re discussing some totally theoretical problem from an external objective viewpoint.  That’s just scary.  No offense, I mean, we need that right now, I love you like a sister, but you’re kind of a weird sister now.”  She grinned to try to take any sting out of the last comment.

“You know Sheri, Mallory said something very similar about Joel that night at the Armory, too,” Karen replied.

“No offense taken, honest.  I think it’s one of the reasons Joel and I fit so well together.  There are some things that either of us can step back and do that with.  Neither of us can do it with the same subject, though, so at least we complement each other that way.  The last thing we need is a bunch of people sitting around contemplating their navels while the world comes unraveled.”

“Well, the first thing we need to do, I think, is determine how long this is going to last.  In your opinion, Sheri, what is the soonest that the grid could be back up, assuming the worst?” Karen asked.

“It’s not that simple, unfortunately.  ‘The grid’ isn’t an ‘it’, it’s a, well, it’s a bunch of its.  Wow, my high school English teacher just turned over in her grave, assuming she’s dead.  There’s so many pieces of the grid that are interconnected that have all been affected by this that, well, where to begin?”  Sheri took a drink from her bottled water and went on.  “Ok, start big and work down.  I’ll keep it limited to the U.S., even though we are tied in to the power distribution systems of both Mexico and Canada, which could theoretically keep us from getting things back online sooner.

“The big high capacity lines you see running along the freeway in the middle of nowhere, let’s start there.  Those lines are technically what did us in, or at least where it started.  It’s possible to take electrical current and convert it to a radio wave, obviously--that’s how we get radio signals.  What is just as glaringly obvious to an electrical engineer but not to most people is the inverse, you must be able to convert a radio wave back into power, or electricity.”  Sheri could see the ‘aha’ moment happen for both Karen and Rachael at the exact same time.  This was a discussion she’d had more than once, and it never ceased to amaze her when people had their moment.

“Now, again, what most people don’t know, or know and don’t ‘realize’ is that the earth gives off a magnetic field that can be--and sometimes is-- converted into electricity.  For example, if you run a suspended ½ inch diameter steel cable a long enough distance, say a half a mile, and you don’t ground it before you connect each end to what you are terminating it to, and one device is grounded, there’s a good chance that the arc of built up electricity will not only burn out whatever you are connecting it to, but that it’ll kill you.”

“That current is always being built up and bled off in the Extra High Voltage lines all across the country. In short, what happened is that because of the event on Thursday, that Geomagnetically Induced Current, which is the technical term for that electricity that magically appears on the wire, was upwards of eight times what the equipment on the ends of those lines were ever intended to handle.”

“Eventually, the lines would have actually melted and broken, as passing current through them generates heat and the lines themselves were never designed to hold that much current.  But before that could happen, the little guys, the power sub-stations and even the power plants, well, they shorted out.  At the dam, we had two main gauges that I watched, among other responsibilities.  The analog needle actually went to 200%, and it was buried.   But there was a digital gauge that read 812% right before the power went out.”

Sheri let that sink in for a few seconds before she went on.  “Because of the nature of the spike, there was a dip of about 85%, which really caused everything to freak out.  Because everything happened so fast, the spike was able to back feed through the substation, or at least our substation, and blew out two turbines in the dam.  That’s the damage that was done to the power plant, our power plant.  Coal fired power plants, I’m sure, have suffered the same fate, as have nuclear power plants, but NO, don’t look like that, there hasn’t been a melt down!”

“A nuclear power plant uses steam to generate power you two!  Nuclear power plants are even more redundant than ours was.  Those are actually designed with an automatic secondary and tertiary power system and a completely isolated and manually engaged quaternary system.  Push come to shove, they go into a room and literally start a generator practically by hand, and throw switches to get power back on to the plant to go into a controlled shutdown, and that’s assuming that the power was out for more than six seconds to the control rod motor.  I won’t go into it but if the power went out, the reactions stopped.  Game over.”

“There’s some cooling that still has to happen, and those folks would still have gotten their generators working to get the pumps going to get the water cooled off, they know their jobs.  But we’re getting a little far afield.  Big surge burns out turbines at the power plants, regardless of the source of the motive power for those turbines.  The next piece is the step up or step down transformer.”

“The transformers are huge, they weigh tons, and when they go, they go big.  I’ve actually seen one that blew up, and you’ll notice I didn’t use air quotes when I said that.  The one I saw had a manufacturing defect that allowed for a small problem to get big, but it would have happened eventually anyway.  It literally exploded like a 500 lb. bomb.  It destroyed a large portion of the power substation, tore out power lines, took smaller transformers out, and resulted in power being out for an area with 2900 people for three weeks.”

“They aren’t field repairable and they aren’t something that the power companies keep many of in stock.  In fact, at last count, the really big ones…there were thirteen spares in the US and three in Canada, and they aren’t necessarily interchangeable.”  Sheri had to chuckle at the look on Karen’s and Rachael’s faces.  “Oh just wait, it gets better.  Lead time on these things on the world market, assuming the factory or factories that make them has power,” Sheri giggled, “is at least twelve months.”

“No, seriously?” Karen whispered.

“I kid you not, and it isn’t just anyone who can install them either.  Assuming that we can find all thirteen of the spares, and that we get them installed as necessary, and we get the power plants back online so they can build more, AND we find the guys who can install them, AND we keep them busy installing them and teaching new people how to install them,
ten
years minimum.  That’s also assuming we close the borders and tell the rest of the northern hemisphere to go pound sand if they come calling looking for help.  Like I said, Mexico has power plants and a grid too.   So does Canada.  They didn’t have nearly as many spares as we did.  Mexico actually didn’t have any on the books.”

 “But that isn’t all.   There are substations as well, which are also step-down transformers, and there are tens of thousands of those nationwide.  There are spares for those, but again, not for all of them, and they aren’t field repairable, they have to be replaced.  They are about half as large as the ones on the Extra High Voltage lines, which means they are still multi-ton devices, and lead time is still a year to get them built.  And finally, there are the transformers on the poles out front of every two to three houses, or underground.  Those might just be powering up the choir invisible and need to be replaced as well.  Those, they have thousands of spares for, which is good, as there are hundreds of thousands of them across the country--probably more like millions.  It could be twenty-five or thirty years before we get back a grid anything like what we were used to, possibly even longer.”

“Ok, so what do we know?  The power is out generally for a long time.  If we are successful, others will hear about it and will want to be a part of it because it is successful and stable.  We will grow.  The more we grow, the more the basics that we put in place will be stretched and something more will be needed to take its place.  We’re looking at a living document to be governed by.  Hmm, where have we seen one of those before?”  Karen crossed her arms and tapped her right thumb on her pursed lips.

“Question is, or I guess questions are, do we want to start with the US Constitution?  If so, do we want to monkey with it?   If so,
how
do we want to monkey with it?  Are any pieces sacred and should never to be touched?  Do we expand the 2
^nd
Amendment?  Do we prohibit smoking or drugs?  Do we force the legal definition of marriage?  Do we neuter the Supreme Court?  Do we impose term limits in congress?  I’m not saying yes or no to any of these things, I’m simply bringing them up.”

“Well, let’s see how much we can wade through before lunch.  I do have a laptop that wasn’t connected when the spike hit and I happen to have a copy of the entire constitution and amendments in a document.  Let’s pull it up and take a look…”

Chapter Twenty-Two

 “Sergeant Ramirez reporting to Sgt Halstead as requested.” Ramirez ducked into Halstead’s tent.

“Come in, sit down.” Halstead gestured at the chair behind Ramirez.

Ramirez sat down.  “We have the parking situation completed and ready for both the group at the weigh station and the entire compliment from the Armory.”

Halstead’s eyebrows rose, “Already?”  He glanced at his watch, “its 11:52; the only thing that needed to be ready today was parking for the semis and we weren’t even planning on leaving until 15:00.  Keep this up and you’re gonna make Sergeant First Class.”  The comment was designed to get Ramirez’s goat, they both knew he didn’t want SFC.

“I’ll be sure to be a tad late next time, Sergeant Halstead.”

“You and I both know that would be a phenomenally bad idea, Sergeant Ramirez.  I’ll let Sergeant Jensen know you are ready far ahead of schedule, not just for the weigh station group but for all the vehicles at the Armory.  How are we doing for barracks?”

“About 80% Armory personnel and family capacity.  We will need to clear a little more land to meet full capacity but we should be done by Tuesday night.”

“How are we set for water and power?”

“We have two more ROWPUs set up, one online, the other as a backup, ready to go in a matter of twenty minutes.  We have a total of 2 MW generating capacity here at ‘Promised Land’ but our current draw is less than 3 KW so the majority of the generators are offline at present.”

“Outstanding, thank you, Ramirez.” Halstead said.  “I know Top will be glad to hear about the prep for the egress as well.  I think we’ll probably end up heading out a little early for the weigh station group.  Between you, me, and the fencepost, we’re probably going to need a whole lot more room eventually, too.  There’s a lot of chatter on citizen band right now about the fact that the power still isn’t back on, and now people are really starting to freak out about the radio and cell phones not working.”

“Everything is second-hand so far, but that doesn’t mean we should discount it.” Halstead continued.  “As things continue to come apart, I think we’re going to start getting more and more folks looking for a port in the coming storm.  That’s going to be us--at least for some of them--and all those people will need a place to stay.  Top is already thinking about that, and we aren’t going to be some big charity case’s wet dream, but not everyone is going to be able to jump in with both feet right away either.”

“Understood.  I’ve basically been operating under that assumption ever since I heard about the raiding party at the hardware store.  I know Top won’t just turn people away either, not unless they’re the utterly worthless variety, in which case we’d all make them feel real uncomfortable and mostly unwelcome anyway.”  Ramirez’s smile lit up his face, but never touched his eyes.

“Well, keep that ‘planning ahead’ under your hat, or you’re going to find yourself in a desk job,” Halstead said, again mostly joking.  “Again, good job.  Dismissed.”

…

The same two Humvees that had been sent to meet with the group at the weigh station were sent to bring any who wanted to come with the Armory group in.  They didn’t go alone this time, however, as they would be escorting back over thirty semis.  In addition to another day, the sunrise brought with it another caravan from the Armory, including a dozen Humvees, a half dozen Light Attack Vehicles, or LAVs, and a number of cargo vehicles.  A number of the Humvees and all the LAVs were accompanying the original two Humvees to the weigh station.