Snakes and bats cause more blackouts than criminal haxors

Blackouts in Australia can be caused by snakes, birds, bats, and cats, but precious few by Russian hackers. That's the conclusion from power system outfit Eaton's annual analysis of Australia's power system, the Blackout Tracker. Ever since South Australia's 2016 megastorm, “energy security” has been a political catch-phrase …

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

What about spiders?

Or sharks?

[redpawn]

Depends on how common Sharknados are down south. They are a terrible problem in L.A.

[Francis Boyle]

You mean crocs

It's always crocs in the NT.

Even when it's pythons.

[Brian Miller]

Eh, as always, squirrels!

Yes, it's the wild life that takes out the power, most of the time. Gee, does that taste good? Too late! Let's all land on this wire! Not a good idea.

Personally, I always figured that the best way to disrupt air travel was to plant bird seed. Maybe throw some around the transformer stations, too.

[phuzz]

Re: Eh, as always, squirrels!

Airports already have a wide range of way to combat bird strikes, so dumping that bird seed into the fuel supply would probably have more impact.

[Winkypop]

Bat Fink

"Blackouts in Australia can be caused by snakes, birds, bats, and cats, but precious few by Russian hackers."

That's just what the Rissians want you to think....

[GrapeBunch]

Re: Bat Fink

Why would Russian [Nork, American, Iranian, Chinese, Israeli ...] hackers want to bring down utilities at [random location] ? Surely they're developing their arsenals through research, industrial espionage, reverse espionage (e.g. donating code that they already know how to h4XX.) and collection of zero-day exploits. They have their eye on the long game, the sharp disruption upon request at a crucial moment. The damned Eastern Grey Squirrels haven't figured that out. Or have they?

Maybe a 13-year-old itching to be jailed, but not a natjonal hacker.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying foxes

I had to google that because I was thinking "what, they're like flying squirrels that glide from branch to branch like flying squirrels do?"

But no, of course since it was Australia its more scary shit that should have gone extinct ten thousand years ago when most of America's scary shit went extinct. Seriously, a bat with a five foot wingspan? Wonder what other horrible fauna Australia's got I haven't heard of?

[Winkypop]

Re: Flying foxes

"Wonder what other horrible fauna Australia's got I haven't heard of?"

BEWARE THE 'DROP BEAR' !!!

[P. Lee]

Re: Flying foxes

>BEWARE THE 'DROP BEAR' !!!

Check out Path of Exile - an everyday story of criminals exiled to a far continent, featuring drop bears which are a real nightmare.

The game is only half the story. The trees they drop out of are called "widow-makers" because even healthy ones have a tendency to drop large branches without warning.

[Oengus]

Re: Flying foxes

they're like flying squirrels that glide from branch to branch like flying squirrels

You are thinking of Sugar Gliders.

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: Flying foxes

@DougS - Did you want a list?

Spiders

most of the world's most poisonous snakes

BIG spiders

Saltwater crocodiles

Tiny spiders that kill you quickly

1.6 m hopping rats that smash through your windshield and kill you will their claws

Did I mention the spiders?

Box jellyfish

Stonefish

And if the fauna doesn't get you, the weather will have a damn good try.

[Fortycoats]

Re: Flying foxes

Terry Pratchett was right. The list of harmless creatures in "Fourecks" is shorter:

Some of the sheep.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Flying foxes

Well I knew about all that stuff, especially all the deadly spiders and snakes. I was more curious if there are any more 'surprise' animals like giant bats (got any rats the size of dogs, or wasps the size of crows, perhaps....those would be pretty horrible!)

Those big bats probably don't kill you, but sure would scare the shit out of me if I encountered one without knowing they were a thing! I got a bat in my house once but it was small - probably only had a wingspan of 4-5 inches, not five feet. I guess the saving grace is the only way that beast could get into my house would be if I left the front door wide open and it flew in at a 90* tilt to allow its wings to fit!

[bep]

Re: Flying foxes

"Well I knew about all that stuff, especially all the deadly spiders and snakes. I was more curious if there are any more 'surprise' animals like giant bats (got any rats the size of dogs, or wasps the size of crows, perhaps....those would be pretty horrible!)

Those big bats probably don't kill you, but sure would scare the shit out of me if I encountered one without knowing they were a thing! "

I was up at Cape Tribulation one time, they had a little booth manned by a National Parks ranger in which they had various informative posters plus rubber souvenir koalas, kangaroos etc, plus a rubber flying fox which the ranger had hanging by it's feet, bat style, from the counter. At least, both myself and the elderly American tourists at the counter thought it was made of rubber until is suddenly flapped it's wings. I'd never actually seen people levitate before, I was quite surprised myself. Turned out the National Parks ranger was into wildlife rescue and she was rehabilitating said injured flying fox, so of course she took it to work with her. They're quite cute, really.

[toxicdragon]

Re: Flying foxes

"(got any rates the size of dogs)"

Rodents of Unusual size? I don't think they exist.

Sorry. Someone had to.

[Adam 1]

Re: Flying foxes

<Pedant hat>

most of the world's most poisonous venomous snakes

</Pedant hat>

[toxicdragon]

Re: Flying foxes

@DougS

I did the same, just thought it was a bat for the first few images, then saw a person stood next to it for scale. That is a big bat.

[Oengus]

"Blackouts in Australia can be caused by snakes, birds, bats, and cats, but precious few by Russian hackers."

I wonder what percentage of blackouts are caused by the failure to invest in maintenance and upgrade of the network. I seem to remember a couple of years ago parts of the Sydney CBD experienced a series of blackouts caused by lack of capacity and failure to upgrade the network...

[GrumpenKraut]

> failure to invest in maintenance and upgrade of the network

Pro tip: use non-buried lines where thunderstorms are frequent. Works just brilliant!

Last witnessed in the USA (east part), where two or three blackouts per week, each between 30 mins and 3 hours, did seem to be nothing unusual. Hotel personal handed out candles. Never found out how to run my TV with those, though.

Crack-pop, BOOM! Dark. "Oh crap, not again!" ----->

(Yes, I know that burying lines is bloody expensive).

[Anonymous Coward]

Dissapointed

That there's no mention of CyberSquirrel1....

[Rich 11]

D'oh!

Someone stole an earthing cable at Hakea Prison

Well of course someone did. -- the place is full of bloody thieves!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since South Australia's 2016 megastorm,

And what 'megastorm' would that be? The one that the BoM hyped up to try and appear worse than many in earlier years or what.

As for 'the wind not blowing' being a cause, that will most probably change now that the Hazelwood coal fired power station has closed down considering that during most days it supplied more power than all the wind generators in Australia combined.

Also, the writers of this report should consult with those that produced the AEMO report on the SA blackout.

[Alan Brown]

"Also, the writers of this report should consult with those that produced the AEMO report on the SA blackout."

As I recall the problem wasn't that the wind wasn't blowing, but that the owners of the natural gas plant which could have easily taken up the slack decided it wasn't worthwhile firing it up because the last few times they did so the wind started blowing before the plant startup costs were paid for.

[J P]

Now it's set me thinking; which would be more dangerous: 1 forklift sized keyboard, or 100 keyboard sized forklifts?

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

re:Forklifts

African or European forklifts?

[J P]

Re: re:Forklifts

In context, probably the rarer (non-migratory) marsupial variant.

[DNTP]

A single conventional forklift is more dangerous than either of those. Forklifts are primarily destructive forces of destruction that have been vaguely accepted by industry for their incidental capacity to lift things.

[J P]

Apropos of which, DNTP, I've always understood one of the big hurdles for AI development was finding a truly random input generator. In which case, why are they faffing about with software stuff? History (and youtube evidence) suggests that the linkage between steering wheel & road wheels of a forklift would generate sufficient totally random outputs for a given input to meet the requirements.

[John Brown (no body)]

“the wind didn't blow”.

None of the blackouts were attributed to “the wind didn't blow”.

How many are attributed to "the wind did blow"?