Quote:
Originally Posted by Schone23666
Raketenjagdpanzer is telling the truth, unfortunately. Most electronic locks that you'll find here in the U.S. are in fact designed to switch open in case of a power blackout, but certain electronic locks that are use to restrict, how shall we say, extremely sensitive information and/or equipment work differently. Once power is lost, nothing short of C4 is going to bust that lock open, depending on how well reinforced that lock and whatever door or gate it's attached to of course.
That said, I'd hate to know what kind of "datacenter" Raketenjagdpanzer works in.  |
I worked for a company that shall remain nameless. However, while it was a private company, we had systems that were tied in to the Federal Reserve and Visa/MasterCard International, and we were the largest processor of electronic funds (ATM/Point-of-sale/Debit/EFT) transactions on the east side of the Mississippi. Then once we merged with our west coast counterpart, for a brief period (before the company was bought and broken up by two different companies) we were the largest EFT in North and South America, for about a year and change.
Nearly twenty years prior to "If you see something, say something" part of our employee training was "Don't tell anyone what exactly you do at work. If you let it slip, and if someone approaches you about committing card fraud or asks you to breach customer data, call the FBI."
Yes, our data was pretty important.
(And incidentally, no, in response to you guys and to virtually everyone who ever asked me we were
not responsible for $1 and $2 ATM fees - the independent ATM franchisers and banks were, our company took $.0075 (three quarters of a penny) for every transaction we processed. When we tried to make it a penny our customers (banks) screamed bloody murder; you'd have thought we'd gone Manson Family Helter Skelter on them.)
Anyway.
The electronic/electromagnetic locks in the first datacenter we worked at were always doing flaky shit, but it never involved
not locking. Sometimes the combo system would fail (thank you for crashing, Windows NT3.51 machine under the raised floor), sometimes the locks wouldn't release despite showing a good card read...I can only imagine that an EMP induced blackout would produce
hilarious results - including some in the fire suppression systems. I remember one day seeing one of the IBM support guys - dude must have weighed 500lbs - come
running out of one of the glassed-in CPU rooms. On that raised floor it was just like...GBOOM-GBOOM-GBOOM! Yelling OUT OUT EVERYBODY OUT HALON SYSTEM KICKED ON OUT EVERYBODY! Turns out the valve just purged itself of ullage, like...one puff...due to a chronically leaky o-ring (that's what the report from the company that managed the fire system said).
But this was ages and ages ago. And ages and ages. I left that job in October of 2001 to go work for the Army (not be in the army; I was 31 then, hardly 11b material)...that's another sad story for another time, I think...
Anyway anyway, yes, I'd have made it out and as there was a pretty clear view to the west, I'd have seen Macdill AFB and most of southern Tampa (and Patrick AFB & KSC to the east) rising up as a column of smoke and ash, tried to start my car, then walked/run home as best I could make it and...well...you know. Assuming the fallout foot-print didn't sprinkle Orlando, probably spent about a week in utter terror, assuming I and my wife (g/f at the time) didn't get killed by looters in the next couple of weeks, we'd probably have slowly starved to death over a few months, or died of something that the day before Thanksgiving would have been viewed as a minor nothing (influenza, toothache, etc.) I don't have any really applicable "survival skills" and right now my "go plan" involves a few boxes of MREs and bottled water, a generator, propane to keep it running a few days and other sundry goods all "hurricane ready" folks in FL have - but that's now, didn't have that in 1997.
God this is getting depressing.