Fire sale (attack)

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A fire sale is a term from popular fiction describing a three-stage coordinated attack on a country's transportation, telecommunications, financial, and utilities infrastructure systems. The attacks are designed to promote chaos and foster a leaderless environment.

The first part of a fire sale consists of shutting down transportation, street signals, aircraft, highways, trains. The goal for this first part of the attack is to throw the public into chaos, making roads inaccessible, possibly for preventing emergency services to assist.

The second part of the attack would consist of shutting down the financial system of a country, such as the stock market, government agencies, and local law enforcement.

The last part of a fire sale involves the termination of all utilities and telecommunications in the whole country including phones, sat-coms, electricity, water, nuclear, solar, and anything else that requires a power source (except batteries, as it would be difficult if not impossible to shut down all batteries). The final result of all three steps completed would leave the country or community in total chaos, making it extremely vulnerable.

The term may owe its origins to the 1997 article "A Farewell to Arms",^[1] in Wired magazine, that is credited as its inspiration. The article details government "think-tank" war games-styled exercises called "The Day After" that are designed to help plan for prevention and remediation of a coordinated, systematic attack on the United States national infrastructure.

The term was used in the 2007 film Live Free or Die Hard.