A Catastrophic Blackout is Coming - Here’s How We Can Stop It | Samuel Feinburg | TEDxBaylorSchool
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Published 2020-04-10
We are terrible at listening to warnings about disaster.” In this powerful and prescient talk, Helena’s Sam Feinburg speaks to the threat of a catastrophic blackout, what each of us can do to protect our grid, and the quirk in the human mind that makes problems of this ilk - like pandemics or nuclear proliferation - so desperately hard to solve.
Sam is the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of Helena, a problem-solving institution that addresses urgent societal issues through for-profit, non-profit, and legislative action.
Helena's first project, "Factory in the Sky,” supported the construction of the first commercial carbon capture factory by the Swiss company Climeworks, which is now operating in 15 countries globally. Its second project, "Shield", catalyzed state and federal action to help protect the North American electrical grid from threats due to solar storms and cyber-attack, including a 2019 Presidential Executive Order. Its third, 'America in One Room', organized one of the largest political experiments in U.S. history in an effort to improve the way citizens evaluate candidates for public office, featured on the front page of the New York Times, and was hailed by US President Barack Obama.
Helena operates its projects with a small group of leaders it calls "Helena Members". They include Nobel Laureates, Academy Award winners, former CIA Directors, Olympic athletes, NGO leaders, technology entrepreneurs, explorers and more.
Outside of Helena, Sam serves as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at The Boston Consulting Group. In 2014, Sam won the World Schools Debating Championships as a member of the England Debate Team.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
All Comments (21)
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Who’s here before the blackout?
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The only thing we’ve learned from history is that we haven’t learned anything from history
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Revisiting this essential TED talk and it's been almost a year since the February Texas grid failure. The event caused over 700 deaths and many many people were without water, heat and food for a week. BE PREPARED my fellow citizens.
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This is not just a talk, this is a warning!
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I grew up in rural GA on a farm. Did not have electricity as a child. Grew most of our own food and raised animals. Had Kerosene lamps, an outhouse, and used wood for fire. It was a beautiful existence. I just did not know it at the time.
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Don't count on any government. Live as independent and self sufficient as you can.
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I'll be here after this happens once it has happened, I tried to tell my friends and family that a blackout is coming but everyone thinks I'm crazy
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Here because of the new Netflix movie "Leave the World Behind". Woof.
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My gut feeling is telling me this is a warning
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I told a few people about this and you know what their response was? "Nah thatll never happen" Yup we're doomed.
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The real solution to most of these problems is decentralization. Centralization is usually very efficient at doing or producing ONE thing, and very bad at doing everything else. Moving to a decentralized model of energy production, storage, and distribution will increase the robustness of the system many times over, for a (relatively) small decrease in efficiency.
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Who else is watching in wake of what happened in Moore County, North Carolina
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Who just jumps to the comment section?
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“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ― Albert Einstein
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In a massive blackout people in the city would die of starvation while in rural America I’d just die of boredom.
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looks like the preppers had it right all along and they are really good about preparing for disasters!
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The sad part is that now you will be called a conspiracy theorist if you think proactively with abstract thought.
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" Stop the world, I want to get off"
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For three decades I have read and studied the potential risks and damage from a “hit” by a CME or a nuclear explosion causing a large EMP. This is the best, most informative, and level-headed presentation on EMP / fragility of our nation’s power grid that I have ever seen. Kudos! Members of Congress should be required to watch this presentation on a yearly basis.
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That dude made the fatal mistake of assuming the govt works FOR the people, not AGAINST the people and here we are in 2021.
