Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists practiced for a potential disaster that few people likely worry about last week -- a cyber attack on the nation's electric grid.
But such an attack has the potential to spread quickly across the nation's grid, disrupting power supply and crippling the ability to provide the basic and emergency goods and services on which the nation relies.
Operators could lose control over the distribution of electricity or the attack could cause a prolonged blackout.
"A local problem could at light speed become a regional problem, a state problem, a whole western side of the nation problem," said Phil Craig, a senior cyber security research scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.
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