Expert Warns U.S. Grid Could Face an 18-Month Blackout Scenario. Nineteen minutes. That's how long gunmen needed in 2013 to disable 17 giant transformers at PG&E's power plant offline near San Jose — firing roughly 120 shots and targeting cooling systems before disappearing into the night. Utility workers spent 27 days restoring that single substation. Former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chair Jon Wellinghoff later ran the numbers and arrived at a scenario that stops most readers cold. Nine such attacks, coordinated across the U.S. grid's three interconnections, could black out the entire country. His estimated recovery window, as reported by the New York Times Magazine: eighteen months or more. https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/expert-warns-u-grid-could-185554431.html