Adopted NGC 5548 SEDs. In black we show the SED for NGC 5548 in 2002 at an unobscured X-ray flux (hereafter “high SED”, from Steenbrugge et al. 2005). In blue we show the SED appropriate to the 2013 epoch, where for the same flux at 1000 Å, the new X-ray obscurer reduced the ionizing flux by a factor of 17 between 1 Ry and 1 keV (obscured SED). The ionization potentials for destruction of some of the prominent observed species are shown by the vertical lines.