# Internet Down and the End of the World **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 29, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015 "2013-04-29T16:15:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/1 "2013-04-29T16:15:33Z")
Is it safe to say that if the internet went down tomorrow, like **all** of it, that civilization would have a rough next few years, to say the least? What forces besides the sun exist that _could_ take all of the internet down tomorrow? Note to those who care: I’m using “internet” interchangeably with “World Wide Web” and whatever other relevant nerd terms here; by it I mean “this system involving computers by which I’m able to be posting to the SDMB in one tab, have my gmail open in another tab, and the news in another tab”. ---
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/2 "2013-04-29T16:19:37Z")
Oops…this is GQ. Deleted my reply. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/3 "2013-04-29T16:30:39Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > What forces besides the sun exist that _could_ take all of the internet down tomorrow? Nuclear holocaust, a big ass meteor, some insane virus, Skynet, a lot of people with a lot of hammers… ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/4 "2013-04-29T16:33:10Z")
Well, certainly the financial sector would have a hard time of it given its reliance on electronic transfers of both money and instructions about things to do with money. The telephone networks would be severely overtaxed (especially if the Big Event also takes out the mobile phone networks). There’d be runs on the banks and a lot of people would suffer. And God help you if you bought bitcoins. I’m not sure what kind of event could damage the world internet for a long time that wouldn’t also have a serious effect on other systems and indeed us. Even if, say, mutated neutrinos caused the Earth’s core to give off a worldwide EMP it would fry electronics everywhere, not just the internet, and civilization really would crumble. ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/5 "2013-04-29T16:50:15Z")
Hmmm…I guess I’m asking if there are ways the internet could be taken down which wouldn’t end civilization all by themselves internet or no, e.g. big ass meteors. Background: I’m a library director with some employees who don’t quite get that computers (and by extension the internet) really aren’t just a passing fad like they think, something they have to deal with right now but which will eventually go away and they can go back to their typewriters and paper and everything’ll be like it was. What I try to impress upon them is that while maybe in 1980 or even 1990 a case could be made for the library (this one, anyway) not being especially dependent upon them, in 2013 the workings of the library–and indeed, the world–are inexorably tangled up with computers/the internet; that is, if something happens such that we need to use the card catalog again, then we have bigger problems to worry about than which books are where–problems like how to ration gasoline, and which types of senior citizens make the best substitute for beef. What I’m wondering is if my scenario is accurate (if not necessarily in the details). ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/6 "2013-04-29T18:02:19Z")
Old _Onion_ headline: The Internet crashed yesterday, and the nation was plunged into productivity. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/7 "2013-04-29T18:34:05Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > Background: I’m a library director with some employees who don’t quite get that computers (and by extension the internet) really aren’t just a passing fad like they think Sounds like all you need are new employees. ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/8 "2013-04-29T18:35:44Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Sounds like all you need are new employees. Yeah, maybe. Not likely to happen though. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/9 "2013-04-29T18:44:53Z")
The Internet is largely an extension of a DARPA project, funded by the military to solve the issue of how to maintain command and control during a nuclear holocaust. By routing traffic through whatever computers and communication channels are available, the Internet is pretty resilient. So… it really is true that anything that can take out the Internet has so completely screwed us over that the lack of the Internet is one of our smaller problems. You can take out pieces of the Internet and make it less reliable, but getting rid of it entirely basically requires shutting down all communication methods and all computer connectivity. If the problem is convincing employees of the importance of the Internet… I’d restructure their jobs so that you can outsource it to an employee who will work remotely from India for a tenth of their salary. That should make an impression. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/10 "2013-04-29T18:49:00Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > I’m not sure what kind of event could damage the world internet for a long time Here’s an example where Egypt, the Middle East and Asia were cut off from the internet because a ship’s anchor sliced the undersea cable (actually 4 cables adjacent to each other). The [article](http://gigaom.com/2013/03/27/undersea-cable-cut-near-egypt-slows-down-internet-in-africa-middle-east-south-asia/) states > [@](#): > > It is like Groundhog Day! Once again an undersea cable has been cut Apparently, from this article, broken cables are a very common problem. There are a total of 10 cables that provide internet to that part of the world, so in this case, losing 4 was not critical–they faced huge slowdowns, but not complete loss of connection. The internet has a lot of redundancy, so the damage was limited. But if one ship can do this much damage, than imagine what could have happened in a modern-day replay of 1941. If we ever face another war the size of WW II , then it’s definitely possible to imagine a lot of ships cutting a lot of cables all at once. Even if , say, only half of the internet connections get cut, the resulting slowdowns would make it impossible to continue business as usual. Imagine if connection speeds return to the days of 28k modems and AOL dialup…Today’s economy would , if not collapse, slow down so much that it would cause something like the Depression, on a world-wide scale. We could see famine in first-world countries. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/11 "2013-04-29T19:15:34Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > a lot of people with a lot of hammers… Wrenches, not hammers. It’s a series of tubes, you use wrenches on piping. ---
**Author:** ![Blakeyrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecd19e/32.png) [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/12 "2013-04-29T23:09:30Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > Hmmm…I guess I’m asking if there are ways the internet could be taken down which wouldn’t end civilization all by themselves internet or no, e.g. big ass meteors. Nothing really? You could take out (simultaneously) the 13 root DNS servers, that would cripple the Internet for a few hours until replacements are brought online and ISPs directed to use the replacements. But DNS isn’t really “The Internet”, and that wouldn’t really affect those backing transfers or cell networks at all. It would just annoy the Facebook users of the world for a day or two. Also: their locations are secret, for exactly this reason. That leaves, basically, “brainwash well-placed technicians in every ISP on Earth with subconscious instructions to wreck the routing hardware at a pre-defined time”. That’s pretty tough to accomplish. Unless you’re Starro perhaps. The Internet is a lot more durable than people give it credit for. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/13 "2013-04-29T23:17:02Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Well, certainly the financial sector would have a hard time of it given its reliance on electronic transfers of both money and instructions about things to do with money. The telephone networks would be severely overtaxed (especially if the Big Event also takes out the mobile phone networks). There’d be runs on the banks and a lot of people would suffer. And God help you if you bought bitcoins. These days in the US the phone network and the internet are not very separate except for the last few miles getting to your house. If the internet goes down in the US the phones will not be working except possibly to make very local calls and probably not even that. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/14 "2013-04-29T23:37:43Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > The Internet is largely an extension of a DARPA project, funded by the military to solve the issue of how to maintain command and control during a nuclear holocaust. **Wrong.** [Multiple](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9798160&postcount=49) [cites.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11414378&postcount=58) ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/15 "2013-04-30T00:38:24Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > **Wrong.** [Multiple](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9798160&postcount=49) [cites.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11414378&postcount=58) Well, I’ll stand kind of corrected. Clearly the stated intent and the scope of ARPAnet was for sharing computing resources for research purposes. But, from your own cite: > [@](#): > > The potential military applications (including the potential for robust communications) were well in our minds, but they were not our primary responsibility. In fact there existed a significant Air Force program devoted to Strategic Command and Control, and related pieces of work were done under that aegis. ---
**Author:** ![Terry\_Kennedy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@Terry\_Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terry_Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/16 "2013-04-30T04:16:37Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#): > > You could take out (simultaneously) the 13 root DNS servers, that would cripple the Internet for a few hours until replacements are brought online and ISPs directed to use the replacements. Actually, there are a lot more than that. Many of them are [anycast](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast), so there are hundreds. I have an F-root a couple cabinets over, in fact. It’s one of at least 46 instances of F-root. ---
**Author:** ![Terry\_Kennedy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@Terry\_Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terry_Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/17 "2013-04-30T04:29:09Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > The Internet is largely an extension of a DARPA project, funded by the military to solve the issue of how to maintain command and control during a nuclear holocaust. As mentioned in subsequent replies, this isn’t the case. And I’ve been on ARPANET and its successors since 1974. Even when the telcos and their customers thought there was diverse routing on the 'net, there were a number of embarrassing incidents. One from the early days of commercial use on the Internet (early 90’s) was the “midwest backhoe incident” where a single fiber optic cable was found to be carrying traffic from multiple telcos for both the NSFnet and Alternet. More recently, there have been a number of accidental (and some allegedly intentional) cuts of undersea cables, cutting off or severely choking traffic to countries or even continents. In addition, it is still possible for somebody to “break [large parts of] the Internet”. This was a lot more common in the 90’s, when anybody with a router and a T1 could be an ISP and announce routes to the world. These days, almost all major providers filter routing announcements. However, it still happens but less frequently. [Here](http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2012-03/leaks.html) is a description of an incident from only a year ago. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/18 "2013-04-30T05:09:03Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > Well, I’ll stand kind of corrected. Clearly the stated intent and the scope of ARPAnet was for sharing computing resources for research purposes. > > But, from your own cite: Well, having something ‘in mind’ is not the same as the project being designed for that purpose, which is what I was responding to. > [@Terry\_Kennedy](#): > > As mentioned in subsequent replies, this isn’t the case. And I’ve been on ARPANET and its successors since 1974. > > Even when the telcos and their customers thought there was diverse routing on the 'net, there were a number of embarrassing incidents. One from the early days of commercial use on the Internet (early 90’s) was the “midwest backhoe incident” where a single fiber optic cable was found to be carrying traffic from multiple telcos for both the NSFnet and Alternet. > > More recently, there have been a number of accidental (and some allegedly intentional) cuts of undersea cables, cutting off or severely choking traffic to countries or even continents. > > In addition, it is still possible for somebody to “break [large parts of] the Internet”. This was a lot more common in the 90’s, when anybody with a router and a T1 could be an ISP and announce routes to the world. These days, almost all major providers filter routing announcements. However, it still happens but less frequently. [Here](http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2012-03/leaks.html) is a description of an incident from only a year ago. [AS 7007 NEVER FORGET!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS_7007_incident) [A NANOG post about the incident, for all the technical details.](http://merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00380.html) [Here’s a NANOG post with a little more narrative to it.](http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00444.html) (This mentions MAE-East. Yes, Virginia, there is a [MAE-West](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAE-West); why don’t you come up and see her sometime?) [Here’s a post I wrote for Hacker News a little while ago that lays the foundation for understanding this](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5321663): > [@](#): > > AS = Autonomous System, a network of one or more (usually more) computers that looks like one entity to the outside Internet. It’s ‘autonomous’ in that it can route traffic within itself without help from any outside source. The Internet is, at a high level, a collection of ASes that all pass data among each other. Every AS has a globally unique number, usually represented as AS15169 for AS number 15169. > > BGP = Border Gateway Protocol, a specific Exterior Gateway Protocol that allows ASes to figure out what other ASes are close by and to which of their neighbors they should route traffic destined for a specific IP address. This basically works by each AS advertising which groups of IP addresses (represented by prefixes) they know how to reach. A prefix is something like 10.0.0.0/24, which represents all addresses from 10.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.255; in a prefix, the number after the slash is how many bits of the IP address are fixed. In a /24, 24 bits, or three eight-bit bytes, are fixed, so the last eight bits can vary freely. Larger numbers indicate smaller blocks of addresses, unintuitively enough. For example, AS15169 advertises that it contains 173.194.0.0/16, or the range 173.194.0.0 - 173.194.255.255. Route advertisements contain cost information, which is primarily due to how long the path is; as an example, if I’m AS1 and I contain the range 10.0.0.0/24, I’ll advertise that with a very low cost. If I hear from my neighbor AS3 that she contains 192.5.0.0/16, I’ll advertise that with a higher cost, since I’ll have to hand it off to a different AS. Now, I told you that story so I could tell you this one. From Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > The AS 7007 incident was a major disruption of the Internet on April 25, 1997 that started with a router operated by autonomous system 7007 (MAI Network Services,[1] although sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Florida Internet Exchange[2]) accidentally leaking a substantial part of its entire route table to the Internet, creating a routing black hole. > > [snip] > > [R]outes leaked were deaggregated to /24 prefixes, which were more specific than the routes originally present on the Internet, and had the AS path rewritten to 7007, leading the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) used by the Internet’s routers to prefer the leaked routes. So, on April 25, 1997 a router advertised that it knew the shortest path to (Pretty Much) The Entire Internet. Other routers believed it and repeated this insane lie to more routers down the chain, until it was The Death Of The Net As We Know It. In retrospect, they probably should have seen it coming; I don’t think routers are quite as trusting these days, but [recently, it was possible for Pakistan to block a lot of the world’s access to YouTube using much the same trick.](http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/02/insecure-routing-redirects-youtube-to-pakistan/) ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/19 "2013-04-30T06:20:34Z")
> [@whc.03grady](#): > > Hmmm…I guess I’m asking if there are ways the internet could be taken down which wouldn’t end civilization all by themselves internet or no, e.g. big ass meteors. > > Background: I’m a library director with some employees who don’t quite get that computers (and by extension the internet) really aren’t just a passing fad like they think, something they have to deal with right now but which will eventually go away and they can go back to their typewriters and paper and everything’ll be like it was. Ask them whether they ever use an ATM or pay by card. Those work via the internet. I’ve met people who would refuse to believe such a thing (apparently in those people’s world the little card machine just mind talks to other little card machines or something, none of them was able to come up with a rationalization), but in general it’s been a good way to make people realize just how much of what we do every day depends on the net. ---
**Author:** ![j\_sum1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8baadc/32.png) [@j\_sum1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j_sum1)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015/20 "2013-04-30T06:44:32Z")
Ok, granted. The net is pretty resilient and anything that could take it down via hardware would render internetlessness the least of our problems. But hypothetically… suppose someone initiates some kind of viral hack that interferes with all of our communications protocols – a hack which for the sake of argument we cannot find a solution for for a number of years. HTTP, FTP, PPP and whatever other communication protocols there are do not work. The result is that computers cannot talk with one another. Any data shared between computers has to be done physically through unplugging and plugging USBs or older technologies (floppies anyone?) Nothing else changes. No meteors, earthquakes or tsunamis. Voice over phone lines still works. Radio and digital tv are untouched. So… what changes? On the scale from mild annoyance to armageddon, where does this rate? (That’s how I read the OP anyway.) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/internet-down-and-the-end-of-the-world/657015.md?page=2)