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The modern world built by humans faces numerous problems.
Our cities are often threatened by storms, natural disasters, rising sea levels,
or in some cases, even by other people.
However, one of the biggest threats to our modern way of life, and well-being, in cities faces
is maybe the most ancient threat that humans have had to deal with since forever.
Animals. and specifically, the incredibly clever and dangerous squirrel.
While looking cute and fuzzy on the outside, squirrels are in fact extremely destructive little beasts
when put together in large numbers.
Over the summer of 2013 alone,
squirrels managed to inflict 20 power outages across 24 different U.S. states.
It's almost like squirrels evolved to be specifically good at wrecking power lines
and causing chaos in human-built cities.
Because they do this a lot,
they can damage electrical distribution centers
by tunneling underneath with their little hands and big teeth,
and preventing them from causing any damage once they're inside is difficult, because
a) I don't know if you've seen one, but squirrels are pretty small and flexible, and can squeeze themselves
through small openings to force their way into their target,
and b) squirrels are clever and can easily bypass plastic animal guards.
They'll then get through the electrical wires and insulation,
chew through them, and blow out the power to whatever those wires are sending the electricity to.
When a squirrel shuts down the power in this way,
the act is fatal to the squirrel itself,
whose body becomes a conduit through which high voltage passes
to complete the curcuit to the ground.
The American Public Power Association (APPA) has actually developed a data tracker
they call the "Squirrel Index", which they use to monitor
squirrel-caused grid disruption across the U.S.
The data shows that squirrels reach their most intense disruption activities in the summer and the fall,
and some of the individual stories are pretty hilarious.
In 1987, a squirrel took out power to the NASDAQ's automated trading computer
and the stock exchange went without power for 90 minutes.
Twenty million trades were affected as a result.
And it's not even the only time this has happened here.
Another squirrel took out the NASDAQ's power again in 2014, and shut it down
for 30 minutes.
But their attacks can happen all over the place,
and they're some times fatal.
A report from 2017 claimed that 6 people in the U.S.
have been killed by squirrel-related attacks
on electrical infrastructure.
Mostly by falling power lines hitting their unfortunate victims.
And while storms do tend to cause the longest and most widespread power outages,
squirrels remain the most frequent cause of them.
In the Washington D.C. metro area alone in 2013,
squirrels were the reason for 21% of all unplanned power outages.
The state of Montana reported spending $11 million in 2015 to repair damages caused by squirrels.
And in the summer of 2015
a lone squirrel managed to take out an entire substation in San Francisco
that left 45,000 homes without power.
But squirrels aren't just a problem to American infrastructure,
they're a problem anywhere squirrels can be found,
which is basically everywhere that is not Antarctica.
In 2005, the German press reported on a "cyber-squirrel" that crippled the entire electrical grid
south of the River Elster for an hour.
Because of squirrel attacks like these that happen every day around the world,
many have begun to hypothesize that the threat to the Internet, infrastructure, and services
posed by squirrels is greater than that posed by terrorists,
or maybe even by any other force.
John C. Inglis, this guy, who's the former Deputy Director of the NSA, once said,
Squirrels!
Squirrels are just one of the many rodent builds in the game,
and all of them possess unique abilities that have
allowed them to survive several balance patches,
and become some of the most dominant builds in the current meta.
But rodents don't all have the same stats.
For example, squirrels have high mobility, but are severely lacking in power and intelligence;
stats some other rodents excel at.
Head on over to my channel after this video to get a complete breakdown on the rodent build,
and see where each species falls on my tier list.
So even as utilities spend millions on wildlife protection measures,
squirrels so far have always remained capable of outsmarting them.
While squirrels remain one of the greatest threats to restriciting your useage of the Internet,
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Subtitles by: Ethan L.