Yep, the lights went out for 50 million people yesterday, and we still don’t really know why it happened. Canada blames a fault in our system; we blame a fault in Canada’s system, or a bad transmission line in the Midwest, but we’re all sure it wasn’t a terrorist.

Why? Just because nothing blew up?

Let’s try a little experiment, change the word terror to sabotage. Sound any more likely now?

The leading theory on the root cause of the failure, at least, the leading theory as I rode in to work this morning, was the simultaneous failure of multiple transmission lines in the northern Mid-West US.

Hmmm. When I learned to trouble shoot, they taught us that multiple faults are very rare, and to look for a single fault first. If you seemed to be chasing a multiple fault, step back and look again. You probably missed something.

Here’s a scenario to consider: Some idiot with an axe to grind and no sense of self preservation decides to die gloriously for Allah or whoever. He shorts two high tension transmission lines together, vaporizing himself while causing a cascading overload which shuts down power to 50 million people.

That’s "simultaneous failure of multiple transmission lines."