# Conspiracy theory on Iran **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 5, 2023, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143 "2023-12-05T18:57:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/21 "2023-12-06T15:20:06Z")
It doesn’t have to be a network that’s run by you- it just has to be private and unconnected to the Internet. So a water utility could talk to say… Verizon or AT&T and get them to set up a private network for that sort of thing. That’s probably the best way to go about it, especially if you’re pretty geographically separated. I mean, you might run your plants on their own LAN that you run your own cable for, but the actual infrastructure is going to need someone else’s help- microwave, private network managed by a telecom carrier, etc… Whether or not it’s networked is probably going to depend on the scale- my local water utility has 3 purification plants, two wastewater plants, a couple dozen pump stations, and 20 or so reservoirs and towers. There’s no way they can manage that manually and locally in any sort of efficient manner. But some MUD that has a handful of single-family residential subdivisions? They probably have one treatment plant and one purification plant, and no additional pump stations. That can be done that way. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/22 "2023-12-06T16:08:58Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Because smart electrical and water departments don’t connect their control stuff to the Internet in the first place. There’s a whole Department of Homeland Security section dedicated to “protected critical infrastructure” best practices, and the management of related information about said critical infrastructure. On the other hand, a couple of yahoos with shotguns managed to [knock out power](https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc11.com/amp/moore-county-one-year-power-grid-substation-attack/14138102/) to a North Carolina town for five days last year. An old-school hack, if you will. I don’t think even the bloated Department of Homeland Security has enough agents to guard every power substation in the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/23 "2023-12-06T16:30:59Z")
True, but that takes a whole other level of planning and dedication to get into the country and perpetrate the acts than it would to just do it from their couch at home. Not that they can’t or won’t do that, but it’s a different level of complication and likelihood for failure. I actually think this shotgun yahoos business in North Carolina points out the real vulnerabilities in the system- rural infrastructure is often not redundant or very secure. I mean, if someone blew up the water pumping station near my house, they’d be able to shut it off, and up the rate from the other ones, and keep fresh water flowing to my house, since the water pipes are all a grid and interconnected. But in a rural area, that one pump station might be _it_ for a large area. Same thing for electrical substations- I suspect they’re a grid in cities, and less redundant in rural areas. If I were these hypothetical terrorists, I’d probably mess up a whole bunch of small town infrastructure, instead of trying to do anything to cities. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/24 "2023-12-06T16:38:07Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The biggest thing(s) Iran could possibly accomplish to harm the domestic USA would be the teeniest of pinpricks on a national scale. And would result in utter, total, complete Armageddon for their government. I wonder if it would be Armageddon for them, though? They might invoke Russia as an ally for a ‘nuclear shield’? Perhaps there is a reason why Bush went after Iraq rather than Iran… ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/25 "2023-12-06T17:30:53Z")
> [@bump](#): > > electrical substations- I suspect they’re a grid in cities, and less redundant in rural areas. Oh, good golly, yes. I proofread transcripts of regulatory hearings for Massachusetts utilities, and there is a lot of redundancy, cross-connections, segment-isolating switching, etc. built into the utility systems; both the companies and the regulators insist on it. One way regulators monitor utility performance is through outage rates – frequency, duration, scope – and utilities are required to report annually, with plans to upgrade the worst-performing circuits. There’s constant monitoring by the companies of their facilities, with electronic failsafes wired into the system to react faster than human operators, to help stave off cascading failures like the 2003 East Coast blackout. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2023, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143/26 "2023-12-06T17:54:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > But in a rural area, that one pump station might be _it_ for a large area. Same thing for electrical substations- I suspect they’re a grid in cities, and less redundant in rural areas. > > If I were these hypothetical terrorists, I’d probably mess up a whole bunch of small town infrastructure, instead of trying to do anything to cities. This is a very interesting topic, though perhaps one that should spin off into a different thread? Just how robust is our current industrial civilization? Supposedly with Just In Time optimization etc we are told that any major city is only a few days from catastrophic logistical disaster: starvation etc. If it was a local problem, there would be sufficient resources from elsewhere to resupply. But a systemic problem… total loss of the electrical grid, or, nowadays, the Internet? There have been quite a few science fiction books about this. Presumably military strategists have considered it as well. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conspiracy-theory-on-iran/994143.md?page=1)