The Civil Defense Book by Michael Mabee

Emergency Preparedness for a Rural or Suburban Community

“Knowledge may be more valuable than currency someday.” Michael Mabee

Michael Mabee is an expert on the vulnerability of the American electric grid. You can access his expertise here. His tome, The Civil Defense Book, is well worth buying, reading, and using to keep your family and neighbors safe and civil defense savvy.

He is an American electric grid down expert telling the truth that no one wants to hear. If our American Republic survives the assault of the Communist Chines Party/People’s Liberation Army (CCP/PLA) unrestricted warfare on our nation, he will be celebrated 100 years from now for having the vision Hap Arnold, the general who invented the U.S. Air Force had in the 1920’s and 1930’s that saved us in the 1940’s.

A continuous CCP/PLA cyberattack, if now assisted by the 30 divisions of PLA soldiers who have invaded into the interior of the United States after crossing the Southern border, could take down our national electric power grid, they will.

Plan accordingly.

Forewarned is Forearmed

All 173 pages of The Civil Defense Book are loaded with information for how to ensure your family and community survive if a long-term electric grid event happens. Like me, he subscribes to the idea of subsidiarity, that the local level (family, neighborhood, community) of response is best to handle these events.

Here is my interview on Civil Defense Radio in 2019 where I said exactly what he is saying in this book.

I cannot emphasize enough how comprehensive his book is to give you and your family the tools you need to plan for, deal with, recover from, and prosper no matter the disaster.

Although the book contains far too many ideas, policies, and tasks to deal with in this limited Substack, I will try to highlight some in hopes you will purchase and read The Civil Defense Book, do a deep dive on his Grid Security Now! website, and then implement his practical suggestions in current and future civil defense disasters for your family and neighbors.

Here is his description of the book.

According to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security in 2017, millions of Americans—perhaps the majority of the population—would die if the electrical grid went down for a significant period of time. Not only is this disturbing fact is well known to Congress, it is also well known to America’s enemies. The United States today remains extremely vulnerable to a wide variety of man-made and natural threats, such as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, cyber-attack, geomagnetic disturbance (GMD), terrorism, weather and many other threats.

In November of 2017, the FEMA Administrator noted in his testimony to Congress that “we do not have a culture of preparedness in this country.”

The majority of Americans are unaware of the magnitude of the threats to the electric grid and our communities are completely unprepared. We have seen from recent disasters such as hurricanes Katrina, Maria, Harvey and Irma that communities can be on their own for a long period of time until help arrives – and these are regional disasters where massive outside resources are still available.

Here is the fatal flaw of the emergency management system in the United States: it depends on our ability to bring outside resources into a disaster area. But what if the majority of the country was the disaster area? What if cities and towns across the country were on their own for a long period of time? Survival will be a local issue. The cavalry will not be coming.

The real key to having prepared and resilient communities lies in the communities having a civil defense plan and being prepared for a worst-case scenario, such as a national-scale power outage. This book is about taking pre-disaster mitigation to the next level, so that your town can be ready for any disaster, large or small.

It is possible for a town to survive if the grid goes down long term. But only if a few of its citizens act now.

This book takes you through the steps to prepare your town for a worst-case national disaster. And in being prepared for a worst-case scenario, you and your town can be prepared for anything from a minor power outage to a hurricane to an electromagnetic pulse, solar flare or cyber-attack taking out the entire power grid. This is the Civil Defense Book!

The Book of Civil Defense Contents

You can get a good idea of the broad civil defense policy and specific civil defense tasks he elucidates by looking at his table of contents below.

Also check out his Grid Security Now! website for current American grid security infrastructure issues.

The First Principal: We Survive Together, No Alone

I have always taught that we survive together, not alone. It is a first principal of civil defense. After 40 years of learning, teaching, and living civil defense, I agree with his first principal: the calvary is not coming.

Individual preparedness and family preparedness alone are not going to save us in a long-term catastrophe. This is the purpose of this book. Instead of focusing, as many “lone wolf” preppers do, solely on individual and family preparedness, wouldn’t we be better off to also focus on the survival of our town or village? Wouldn’t prepping be better played as a team sport?

A year’s worth of food storage will do you little good if your house is looted by a heavily armed group of desperate, starving refugees in a “without rule of law” world. But if you live in a fairly secure town, with a working preparedness plan (which includes an adequate security force), there is a better chance that your family’s preparedness supplies , and your family, would survive. Moreover, it does not matter how much food and water you have saved Up; eventually, you are going to run out, even if you are not looted. Then what? If your town has an effective government and a contingency plan for security, food, water, and medical care (“beans, bullets, and bandages”), everybody’s survival prospects in the town increase.

Most families will be unable, realistically, to have a doctor, dentists, farmer, soldier, carpenter, teachers, alternative energy expert, horticulturalist, brick mason, and blacksmith in their houses. But the community at large has all these resources.

So “community prepping in addition to individual family repping as the advantages of collective resources, collective skills, and collective security. Individual and family preparedness alone isn’t going to cut it if the grid goes down for a year or more. A prepared family in a prepared community has a much greater chance of survival. There is another term for “community prepping”: civil defense.

Concentrate on your family, neighbors, church, and community. Ignore the social media fake world. Get to know the people you can depend on to survive. As me dear departed Da said many times, “When you are being lowered into the ground, look up! All those people who stayed with you to the end are the ones worth protecting, loving, and defending.”

What is the American Electric Grid

Mabee provides a summary of what the American electric grid is here. Below are some highlights.

First of all, the North American electric grid is an amazing human accomplishment. It is the largest machine in the history of the world, built piece by piece over many generations.

But what is it exactly? The “grid” is actually thousands of companies, both public and private sector, that operate in an interconnected system to facilitate the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power.  (No one company owns “the grid”—literally thousands own pieces of it!) The grid is made up of power generation—such as nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants, wind turbines and solar farms, high voltage transmission lines that span long distances across the country and local distribution lines which bring the power from the street to your house.

• Click HERE for a graphic representation of the grid. 

• Click HERE for a government primer on the electric grid. This is an overview of FERC’s regulatory role. You can determine for yourself how well they are doing their job to keep America’s electric grid safe, reliable, redundant, and working to meet our current and future energy infrastructure needs.

This interconnected—and vulnerable—patchwork is what allows the United States to support her human population. Everything that enables 330 million people in the country to survive is wholly reliant on the grid. All of our critical infrastructures—food, water, fuel, transportation, financial, communications and medical systems are all 100% dependent on the grid.

One HUGE Reason the American Electric Power Grid is Vulnerable

In addition to the lack of spending to keep the American electric grid updated, Mabee has been pointing out the remarkable vulnerability of our energy grid infrastructure to the Red Chinese for years, Here is one example.

The U.S. Has 300 Chinese Large Power Transformers

Posted on January 30, 2021 by Michael Mabee

Large Power Transformers are the Backbone of our Electric Grid

Okay class. Let’s try a word problem: If large power transformers are the backbone of our electric grid, and we have bought 300 large power transformers from China – what could possibly go wrong?

Between 2006 and 2019, according to data from the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. imported 300 “Liquid dielectric transformers having a power handling capacity exceeding 10,000 kVA” from China.

At least 200 of these Chinese large power transformers found their way into our electric grid. Others may have been bought by large industries, but it is certain that most of these 300 Chinese large power transformers have embedded themselves in some of our critical infrastructures in the U.S.

Where Are the Chinese Transformers?

Do the regulators even know where these 300 Chinese transformers are? The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) did not inspire confidence when they testified in 2019 that did not know if any of the entities in the grid had Kaspersky, Huawei, or ZTE equipment in their systems. If NERC can’t answer basic questions on supply chain cybersecurity, I don’t have a great deal of faith that they are handling security issues with the Chinese transformers.

Even if NERC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) know where these Chinese transformers are, there is no requirement that anybody do anything about it.

As I have been reporting, on January 20, 2021 President Biden signed Executive Order 13990 entitled: “Executive Order on Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” Buried deep in the 7 page wide ranging order is this provision:

(c) Executive Order 13920 of May 1, 2020 (Securing the United States Bulk-Power System), is hereby suspended for 90 days. The Secretary of Energy and the Director of OMB shall jointly consider whether to recommend that a replacement order be issued.

Presidential Executive Order 13920 was issued to address the electric grid Supply Chain Cybersecurity threat. Precisely the threat that Chinese transformers on our electric grid could pose!

Here is just another example of how Michael Mabee has been trying to warn Americans of our electric grid vulnerability.

Today, we are literally on life support, plugged into the electric grid. The lives of hundreds of millions of people depend on the things the electric grid provides. Without it, we would literally have what we had in 1850 – except we no longer have the requisite skills and most of us do not own a horse or mule.

Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately it isn’t. In 2017 the U.S. Senate said that the majority of the population of the U.S. would die if the electric grid as successfully attacked – by man or nature! (Read it HERE.) Still not convinced? How about over two decades of federal reports, hearings and Congressional Record detailing the threats to the electric grid? (Read them HERE.) But there must be a plan for this right? Nope. Click on this slide from a FEMA presentation last year. The U.S. has no plan for “very long term or extremely wide spread power outages.”

From the Back Cover: Millions of Americans, perhaps the majority of the population, would die if the electrical grid went down for a significant period of time. And while this disturbing fact is well known to Congress, it is also well-known to America’s enemies. Little has been done to mitigate the threat. Iran, North Korea, terrorist groups, and others are moving forward in their capabilities to attack the power grid, and the United States today remains extremely vulnerable.

The bad news: federal, state, and local governments are completely unprepared. Survival will be a local issue. The cavalry will not be coming.

You need to read this book. It is the plan for communities to survive. If the grid goes down long-term, you and your community are on your own.

About the Author: Michael Mabee’s career includes experience as an urban EMT and paramedic , a suburban police officer and with the federal government. Michael served into wartime deployments in Iraq and two humanitarian mission to Guatemala with the United States Army.

He has a great deal of experience both overseas and in the U.S. working in worlds where things went wrong.

Motion of Complainant Requesting FERC Take Official Notice

On October 13, 2023, Mabee filed a notion of complainant requesting that the Federal Emergency Regulatory Commission (Docket No. IL21-99-000) to order mandatory reliability standards for equipment and monitoring systems marketed from the People’s Republic of China to the U.S. electric grid.

He is bringing a critical vulnerability to light with the FERC that we still import large Chinese transformers we should manufacture in the U.S. if we are to have a secure power grid.

I am a private citizen who conducts public interest research on the security of the electric grid. I am also the Complainant in this docket.

I request that the Commission take official notice of the updated U.S. Census Department data on U.S. imports of large Chinese transformers attached hereto as Exhibit A. These data reflect the imports of Chinese transformers over 10,000 kVA from January 1, 2006 through August 30, 2023.

From January 1, 2006 through August 30, 2023, the U.S. has imported a total of 432 transformers over 10,000 kVA from China. Of these, 351 exceed 100,000 kVA.

The U.S. continues to import large transformers from China in 2023.

Respectfully submitted, Michael Mabee

Bonus Family Civil Defense Content

And now, to help you deal with the clown world nonsense, enjoy my sons Josh and Eamon of Billy and the Curley Brothers fame. My muse is poetry. Theirs is music. Here are some of Eamon’s songs on Spotify.

I could not ask for better sons. Both are audio and sound engineers during the week and musicians on the weekend. They and our network are, naturally, civil defense savvy. We all know that Christian joy, creativity, and hard work are all essential when facing any disaster.

They played at microbreweries and vineyards in Berkeley County, WV, Loudon Country, VA, and Frederick and Carroll counties, MD during the insane plandemic. They brought so many smiles to young moms who danced with their babies and dads who were doing everything to keep their families alive, safe, secure, and prosperous during that bizarre time. It was always such a rush for me to see them making dads, moms, and their children smile and release their stress.

I celebrate them and their music and hope this little Irish ditty Finnigan’s Wake and the Charlie Daniels classic “Devil Went down to Georgia” make you smile, too.