Congressman Roscoe Bartlett Went Off The Grid, but Why?

The Congressman Who Went Off the Grid

Roscoe Bartlett spent 20 years on Capitol Hill. Now he lives in a remote cabin in the woods, prepping for doomsday.

Photo Credit: Jason Koebler

When Roscoe Bartlett was in Congress, he latched onto a particularly apocalyptic issue, one almost no one else ever seemed to talk about: America’s dangerously vulnerable power grid. In speech after late-night speech on the House floor, Bartlett hectored the nearly empty chamber: If the United States doesn’t do something to protect the grid, and soon, a terrorist or an act of nature will put an end to life as we know it.

Bartlett loved to conjure doomsday visions: Think post-Sandy New York City without power—but spread over a much larger area for months at a time. He once recounted a conversation he claimed to have had with unnamed Russian officials about how they could take out the United States: They would “detonate a nuclear weapon high above your country,” he recalled them saying, “and shut down your power grid—and your communications—for six months or so.”

Full Story by Jason Koebler – Politico

Facts about former Congressman Roscoe Bartlett:

Maryland Congressman Roscoe Bartlett was voted out of office last year, retiring to his remote West Virginia compound on 153 acres of land off the grid.

• Roscoe Bartlett, 87, left office last year after serving as representative of Maryland’s 6th congressional district for 20 years
• He had spent years sounding the alarm about EMPs – electromagnetic pulses that could knock out America’s power grid
• Bartlett and his wife retired to his 153-acre compound in West Virginia wilderness to live off the grid
• Ex-congressman’s lakeside property features six solar-powered log cabins, gardens and mills
• He still works part time as consultant for a cyber-security company in DC