# What if all the mobile phones just stopped working **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 23, 2010, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141 "2010-08-23T10:03:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/81 "2010-08-25T16:11:20Z")
What if there were no hypothetical threads? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/82 "2010-08-25T18:00:28Z")
Okaaaay… I do hope that a good night’s sleep has helped you calm down. > [@xtisme](#): > > But I’m not saying that this WILL cause a systemic failure (which I presume is what you meant by ‘implies that the problems build beyond the sum of their individual difficulties’)…I’m saying that there will be shortages and disconnects that will last beyond your sunny couple of days assertion…or couple of weeks. I’m thinking it’s more like months or even a year or two, and that in the mean time the level of expected services will be degraded, as will the economy. It MIGHT lead to systemic failure, but I don’t know how probably that would be, since I’m not a disaster planner and have never looked at the nuts and bolts of what such an improbable event would have on society, government and business. Okay, I’d like to focus on that sentence in the middle there, where you said “or even a year or two”. Let’s ponder this a moment. What **possible** mechanism are you imagining would lead to shortages and disconnects that cannot be corrected given 18 months, high levels of attention, and awareness of prior technology? Who do you suppose is going to sit on their hands for a _year_ saying “No way, ain’t gonna use a computer instead, ain’t gonna follow last decade’s business practices, not gonna do _nothing_ until I get me a cell phone again”. Oh, I know, that’s a strawman; you actually are talking about factories still experiencing increased production, while still being plagued with constant supply problems that simple _cannot_ be corrected no matter _what_, and possibly materials shortages and possibly rains of asteroids for all I can tell. But the thing is, even if people _never_ get voip phones, every business on the planet will have found passable workarounds within a _year_. So even if the phone factories are still choking on their own vomit a year or a decade later, it’s going to matter less and less with each passing month. And in two years it won’t matter at all. “But it will be less efficient!” Well, yeah, in some cases. So? Efficiently or not, the work will get done. Or isn’t a year long enough to hire people to fill the new labor shortage? > [@xtisme](#): > > What I’ve been saying is that people will react badly, especially initially, and that critical and non-critical services will get disrupted. That’s not ‘everyone throws their hands up and burns their office buildings down and moves into cardboard boxes because it’s just impossible to schedule a meeting if you only have the entire internet to use to communicate with’, it’s ‘there will be panic, and businesses and governments will be scrambling to make adjustments and put in place stop gap measures to get over the hump’. You are portraying a hopelessly sunny and unrealistic view of such an event, and I’m trying (obviously without success) to toss in some realism to discussion. > > As I’ve already said, I don’t KNOW what all the ramifications would be…I just know it would be more of an event that a couple of days of mild annoyance while folks figure out they just need to go back to the office and user their phones. Panic is probable due to fear of a second attack, or that internal combustion will be next to go, or that whatever caused this miraculous failure will return for round two. Panic will not happen just because it now takes a little longer for some things to get done. And that’s not sunny and unrealistic; that’s simply obvious. > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, I’m one up on you then…while my stance obviously mystifies you, your own is quite understandable to me. I’ve seen it all my life from folks who make decisions about their companies and who think they know what the impact of a major network or system outage would be on their business without actually understanding either how intertwined the systems have become to their business process or the technology, or even the real risks. I’ve literally heard the exact same confident assertions from CEO’s and CFO’s, business owners and program manages, on both the government and commercial side. They confidently assert such until there is an ACTUAL failure, and then they discover that they should have paid a wee bit more attention to what the folks who understand the technology and who have looked into how dependent on the technology their business has become are telling them. Get back to me when the computers go out too. _They’re just cell phones_. Your insistence that the wheels of business can’t turn without them is _absurd_. Thought experiment: all of your company’s cell phones disappear forever. You have no other phones, so you are now all completely phoneless. How long to you think your boss will allow you to sit around doing nothing as a result? > [@xtisme](#): > > Mind, I’m not saying I have any special expertise concerning cellular systems and risk management of such systems, or disaster planning on this topic…I’m just saying I’ve heard the same things said in areas where I DO have some expertise. Would that area of expertise be computers maybe? If all the computers in the world stopped working everything would grind to a halt **quick** , and _stay_ there. Unimaginable amounts of real information would be lost. Heck, half of the _cars_ would die. Panic would reign, and persist in reigning as we tried to rebuild our paper databases from scratch. Cell phones, not so much. They are simply, obviously, not comparable. Especially given that they were simply not a factor in life at all until very very recently, and in most cases we _could_ easily go back, despite your rather baseless protests. New thought experiment: all the powered can openers in the world dissapear. Global massive failure of the powered can opening system. Being a system outage, that means that panic reigns, right? Since it would if it happened in your area of expertise. > [@xtisme](#): > > Probably not…but the ones you have will have to change the way they do things, and it’s going to put additional strains on them. And initially you MAY have to hire more before things settle out. Exactly. Yes. I agree 100%. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It would not be _fun_, and in the short term stopgaps of various kinds would have to be employed until things settle out. There wouldn’t be anybody willing to sit on their hands waiting for the settling to happen before resuming work. > [@xtisme](#): > > Now, going back to re-read what I actually wrote, you will see I was talking about the DATA systems in the police, fire and rescue vehicles. Those work on cellular. Really quickly, and without italics, a ‘radio’ is something you press a button and talk into. That’s pretty much all it does. Press. Talk. The vehicles, however, have those computer thingies in them, with all that information stuff in it. Press the radio, talk, computer just sits there doing nothing, since it can’t, you know, hear the radio. > > Now, you COULD build a radio network that would allow for the transmission of data, and give you the same capabilities that the police, fire, rescue and emergency vehicles currently have. You just can’t do it in a couple of days. I read and understood what you wrote. And they wouldn’t have all the data at their fingertips anymore, yes. I guess they’re just going to have to let all the criminals go, like they did twenty years ago. Truly the dark ages of the early nineties, where criminals ran unrestrained, fires burned out of control, and the ill and infirm died in the streets due to lack of medical care will be upon us again. > [@xtisme](#): > > You really don’t have a clue how any of this stuff works, do you? The data system used by police etc are simply ‘conveniences’ that they can ‘do without’…and the dispatchers are going to simply be able to pick up the slack? In a couple of days? Seriously? 😛 You bet your ass. Or more accurately, they will simply do without having that much detailed information for a while. They’ll have to find some cops around who’ve been on the force for, oh, say ten years to teach them the esoteric art of writing a speeding ticket by _hand_ again. > [@xtisme](#): > > You would need to hire people to do all the manual stuff that is done currently using cell phones. See, if you now require me to be parked in front of a phone, I can’t do the other stuff I WAS doing when I was free to move about because you could contact me via cell phone. > > \ > > As I pointed out earlier (in another post you obviously didn’t read), our system automatically monitors the network and alerts us (via…CELL PHONE AND PAGER) when there are network problems and issues. So, while I’m over at one facility working an issue I can get a text message an page about an outage somewhere else. Sadly, with no cell phone or pager I won’t be able to get that message, which means you need another one of me waiting by a ‘Land. Line.’ to get that trouble call…or, you have to accept that your service is going to be degraded, since I won’t be able to respond (or even know about) to a problem until I can call to check in or go back to my nice little office where my ‘Land. Line.’ will be there for my use. So, if you _had_ a pager, your clone would split off from you and go work on the other issue? You are truly talented. Now, admittedly, you will be spending a little more time driving, because you have to go to point B to check your messages first rather than going straight from A to C. On the degraded-service scale of 1 to 10, where would you rate that? I suppose it could be a lot of wasted time if all your work sites are clustered really close together, really far from the office. (And, pagers are down too? I was silent about the cop computers, but don’t pagers _predate_ cell phones?) > [@xtisme](#): > > Now, you might be thinking that, in the whole wide world only XT and his misfit organization operates in this crazy manner, so only we will be effected. Let me assure you that this is not the case, and in fact we aren’t even on the cutting edge of this technology…some organizations are even MORE dependent on this technology than we are! And fairly shortly WE will be more dependent, since we are thinking about shifting to more 3G/4G networking as well (plus getting those evil iPad thingies for everyone, so that we won’t need to connect laptops to local building networks work problems in the system). Oh, I think that a reasonable number of companies would be effected _that_ much. Just like a lot of people own powered can openers. (Handy things, powered can openers). I just think, or rather _know_ that you’re overstating the comparative difficulty of life with, and life without, cell phones. Sure, cell phones streamline things some; that’s why most people find them to be convenient. But losing them would not exactly drive us back to the hunter/gatherer level. > [@xtisme](#): > > Retool their business processes…such as my wasted demonstration above. On the physical side, companies who manufacture components for cell phones also manufacture components for other devices…and software developers do the same sorts of things. If cell phones all went down, then the companies who are directly and indirectly involved are going to also go down, and that could and probably will disrupt production of companies who manufacture VoIP phones or other land line systems. Good look thinking up a business practice retool that would actually be problematic to implement. _Especially_ if we don’t presume a multi-month inability to get alternate hardware. And wouldn’t the increase in demand for one part compensate for the decrease in demand for the other? Sure, they would initially be unable to properly allocate their resources, but at least they can sell some of their things hand-over-fist in the meantime. > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, why didn’t you just say so…I mean, if it’s been noted and all, why are we still discussing this? First round is on you, right?? It’s a message board. We discuss. It’s what we do. And if you want to “win” some “rounds”, try making some arguments that don’t sound like fatalistic and highly hyperbolic guesses that require one to ignore known realities. (Like, that during the 80s several dozen businesses were still able to function and -gasp!- make a profit! _Despite_ their technicians having to come back to the office between unscheduled jobs.) > [@xtisme](#): > > They can’t get the information they need, obviously. So, when they pull someone over, instead of going into the system to check them out, they have to call dispatch to have them look it up. No worries, right? It happens now when the system is interrupted. Trouble is, now EVERY cop, fire fighter, emergency rescue/response type is going to be calling into dispatch to get all that information they were getting directly into their vehicles. What did they do twenty years ago? > [@xtisme](#): > > If you can’t see that this would be a problem, or that the problems would be the silly ones you posted here, then I don’t know what to tell you…it’s not reality based. And, the funny thing is…the US is behind on really using this technology. Other countries are MUCH more heavily dependent on it because they are using it more efficiently and effectively, have integrated it more tightly with their process, and have been doing so for longer. We’d have a serious problem…some other countries (like Japan) it might be a disaster. I can see that most or all of the the problems that _you_ are posting here are silly and/or completely overblown. We in the US _would_ have an advantage over areas where they never had civilized society prior to cell phones, or where the infrastructre that those processes relied on has degraded more severely. After all, Japan was, like, _feudal_ way back in the eighties, right? > [@xtisme](#): > > Again, I know you don’t get that this technology is used as extensively as it is. I get that…you think it’s a toy or a convenience, not vital. But the reality is that it’s a toy, a convenience AND it’s a vital tool that organizations have become dependent on. Even the toy and convenience angels would have a large impact on those of us who actually have and use cell phones in our personal lives…but it would have a much greater impact on organizations that use this technology extensively. Vital? If your thesis were true, then none of the companies, organizations, services, or governments you speak of could have **existed** 15 years ago, because they would have lacked this _vital_ tool for their survival. > [@xtisme](#): > > No…I think that people will HAVE to change their behavior, or else it would all fall apart. Also, I can think of ways around using cellular systems (assuming that, magically everything else works BUT cellular networks and systems). It will take time, however, to have people adjust, to have businesses adjust, to retool their processes and SOPs, probably to change their staffing levels, to get over the financial hit everyone would take, to work through all the other problems and issues, and then to get back on track. Time. Or, IOW, more than a week or two. And it will take even more time for people to adjust to the new reality, to go back to being tied to a land line telephone, to not being able to go out and golf or go to dinner or a movie or vacation, or to sending people into the field and being able to reach them and redirect them in transit, or while on a job somewhere, etc etc. Your simplistic ‘well, they just won’t be able to golf’ thingy isn’t even a good parody of all the things it will impact in peoples lives or organizations processes. Of course they’d have to change their behavior- this has never been dispute. (Though companies that take a month to do so will, rightly, suffer much more horribly than the part of the market that is able to adjust to obvious realities.) This “more than a week or two” of yours? That’s completely of rectal origin, isn’t it? Possibly based on a misapplied awareness of the fact that computers going out would be a staggering change, and then translating that to cell phones and can openers. But completely rectal nonetheless. As long as we’re going to be making a policy of pointing such things out. > [@TriPolar](#): > > What if there were no hypothetical threads? We would all die in a matter of days. _Horribly_. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/83 "2010-08-25T20:01:46Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] Okaaaay… I do hope that a good night’s sleep has helped you calm down. [/QUOTE] Well, they say hope springs eternal. Sadly, as a chronic insomniac, good night’s sleep are a rarity with me. > [@](#): > > What _possible_ mechanism are you imagining would lead to shortages and disconnects that cannot be corrected given 18 months, high levels of attention, and awareness of prior technology? Today, it can take any where from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to purchase certain pieces of network equipment…like the switch I described from CISCO. And that’s today, without everyone scrambling to build infrastructure that isn’t necessary due to everyone on earth trying to buy the same stuff in order to build services they currently don’t have or need because they use cell phones for them instead. And that’s just one thing. Handsets would be another thing that I imagine will be in short supply as everyone scrambles to purchase what they need from a limited supply due to no one anticipating the demand if there suddenly and unexpectedly cell phones didn’t work. Couple that with the fact that unless there is a clear indication that cell phones will not ever work again there is going to be a period where people try to MAKE them continue to work, and I can see the reality stretching out to 18 months or more. Even if you put a high priority on building new switches and hand sets, and even assuming that all the companies who build the things will be ramping up production to the full extend they can, you can’t just throw a switch and get more stuff instantly…it takes time to ramp up production, and in a lot of cases that would mean building new manufacturing plants. You can’t do that in a couple of weeks, ehe? > [@](#): > > Oh, I know, that’s a strawman; you actually are talking about factories still experiencing increased production, while still being plagued with constant supply problems that simple cannot be corrected no matter what, and possibly materials shortages and possibly rains of asteroids for all I can tell. Actually, no…that one wasn’t a strawman. I’m not trying to confuse you, but you really don’t seem to be getting what I’m saying. > [@](#): > > But the thing is, even if people _never_ get voip phones, every business on the planet will have found passable workarounds within a year. Maybe they will and maybe not. I’d say that a lot of companies will have workarounds in that time frame, but not every business. The scale of the problem is too great…we are talking about a failure of a system on a world wide scale after all. > [@](#): > > “But it will be less efficient!” Well, yeah, in some cases. So? Efficiently or not, the work will get done. Or isn’t a year long enough to hire people to fill the new labor shortage? But ‘less efficient’ will mean stuff will cost more. That would be on top of the fiscal strains you already acknowledged. If the cost of some good or service goes up by X amount, that will impact OTHER industries, and could cause them to also have to raise their prices. It could cause delays in procurement, could cause delays in supply, and that could further have other impacts. > [@](#): > > Panic is probable due to fear of a second attack, or that internal combustion will be next to go, or that whatever caused this miraculous failure will return for round two. Panic will not happen just because it now takes a little longer for some things to get done. And that’s not sunny and unrealistic; that’s simply obvious. People panicked twice simply due to a broadcast of Orson Well’s War of the Worlds on radio…one of those times was in the 60’s, decades after the book had been released and decades after the first panic. > [@](#): > > Your insistence that the wheels of business can’t turn without them is absurd. So speaks the man who doesn’t really use one either for personal or business reasons. Besides, this IS a strawman…I didn’t say the wheels of business can’t turn without cell phones. Again, you really don’t seem to be following what I’m actually saying in this thread. > [@](#): > > Thought experiment: all of your company’s cell phones disappear forever. You have no other phones, so you are now all completely phoneless. How long to you think your boss will allow you to sit around doing nothing as a result? Well, leaving aside the fact that I never said anything about sitting around and doing nothing, I’d say that if that happened there would be no way we could support our customers. How would they contact us to be able to tell us they were having problems? Carrier pigeon? Send runners? Have someone drive over? If we have no phones we have no business, if by ‘we’ you mean everyone in the world. That WOULD be catastrophic, no other way around that, and despite that we’ve only relied on phones for a ‘mere’ half century plus. What’s your answer to this question btw? How would my business be able to work without any phones at all, and how does this relate to the OP? > [@](#): > > Would that area of expertise be computers maybe? I’m an IT Network Engineer, FWIW. That’s not exactly ‘computers’, though most people seem to assume it is. If it helps, I’m an infrastructure engineer…my job is to design, build and troubleshoot networks, including ‘land line’ and various forms of wireless systems (not including 3G/4G type networks, at least not yet…we are looking into possibly building one next year for the country, assuming we can get some grants and federal funding for the project). > [@](#): > > New thought experiment: all the powered can openers in the world dissapear. Global massive failure of the powered can opening system. Being a system outage, that means that panic reigns, right? Since it would if it happened in your area of expertise. I’d say that if there were no can openers working in the entire world it WOULD cause quite a bit of disruption and probably some panic as well. For one thing, how would I get my dinner tonight?? 😛 For another, anything that happens like this would be VERY strange, and that’s going to cause some level of panic regardless. Of course, since it’s only POWERED electric can openers, I’d say that most people still have the manual kind around the house somewhere (I actually don’t even HAVE an electric can opener, nor do most of the people I know), but I guess someone who completely relies on them would have to go out and buy a new one. If the number of folks who don’t have a single manual can opener in their house is greater than the supply or short term manufacturing capabilities of the companies who make the things then there will be supply and demand issues, and that could lead to manufacturing issues. And that’s just for a freaking can opener. Cell phones are quite a bit higher on the food chain of necessity for most people in the world than electric can openers are but, I believe, any rational metric. > [@](#): > > Exactly. Yes. I agree 100%. You’ve hit the nail on the head. It would not be fun, and in the short term stopgaps of various kinds would have to be employed until things settle out. Then we are in full agreement! You are buying, right? > [@](#): > > There wouldn’t be anybody willing to sit on their hands waiting for the settling to happen before resuming work. And I never said they would be sitting on their hands and waiting for things to settle out. > [@](#): > > I read and understood what you wrote. And they wouldn’t have all the data at their fingertips anymore, yes. And you don’t see how that would be a problem, I assume. > [@](#): > > I guess they’re just going to have to let all the criminals go, like they did twenty years ago. Truly the dark ages of the early nineties, where criminals ran unrestrained, fires burned out of control, and the ill and infirm died in the streets due to lack of medical care will be upon us again. Truly a dizzying intellect. > [@](#): > > You bet your ass. Good thing I would have won the bet then, ehe? I’ve got a lot of ass to lose… > [@](#): > > Or more accurately, they will simply do without having that much detailed information for a while. They’ll have to find some cops around who’ve been on the force for, oh, say ten years to teach them the esoteric art of writing a speeding ticket by hand again. They still write the speeding tickets out by hand my friend…that wouldn’t be the issue. That you think this is the issue sort of underscores the entire discussion, especially since I took the time to give real examples of the disruptions and what it would entail to ‘fix’ them in the short term. > [@](#): > > So, if you _had_ a pager, your clone would split off from you and go work on the other issue? You are truly talented. Telnet, terminal services, VPN and RDP is your friend. Not to mention those web interface thingies… > [@](#): > > Now, admittedly, you will be spending a little more time driving, because you have to go to point B to check your messages first rather than going straight from A to C. On the degraded-service scale of 1 to 10, where would you rate that? I suppose it could be a lot of wasted time if all your work sites are clustered really close together, really far from the office. And if something changes when I’m en route from A to B that necessitates I go to D (in the opposite direction from C), then it will take even more time. So, depending on what our SLA is with a given customer we might either have to offer less service or hire a couple more of me to be able to deal with the situation. No worries…except that we are talking about EVERY company and organization on a world wide scale, not just XT and company in one little organization. > [@](#): > > (And, pagers are down too? I was silent about the cop computers, but don’t pagers predate cell phones?) Pagers use the same cellular networks man, at least all the ones I know about do these days. Yes, they predate cell phones, but, you see, the world has moved on, and companies who provide pager services don’t keep separate networks for paging and cell phones. They are all, what’s that word…um, integrated. Thingy. > [@](#): > > It’s a message board. We discuss. It’s what we do. > > And if you want to “win” some “rounds”, try making some arguments that don’t sound like fatalistic and highly hyperbolic guesses that require one to ignore known realities. (Like, that during the 80s several dozen businesses were still able to function and -gasp!- make a profit! Despite their technicians having to come back to the office between unscheduled jobs.) No…I was trying to be funny. Like my explanations of stuff in this thread, my humor is also not finding exactly fertile ground here. I seriously don’t know how to get through to you (or really anyone…I’m afraid maybe no one is following me in this thread at all, sadly). I don’t want to just keep repeating the same stuff over and over again, but your ‘(Like, that during the 80s several dozen businesses were still able to function and -gasp!- make a profit! Despite their technicians having to come back to the office between unscheduled jobs.)’ indicates to me, even leaving aside the possible tongue in cheek factor, that you really aren’t following what I’m saying. > [@](#): > > What did they do twenty years ago? The police? They had large dispatch staffs who had computers and looks up the information requested then radioed that information back to the police, fire or rescue departments. More broadly, they had messaging services to call people (staffed by lots of people), they had large dispatch and receptionist type staffs…and, of course, they had pagers 20 years ago. Better to ask what they did before pagers came into wide spread use. The answer is the same, however…there are whole categories of jobs that have been mostly or completely eliminated today that existed then, just as there are whole categories of jobs that exist today that didn’t then. And, with this sudden change, there would be whole categories of jobs that would be eliminated due to this event with millions displaced and out of work, and those old job categories would have to be recreated and restaffed. I don’t know about you, but I’d be seriously bummed to go from a job category today to out of work to having to become a receptionist or dispatch operator or a manual paging/messaging service operator. That would seriously suck. Anyway, going to leave it at that for now as I have a meeting to run too. If I missed any specific question or response you were looking for let me know…just point to the paragraph I missed (I know I didn’t cover everything you wrote…sorry about that). -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2010, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/84 "2010-08-25T21:26:25Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Well, they say hope springs eternal. Sadly, as a chronic insomniac, good night’s sleep are a rarity with me. Having to use a cell phone _and_ having insomnia? Man, your life sucks! (Where’s the only-half-serious smiley?) > [@xtisme](#): > > Today, it can take any where from a couple of weeks to a couple of months to purchase certain pieces of network equipment…like the switch I described from CISCO. And that’s today, without everyone scrambling to build infrastructure that isn’t necessary due to everyone on earth trying to buy the same stuff in order to build services they currently don’t have or need because they use cell phones for them instead. And that’s just one thing. Handsets would be another thing that I imagine will be in short supply as everyone scrambles to purchase what they need from a limited supply due to no one anticipating the demand if there suddenly and unexpectedly cell phones didn’t work. > > Couple that with the fact that unless there is a clear indication that cell phones will not ever work again there is going to be a period where people try to MAKE them continue to work, and I can see the reality stretching out to 18 months or more. Even if you put a high priority on building new switches and hand sets, and even assuming that all the companies who build the things will be ramping up production to the full extend they can, you can’t just throw a switch and get more stuff instantly…it takes time to ramp up production, and in a lot of cases that would mean building new manufacturing plants. You can’t do that in a couple of weeks, ehe? And you **entirely** missed my point. Which was, all infrastructure issues aside, all hardware issues aside, all hope-springing-eternal-that-the-problem-will-be-fixed aside, Every business, including yours, will have completely decoupled their operations from cell phones in _well_ under a year. I am both completely serious and completely certain of this - a _year_ is an inconceivably long time for a business to be nonfunctional over this. They _will_ implement solutions that are by and large workable, and after a _year_ they will have either gotten completely used to these stopgaps, or will have even better workarounds in the works. (Possibly dependent on when the reconstruction of the factories after the meteor shower finishes.) After a year, if the factories _still_ aren’t producing to spec the gotta-have-it-now demand will have dropped to what they _can_ supply. > [@xtisme](#): > > Maybe they will and maybe not. I’d say that a lot of companies will have workarounds in that time frame, but not every business. The scale of the problem is too great…we are talking about a failure of a system on a world wide scale after all. So what? Perhaps you’re used to working with systems that are heavily dependent on other parts being fixed first and which can only be repaired in an incremental manner, but I don’t see what part of the cell phone crisis fits this paradigm. To my mind there are precisely two levels here: hardware suppliers (as a class), and their customers the businesses. As you point out (with implausible pessimism), interrelated snarls amongst the hardware manufacturers could in theory keep cascading until the entire planet bursts entirely into flames. Sure, fair enough. But the businesses are _not_ going to wait around for them. Nor are they going to wait for each other. Contracts are still in effect; obligations must be met, and while you might be able to beg for a few days’ extension on account of not having phones, that excuse is going to start getting pretty stale in six _months_. Or even six weeks. So nobody is going to wait one moment before trying to find workarounds - including workarounds for the fact that phone hardware is backordered through the year 2491. So this worldwide scale problem of everyone taking two weeks to find workarounds? They’ll all be doing is simultaneously. Which means that the whole world is done, by and large and with a smattering of exceptions, within that two weeks. Because otherwise their competitor who _did_ find a workaround will steal their business out from under them. So I am seriously not seeing even the _possibility_ of a cascade problem among the businesses. Cascading problems among the supplies seem possible, if not as likely as you seem to be assuming, but cascades among the businesses figuring out a way to work without phones seem _impossible_. > [@xtisme](#): > > But ‘less efficient’ will mean stuff will cost more. That would be on top of the fiscal strains you already acknowledged. If the cost of some good or service goes up by X amount, that will impact OTHER industries, and could cause them to also have to raise their prices. It could cause delays in procurement, could cause delays in supply, and that could further have other impacts. Yeah, but these effects will be spread out over months as the issues ripple out through the supply chain and economy, rather than being one titanic shock. (That is, it will _actually_ cascade.) And the consumers will be the ones who end up sucking it up in any case, likely without cataclysmic effects. Especially if large numbers of people are hired to make up for cell phones in one role or another. > [@xtisme](#): > > People panicked twice simply due to a broadcast of Orson Well’s War of the Worlds on radio…one of those times was in the 60’s, decades after the book had been released and decades after the first panic. Right - I concede pandemonium; but the panic won’t have anything do to with the fact that they now have to wait an extra hour before their cable internet comes back on. It’ll be because **THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END THE MARTIANS ARE COMING TO RAPE OUR KITTENS GARBLEGARRRGHBLEGAH!!** > [@xtisme](#): > > So speaks the man who doesn’t really use one either for personal or business reasons. Besides, this IS a strawman…I didn’t say the wheels of business can’t turn without cell phones. Again, you really don’t seem to be following what I’m actually saying in this thread. You seem to be saying that there will be widespread separate occurences of minor delays and inconsistencies **which will manage to cascade and snowball to a disaster of titanic proportions annihilting the business world and all social services services crippling society as we know it beyond everyone’s ability to repair with _years_ of effort.** Is that close? > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, leaving aside the fact that I never said anything about sitting around and doing nothing, I’d say that if that happened there would be no way we could support our customers. How would they contact us to be able to tell us they were having problems? Carrier pigeon? Send runners? Have someone drive over? If we have no phones we have no business, if by ‘we’ you mean everyone in the world. That WOULD be catastrophic, no other way around that, and despite that we’ve only relied on phones for a ‘mere’ half century plus. > > What’s your answer to this question btw? How would my business be able to work without any phones at all, and how does this relate to the OP? COMPUTERS. Any of you lot ever heard of e-mail? I guarantee that a respectable percentage of “everyone in the world” has. Or two cans and a string, whichever you prefer. > [@xtisme](#): > > I’m an IT Network Engineer, FWIW. That’s not exactly ‘computers’, though most people seem to assume it is. If it helps, I’m an infrastructure engineer…my job is to design, build and troubleshoot networks, including ‘land line’ and various forms of wireless systems (not including 3G/4G type networks, at least not yet…we are looking into possibly building one next year for the country, assuming we can get some grants and federal funding for the project). Not all wireless systems are cell phones. You might try not fighting the hypothetical. > [@xtisme](#): > > I’d say that if there were no can openers working in the entire world it WOULD cause quite a bit of disruption and probably some panic as well. For one thing, how would I get my dinner tonight?? 😛 For another, anything that happens like this would be VERY strange, and that’s going to cause some level of panic regardless. Of course, since it’s only POWERED electric can openers, I’d say that most people still have the manual kind around the house somewhere (I actually don’t even HAVE an electric can opener, nor do most of the people I know), but I guess someone who completely relies on them would have to go out and buy a new one. If the number of folks who don’t have a single manual can opener in their house is greater than the supply or short term manufacturing capabilities of the companies who make the things then there will be supply and demand issues, and that could lead to manufacturing issues. > > And that’s just for a freaking can opener. Cell phones are quite a bit higher on the food chain of necessity for most people in the world than electric can openers are but, I believe, any rational metric. You heard it here folks: the mere loss of freaking electronic can openers would lead to efficiency issues and manufacturing issues that would doubtlessly bring our world to its knees, presumably through a cascading effect. Before you call that hyperbole, keep in mind that that as best I can tell is your argument for cell phones. Which are, IMHO, a lot closer to can openers than they are to computers with regard to the business worlds’ ability to function without them, mainly to due to the fact that computer actaully _have_ become critical, trapping our vital information in their digital bowels. > [@xtisme](#): > > They still write the speeding tickets out by hand my friend…that wouldn’t be the issue. That you think this is the issue sort of underscores the entire discussion, especially since I took the time to give real examples of the disruptions and what it would entail to ‘fix’ them in the short term. Issues that as best I can tell have nothing to do with actual cell phones, I’ll note, as I’m tired of fighting the hypothetical. The only problems in this thread that have to do with actual cell phones _have_ been trivial. It seems the actuall issue under discussion is not the issue. > [@xtisme](#): > > Telnet, terminal services, VPN and RDP is your friend. Not to mention those web interface thingies… So have your systems send you an _email_ when there’s a problem. Oh look, the **entire** problem is solved, and the only time cell phones are even _slightly_ missed is if a problem occurs while you’re en-route. > [@xtisme](#): > > And if something changes when I’m en route from A to B that necessitates I go to D (in the opposite direction from C), then it will take even more time. So, depending on what our SLA is with a given customer we might either have to offer less service or hire a couple more of me to be able to deal with the situation. No worries…except that we are talking about EVERY company and organization on a world wide scale, not just XT and company in one little organization. What happened to telnet, terminal services, VPN and RDP? Just fix D from C. Or is there some way in which you _didn’t_ just defeat your own point? Let’s just assume I’m having a hard time reading your plain english, because from where I’m sitting it doesn’t sound like cell phones are _near_ as helpful to you as you think they are. Which is a statement that (using your own hyperbole) can be said for EVERY company and organization on a world wide scale. > [@xtisme](#): > > Pagers use the same cellular networks man, at least all the ones I know about do these days. Yes, they predate cell phones, but, you see, the world has moved on, and companies who provide pager services don’t keep separate networks for paging and cell phones. They are all, what’s that word…um, integrated. Thingy. You and the hypothetical should just make peace, because I’m tired of watching you fight. I now hereby declare that the cell phones were broken by **magic**. (Which honestly is pretty much what it would take to take them out permanently anyway.) All things cell phone no longer work. Everything else does. If you think you have something that straddles the definitional line, take it up with the Wizard that Did It. > [@xtisme](#): > > No…I was trying to be funny. Like my explanations of stuff in this thread, my humor is also not finding exactly fertile ground here. > > I seriously don’t know how to get through to you (or really anyone…I’m afraid maybe no one is following me in this thread at all, sadly). I don’t want to just keep repeating the same stuff over and over again, but your ‘(Like, that during the 80s several dozen businesses were still able to function and -gasp!- make a profit! Despite their technicians having to come back to the office between unscheduled jobs.)’ indicates to me, even leaving aside the possible tongue in cheek factor, that you really aren’t following what I’m saying. Here’s the part I’m missing: where you give examples of problems that are _not_ as trivial as having to come back to the office, or return to your phone, or turn on your frikking computer. Your position is based on titanic levels of cascading and ballooning problems that will supposedly plague businesses, social services, and governement, but you don’t seem to be _delivering_ on these problems. I feel liky a porcupine in a balloon factory taking the air out of your examples. Unless you can persuasively demonstrate that there will not only be inconveniences, but they will also _inevitably_ add up to something, and will _not_ have trivial workarounds (like checking your email), then you haven’t made a persuasive case. Which is why I’m not convinced. And no matter how many times you point out the molehills that’s not going to change; you have to make them into mountains somehow. > [@xtisme](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > What did they do twenty years ago? > > The police? They had large dispatch staffs who had computers and looks up the information requested then radioed that information back to the police, fire or rescue departments. > > More broadly, they had messaging services to call people (staffed by lots of people), they had large dispatch and receptionist type staffs…and, of course, they had pagers 20 years ago. Better to ask what they did before pagers came into wide spread use. The answer is the same, however…there are whole categories of jobs that have been mostly or completely eliminated today that existed then, just as there are whole categories of jobs that exist today that didn’t then. And, with this sudden change, there would be whole categories of jobs that would be eliminated due to this event with millions displaced and out of work, and those old job categories would have to be recreated and restaffed. I don’t know about you, but I’d be seriously bummed to go from a job category today to out of work to having to become a receptionist or dispatch operator or a manual paging/messaging service operator. That would seriously suck. The Wizard just gave them their computers back. Now what? > [@xtisme](#): > > Anyway, going to leave it at that for now as I have a meeting to run too. If I missed any specific question or response you were looking for let me know…just point to the paragraph I missed (I know I didn’t cover everything you wrote…sorry about that). No worries. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/85 "2010-08-26T15:02:34Z")
Ok…I think this will be my last post, as from what I can tell I’ve answered all these questions already and I hate going around and around over the same ground. [QUOTE=begbert2] And you entirely missed my point. Which was, all infrastructure issues aside, all hardware issues aside, all hope-springing-eternal-that-the-problem-will-be-fixed aside, Every business, including yours, will have completely decoupled their operations from cell phones in well under a year. I am both completely serious and completely certain of this - a year is an inconceivably long time for a business to be nonfunctional over this. They _will_ implement solutions that are by and large workable, and after a year they will have either gotten completely used to these stopgaps, or will have even better workarounds in the works. (Possibly dependent on when the reconstruction of the factories after the meteor shower finishes.) After a year, if the factories still aren’t producing to spec the gotta-have-it-now demand will have dropped to what they can supply. [/QUOTE] I got the point that you BELIEVE this to be true. I disagree for the reasons I’ve specified. > [@](#): > > So what? Scale is the key. If you have a shortage of something in a region, it’s different than a shortage in an entire nation, which is different than shortages that span an entire world. > [@](#): > > Perhaps you’re used to working with systems that are heavily dependent on other parts being fixed first and which can only be repaired in an incremental manner, but I don’t see what part of the cell phone crisis fits this paradigm. No…I’m used to working in a system where we don’t keep spares on hand because we have contracts with the vendors to repair our equipment with a 4 hour response. So, if a switch breaks, we get a new switch in 4 hours and are back up. To procure a new switch or router today takes anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month…or two in some cases. How would this stay the same or get better if there was MORE demand for the same switch we are trying to buy? > [@](#): > > So this worldwide scale problem of everyone taking two weeks to find workarounds? They’ll all be doing is simultaneously. Which means that the whole world is done, by and large and with a smattering of exceptions, within that two weeks. Because otherwise their competitor who did find a workaround will steal their business out from under them. It takes us more than 2 weeks to get the equipment you are talking about TODAY…how would we get it in the same period if every single government agency and business were also trying to get the same equipment? There are only so many vendors of the stuff needed, only so many technicians to install and configure it, and they are going to be hampered by the fact that they can’t call in the way they have been trained, but instead have to use a clunky work around of stopping constantly and calling back to the office (which will have to staff up their call centers and receptionists)? > [@](#): > > So I am seriously not seeing even the possibility of a cascade problem among the businesses. Cascading problems among the supplies seem possible, if not as likely as you seem to be assuming, but cascades among the businesses figuring out a way to work without phones seem impossible. I know you aren’t seeing it, but based on your responses in this thread it’s clear (to me anyway) that you really don’t understand either the technology, how it’s actually used, or the issues involved in changing over systems on this scale, let alone the changes in SOP and process flow that it would entail. > [@](#): > > Yeah, but these effects will be spread out over months as the issues ripple out through the supply chain and economy, rather than being one titanic shock. (That is, it will actually cascade.) And the consumers will be the ones who end up sucking it up in any case, likely without cataclysmic effects. Especially if large numbers of people are hired to make up for cell phones in one role or another. I agree that consumers will be paying more for less, but I think you are vastly under rating the effects. > [@](#): > > Right - I concede pandemonium; but the panic won’t have anything do to with the fact that they now have to wait an extra hour before their cable internet comes back on. It’ll be because THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END THE MARTIANS ARE COMING TO RAPE OUR KITTENS GARBLEGARRRGHBLEGAH!! It doesn’t matter what the exact cause of the panic is. If people think it’s because of a terrorist attack, mutant space bats or gods will is really irrelevant…the point is that some non-zero percentage of them will panic. Also, some will be in denial, especially some companies, who will spend their efforts trying to make it work before finally giving up. I can’t even begin to calculate how far the stock market will drop over something like this, but that will ALSO cause a panic, as a hell of a lot of people and companies lose a hell of a lot of money, and as companies wink out like fire flies. Even leaving aside the other stuff I’ve tried to explain about how you can’t make changes like this in a week, that alone is going to have deep consequences for companies and people to just get back up on their feet and start working smoothly again. > [@](#): > > You seem to be saying that there will be widespread separate occurences of minor delays and inconsistencies which will manage to cascade and snowball to a disaster of titanic proportions annihilting the business world and all social services services crippling society as we know it beyond everyone’s ability to repair with years of effort. Um…no. I’m not saying it WILL be a ‘disaster of titanic proportions’, or that this will inevitably annihilate the business world. I’m saying that we will take a much bigger hit than you are acknowledging, and that it’s going to take a bit longer than a couple of weeks or a month to fix the problems. > [@](#): > > Is that close? Well, it COULD happen, but I wasn’t focusing on the worst case in most of what I’ve written in this thread. I just don’t think you are looking at this realistically…but then, I don’t think you have the background TOO look at this realistically, based on what you’ve said thus far in the thread. > [@](#): > > COMPUTERS. Any of you lot ever heard of e-mail? I guarantee that a respectable percentage of “everyone in the world” has. You know, I HAVE heard of that email stuff! You are right, that will save the day! Well…except that in order to use it I’d need to connect to a network that’s still working. See, I get my email on my phone right now. I do have a laptop (and an iPad), but if I have to swing by a StarBucks every few miles to catch up on my email it’s going to be sort of a problem. I can check it when I’m at the office (which I would and do), and I can check it at some of my customers sites as well (which I also do), but I fail to see how this is going to save the day for everyone. > [@](#): > > Not all wireless systems are cell phones. You might try not fighting the hypothetical. You don’t say? Really? Not all wireless systems are cell phones? Wow…that’s news to me! 😛 I seriously don’t see the point of this paragraph. First off, this is one of those ‘don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs’ things…I’m a freaking network engineer. I’m well aware that not all wireless systems are cell phones, since, you know, I work with this stuff literally every day. Secondly, the paragraph you quoted to me is simply you asking me off handed what my expertise is, and me telling you. IOW, I never made a statement that all wireless systems are cellular for you to respond as you have. > [@](#): > > Before you call that hyperbole, keep in mind that that as best I can tell is your argument for cell phones. Which are, IMHO, a lot closer to can openers than they are to computers with regard to the business worlds’ ability to function without them, mainly to due to the fact that computer actaully have become critical, trapping our vital information in their digital bowels. 😛 That you seriously put cell phones in the category of electric can openers wrt their impact on society is pretty funny. That you continue to make the distinction between cell phones, which you seem are only used for calling, and computers which you acknowledge as being critical shows the disconnect between your concept of how business and the government uses cell phones today and the reality of what their real function is. > [@](#): > > Issues that as best I can tell have nothing to do with actual cell phones, I’ll note, as I’m tired of fighting the hypothetical. The only problems in this thread that have to do with actual cell phones have been trivial. It seems the actuall issue under discussion is not the issue. No, the REAL problem is that you seriously have no idea of how the technology is actually being used, or what all cellular NETWORKS do for us. You are laboring under the misapprehension that cell phones are used merely to make calls (with some vague idea that people do that nasty texting stuff too). As I’ve tried to point out to you, we use cellular networks to provide data police, fire and rescue vehicles. This isn’t a hypothetical, I’m not fighting it…it’s reality and you don’t UNDERSTAND it. > [@](#): > > So have your systems send you an email when there’s a problem. Oh look, the entire problem is solved, and the only time cell phones are even slightly missed is if a problem occurs while you’re en-route. So, email is going to solve all my problems! :smack: Wow, thanks for the tip! If you have a few minutes, maybe you could solve the little problem the particle physicists are having finding the Higgs Boson? And then you could tackle Fusion this after noon, plus the government needs a solution to the current economic mess they are in. After lunch you could probably knock out the rest of the worlds problems, since you have such an intuitive grasp of things you know nothing about! > [@](#): > > What happened to telnet, terminal services, VPN and RDP? Just fix D from C. Or is there some way in which you didn’t just defeat your own point? So, what you are saying is that you want me to reconfigure or change a customers firewall to allow me to do this stuff from their cite…and you want me to work on another customers problems while I’m on-site fixing the problem of the first customer? BTW, if I could just use VPN, telnet and RDP to fix all the problems I probably wouldn’t need to be DRIVING somewhere, no? Look…in a way you are right here. I can and do use remote access to find information. And, while I use my smart phone to do much of that today, I COULD do a lot of it from a remote network connection. And the customers would probably have to go along, since the new reality would be impacting them, and if they want assistance they would have to open up their security a bit more to accommodate them. But it’s not going to be something that happens over night. It’s still going to take time > [@](#): > > You and the hypothetical should just make peace, because I’m tired of watching you fight. I now hereby declare that the cell phones were broken by magic. (Which honestly is pretty much what it would take to take them out permanently anyway.) All things cell phone no longer work. Everything else does. If you think you have something that straddles the definitional line, take it up with the Wizard that Did It. The the entire discussion is beyond ridiculous. If ONLY the phones break then what’s to stop someone from continuing to use the networks? If a pager can use the network, then why couldn’t a cell phone or an air card? You simply can’t reasonably break JUST the phones and leave everything else working. Even saying that JUST the cellular network (and no OTHER wireless or even wired communications networks) is broken is a huge stretch. If you want to say that only phones stop working and nothing else, if you think THAT is reasonable, then we go beyond fantasy into the realm of the absurd. If that’s what you want to stay focused on then have at it…I will leave the uninformed to discuss the absurd. > [@](#): > > Here’s the part I’m missing: where you give examples of problems that are not as trivial as having to come back to the office, or return to your phone, or turn on your frikking computer. Your position is based on titanic levels of cascading and ballooning problems that will supposedly plague businesses, social services, and governement, but you don’t seem to be delivering on these problems. I feel liky a porcupine in a balloon factory taking the air out of your examples. And I feel like a guy trying to beat his head against a wall of uninformed assumption and plain ignorance. > [@](#): > > Unless you can persuasively demonstrate that there will not only be inconveniences, but they will also inevitably add up to something, and will not have trivial workarounds (like checking your email), then you haven’t made a persuasive case. Which is why I’m not convinced. And no matter how many times you point out the molehills that’s not going to change; you have to make them into mountains somehow. How would I do that? You think the way you think, and no amount of logic or discussion is going to sway you. You acknowledge that you don’t like or really use a cell phone much. Your work doesn’t require them. So, you base your entire argument on your own experience. I have been able to make you understand that they way you use it is not the way that many other people do…or many other countries do. I have been unable to make you understand that cellular networks do more than just enable calls and texts. I have been unable to make you grasp that procuring key systems takes time TODAY, let alone in the aftermath of something like what we are talking about here. I have been unable to make you grasp the scale of the changes, and you continue to insist it would take a couple days or a week or two at most to get things going again…and I have been unable to make you grasp how truly ridiculous that statement is. In short, you think the way you think and aren’t going to be moved by anything I say or do in this thread, and I’m tired of saying the same things over and over again and hearing the same things over and over from you. You think my position is ridiculous and silly. I think yours is massively uninformed, ridiculously optimistic, and basically just wrong. I think I’ll let you fight it out with anyone who still wants to discuss this, as I’m rapidly losing interest…especially since you want to narrowly focus on just the cell phones. Granted, that was in the OP, but it makes less sense than even just saying the cellular networks are down. > [@](#): > > The Wizard just gave them their computers back. Now what? The world is now safe for democracy? -XT ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/86 "2010-08-26T15:08:26Z")
XT, begbert2, I am so proud of you guys. Pointless debate over meaningless issues is a lost art. If only politicians could learn once again to argue about angels and pins they wouldn’t be sticking their noses into matters of actual consequence. Keep up the good work! ---
**Author:** ![qpw3141](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/6bbea6/32.png) [@qpw3141](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qpw3141)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/87 "2010-08-26T16:20:22Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > XT, begbert2, > > I am so proud of you guys. Pointless debate over meaningless issues is a lost art. If only politicians could learn once again to argue about angels and pins they wouldn’t be sticking their noses into matters of actual consequence. Forty two angels on the head of every pin should be the thinking person’s motto. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/88 "2010-08-26T18:30:01Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Ok…I think this will be my last post, as from what I can tell I’ve answered all these questions already and I hate going around and around over the same ground. It’d be nice if you got off that ground too. [QUOTE=begbert2] No…I’m used to working in a system where we don’t keep spares on hand because we have contracts with the vendors to repair our equipment with a 4 hour response. So, if a switch breaks, we get a new switch in 4 hours and are back up. To procure a new switch or router today takes anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month…or two in some cases. How would this stay the same or get better if there was MORE demand for the same switch we are trying to buy? It takes us more than 2 weeks to get the equipment you are talking about TODAY…how would we get it in the same period if every single government agency and business were also trying to get the same equipment? There are only so many vendors of the stuff needed, only so many technicians to install and configure it, and they are going to be hampered by the fact that they can’t call in the way they have been trained, but instead have to use a clunky work around of stopping constantly and calling back to the office (which will have to staff up their call centers and receptionists)? [/QUOTE] Again, you are decidedly not getting my point. There are three levels here: 1. Having no hardware at all, 2. Having non-cell-phone hardware on hand (land line phones, voips) 3. Having cell phones. (and 2.5: having some alternate hardware to limp along with, but not as much as they’d like optimally.) Your thesis of catastrophe implicitly assumes that the actors in question are currently in state 3/1: they have cell phones, and after the failure will have no cell phones. Obviously, persons currently in state 1 or 2 or 3/2 are not going to have any fatal long-term effects from the failure; 1s and pure 2s will be essentially unaffected, and 3/2s will have their tech guys breaking their backs to get the replacement in place within that first week. So. Looking at the 3/1s; the failure happens and they suddenly find themselves stranded without hardware. What do they do? Well, they grab their mail-in order forms and requisition some of that alternate hardware that they don’t have. Naturally there is a glut on the hardware market, and the factory was hit by an asteroid to boot, so they won’t get any alternate hardware for 84 months. Now what do they do? They’re stuck in state 1. _Forever_. _My_ thesis is that, in the absence of alternate hardware, they will come up with workarounds that _don’t_ require the hardware they lack. And my thesis is that they will be pounding out these workarounds as fast as possible - specifically, in that two week period, before their business completely self-destructs due to inactivity. Your thesis is apparently that everyone will go home for 84 months until the parts come in. Which would admittedly destroy the world economy (assuming that everybody is a 3/1 company, as you clearly do). But I think this is an unlikely course of events - some people have work to do that actually needs to get _done_. > [@xtisme](#): > > I know you aren’t seeing it, but based on your responses in this thread it’s clear (to me anyway) that you really don’t understand either the technology, how it’s actually used, or the issues involved in changing over systems on this scale, let alone the changes in SOP and process flow that it would entail. Given that my thesis explicitly assumes that many people are going to have to make due with just stuff they _have_ for a while, it is explicitly _unnecessary_ for me to know anything about the issues involved with requisitioning and installing hardware. > [@xtisme](#): > > I agree that consumers will be paying more for less, but I think you are vastly under rating the effects. Based on numbers of rectal origin, I presume? > [@xtisme](#): > > It doesn’t matter what the exact cause of the panic is. If people think it’s because of a terrorist attack, mutant space bats or gods will is really irrelevant…the point is that some non-zero percentage of them will panic. Also, some will be in denial, especially some companies, who will spend their efforts trying to make it work before finally giving up. I can’t even begin to calculate how far the stock market will drop over something like this, but that will ALSO cause a panic, as a hell of a lot of people and companies lose a hell of a lot of money, and as companies wink out like fire flies. Even leaving aside the other stuff I’ve tried to explain about how you can’t make changes like this in a week, that alone is going to have deep consequences for companies and people to just get back up on their feet and start working smoothly again. What’s your point? If we’re just talking about the effects of _generic_ irrational panic, then it has little to do with cell phones, or the current discussion. > [@xtisme](#): > > Um…no. I’m not saying it WILL be a ‘disaster of titanic proportions’, or that this will inevitably annihilate the business world. I’m saying that we will take a much bigger hit than you are acknowledging, and that it’s going to take a bit longer than a couple of weeks or a month to fix the problems. It will take months, years, decades to _completely_ erase all the effects, to the point that people don’t so much as lament the loss of cell phones. But it will only take weeks for companies to figure out that they need to get back to work, hardware or no hardware. > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, it COULD happen, but I wasn’t focusing on the worst case in most of what I’ve written in this thread. I just don’t think you are looking at this realistically…but then, I don’t think you have the background TOO look at this realistically, based on what you’ve said thus far in the thread. I’m just considering the _realistic_ behavior when they not only don’t have cell phones, but can’t get voips either. I think you’re stopping your thinking one step too early. > [@xtisme](#): > > You know, I HAVE heard of that email stuff! You are right, that will save the day! Well…except that in order to use it I’d need to connect to a network that’s still working. See, I get my email on my phone right now. I do have a laptop (and an iPad), but if I have to swing by a StarBucks every few miles to catch up on my email it’s going to be sort of a problem. I can check it when I’m at the office (which I would and do), and I can check it at some of my customers sites as well (which I also do), but I fail to see how this is going to save the day for everyone. What _would_ you define as “saving the day”? Turning the cell phones back on and nothing less will suffice? > [@xtisme](#): > > You don’t say? Really? Not all wireless systems are cell phones? Wow…that’s news to me! 😛 > > I seriously don’t see the point of this paragraph. First off, this is one of those ‘don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs’ things…I’m a freaking network engineer. I’m well aware that not all wireless systems are cell phones, since, you know, I work with this stuff literally every day. Secondly, the paragraph you quoted to me is simply you asking me off handed what my expertise is, and me telling you. IOW, I never made a statement that all wireless systems are cellular for you to respond as you have. I reached a cracking point with your battle with the hypothetical. That’s what it was about; not that part of your post specifically. It was just the first point in the post that was making the erroneous assumption that the hypothetical was wider than it is. > [@xtisme](#): > > 😛 That you seriously put cell phones in the category of electric can openers wrt their impact on society is pretty funny. That you continue to make the distinction between cell phones, which you seem are only used for calling, and computers which you acknowledge as being critical shows the disconnect between your concept of how business and the government uses cell phones today and the reality of what their real function is. Or it shows that I’m aware that computers can pick up most of the slack for cell phones, leaving the difference between having computers and cell phones, and having computers and _no_ cell phones, to be much more miniscule than you think. Allow me to point out that the fact that this is why the current saturation of cell phones in government and business is essentialy irrelevent. Suppose that everybody uses butter. Then all the butter disappears. If they had _nothing_, then it would be a flavorful-spread catastrophe, but if everyone has Parkay on hand it’s not anywhere near such a big deal. Sure, the butter was somewhat better for the task; that’s why people used it. But for the most part the Parkay will suffice if it must. > [@xtisme](#): > > No, the REAL problem is that you seriously have no idea of how the technology is actually being used, or what all cellular NETWORKS do for us. You are laboring under the misapprehension that cell phones are used merely to make calls (with some vague idea that people do that nasty texting stuff too). As I’ve tried to point out to you, we use cellular networks to provide data police, fire and rescue vehicles. This isn’t a hypothetical, I’m not fighting it…it’s reality and you don’t UNDERSTAND it. Fuck that shit, and stop trying to dodge the point that the hypothetical is what it is. This thread is about mobile phones specifically. To extrapolate from that that all wireless must be down, or that electromagnetic radiation would have to have dissapeared for it to have occured, or anything else along those lines, is fighting the hypothetical. > [@xtisme](#): > > So, email is going to solve all my problems! :smack: Wow, thanks for the tip! If you have a few minutes, maybe you could solve the little problem the particle physicists are having finding the Higgs Boson? And then you could tackle Fusion this after noon, plus the government needs a solution to the current economic mess they are in. After lunch you could probably knock out the rest of the worlds problems, since you have such an intuitive grasp of things you know nothing about! You have a real problem accepting rational counterarguements, don’t you? > [@xtisme](#): > > So, what you are saying is that you want me to reconfigure or change a customers firewall to allow me to do this stuff from their cite…and you want me to work on another customers problems while I’m on-site fixing the problem of the first customer? > > BTW, if I could just use VPN, telnet and RDP to fix all the problems I probably wouldn’t need to be DRIVING somewhere, no? > > Look…in a way you are right here. I can and do use remote access to find information. And, while I use my smart phone to do much of that today, I COULD do a lot of it from a remote network connection. And the customers would probably have to go along, since the new reality would be impacting them, and if they want assistance they would have to open up their security a bit more to accommodate them. But it’s not going to be something that happens over night. It’s still going to take time Right. And in the meantime, you’ll spend a little more time driving. Truly the end of the world. This is a good example of the incremental nature of the workarounds, though. At first, you just work longer hours, driving back to home base between each fix. Then you get a laptop that can be used to check your email on-site, and only have to drive extra when things come up when you’re actually en-route. Then you get increased access to the systems, and stop having to drive as much. Similar business would happen while people are waiting for the voip factory to have its asteroid damage repaired. > [@xtisme](#): > > The the entire discussion is beyond ridiculous. If ONLY the phones break then what’s to stop someone from continuing to use the networks? If a pager can use the network, then why couldn’t a cell phone or an air card? You simply can’t reasonably break JUST the phones and leave everything else working. Even saying that JUST the cellular network (and no OTHER wireless or even wired communications networks) is broken is a huge stretch. If you want to say that only phones stop working and nothing else, if you think THAT is reasonable, then we go beyond fantasy into the realm of the absurd. If that’s what you want to stay focused on then have at it…I will leave the uninformed to discuss the absurd. If you don’t like the hypothetical, don’t participate in the thread. \ > [@xtisme](#): > > And I feel like a guy trying to beat his head against a wall of uninformed assumption and plain ignorance. Feel that way no more - I have all the knowledge I need to make my arguments. Nobody is going to sit around waiting forever for their voips - that much I know. > [@xtisme](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The Wizard just gave them their computers back. Now what? > > The world is now safe for democracy? And it gets that way within just a few weeks. > [@TriPolar](#): > > XT, begbert2, > > I am so proud of you guys. Pointless debate over meaningless issues is a lost art. If only politicians could learn once again to argue about angels and pins they wouldn’t be sticking their noses into matters of actual consequence. > > Keep up the good work! It entertains _me_; if that does nothing for you that’s not _my_ problem. And if you think that being chained helplessly to this thread is impeding the progress of my plans to destroy the world, you are sorely mistaken - a fact which will be driven home to you with a great deal of force when the scheduled day finally arrives! Bwahahaha! ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/89 "2010-08-26T18:44:53Z")
Anyone arguing that this would not be a massive economic catastrophe is insane. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/90 "2010-08-26T18:47:39Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Anyone arguing that this would not be a massive economic catastrophe is insane. I know I’m insane, but what does that have to do with my argument? What _specifically_ will the loss of cell phones do to the economy? Cause all middle managers to commit suicide in mourning? What? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/91 "2010-08-26T18:54:17Z")
[QUOTE=begbert2] I know I’m insane, but what does that have to do with my argument? What _specifically_ will the loss of cell phones do to the economy? Cause all middle managers to commit suicide in mourning? What? [/QUOTE] You know, that’s a really good question…I wonder why no one has answered this vital question (multiple times in multiple different ways) already?? I eagerly await someone taking a shot at this so you can cut up their argument with all the experience and logic at your disposal! 😛 _sits here eagerly awaiting_ -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/92 "2010-08-26T20:14:41Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > [QUOTE=begbert2] > I know I’m insane, but what does that have to do with my argument? What _specifically_ will the loss of cell phones do to the economy? Cause all middle managers to commit suicide in mourning? What? You know, that’s a really good question…I wonder why no one has answered this vital question (multiple times in multiple different ways) already?? I eagerly await someone taking a shot at this so you can cut up their argument with all the experience and logic at your disposal! 😛 _sits here eagerly awaiting_ -XT [/QUOTE] I already answered _you_ numerous times - the fact that you seem to have difficulty getting past “the hardware will take time to replace!” to the question “will they be able to function in the meantime?” is beyond my control. Also, I wanted to hear _his_ take on it. There is, after all, a small possibility that he had his own thoughts on the matter, distinct from those in _your_ head. He might even have something to offer that you haven’t mentioned! And regardless, I should hope that even though he agrees with your position on this, you might still be able to admit that the reasoning he presented was somewhat lacking in regard to details. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/93 "2010-08-26T21:20:34Z")
There is always that possibility. So…after all the guards go to sleep, we leap FROM the Rabbit and…and…well, maybe if we tried to construct this Giant Badger… -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/94 "2010-08-26T21:36:03Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > There is always that possibility. So…after all the guards go to sleep, we leap FROM the Rabbit and…and…well, maybe if we tried to construct this Giant Badger… > > -XT I get the reference, but don’t get the reference. (Which may or may not be par for the thread.) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/95 "2010-08-26T21:38:10Z")
It was a non-sequitur, designed merely to fill in the blank spaces and awkward silences before fresh blood come into the thread to continue the discussion. I was feeling whimsical… -XT ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/96 "2010-08-26T21:40:10Z")
Ah, okay. Hey, for once we can agree that I did _not_ fail to find the meaning in a statement! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/97 "2010-08-26T21:41:41Z")
We are in perfect and unalloyed agreement on that! Life is good… 🙂 -XT ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/98 "2010-08-26T22:06:10Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > > > Anyone arguing that this would not be a massive economic catastrophe is insane. > > I know I’m insane, but what does that have to do with my argument? What _specifically_ will the loss of cell phones do to the economy? Cause all middle managers to commit suicide in mourning? What? To a certain extent, my basic answer is, what xtisme said. I think he’s pretty much right about everything he has said. But speaking on a broader level, I think that the world economy, particularly right now, is both shaky enough and interdependent enough that it’s not all THAT hard to cause a massive economic catastrophe. Why did the government bail out the car companies? Because having companies that big go out of business would have massive reprecussions all across the economy as a whole. So even ignoring everything xtisme has said, there’s the fact that however many billions of dollars are involved in the business of cell phones, from Verizon to technology companies writing cell phone software to the companies that manufacture the physical parts, print the manuals, etc., to all the thousands of storefronts across America, whoever leases and owns all the cell phone towers, etc… that’s a whole lot of money doing a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people will just stop overnight. (Obviously cell phones all not working doesn’t mean Verizon ceases to exist as a corporate entity in one day. It DOES mean that it won’t be long before Verizon’s stock is selling for zero, however.) Something left vague in the initial hypothetical, which is somewhat relevant, is what is causing this stoppage, and to what extent it is understood. If tomorrow there is a massive sunspot and scientists immediately realize that it is shooting out Q-band radiation that interferes with cell phones and nothing else, but we’ll never be able to fix it… well, that’s one thing. But if they all just stop, like the premise for some kind of Stephen King novel, there are the ethical/philosophical/religious aspects to consider, and the impact this mysterious failure will have on the general human psyche. But really, the key issue is the one xtisme has been talking about, which is the actual disruption from people and businesses suddenly not having access to a technology they depend on. You know how there are always jokes about “Dow plunges 500 on rumors that Jupiter really has 19 moons instead of 18”? Well, that’s because the economy as a whole is very skittish. And as we’ve seen many times over the years, once things start going bad, once people start panicking and selling stock and stuff, they tend to keep doing so. There are lots of parts of the economy that are kind of like dominoes… one failing making things worse for another, etc. If you apply this hypothetical to only a single company, ie, “what would happen to FedEx if all its cell phones suddenly stopped working”, the answer is probably at least somewhat similar to the type of thing you’ve been arguing for. Massive confusion at first, with a huge backlog of packages that can’t be sent. Followed by confusion. Followed by reorganization and retooling and so forth. Followed by limping along, and then gradually approaching current capacity. How bad that would be would vary company-by-company and industry-by-industry, but very very few companies wouldn’t at least experience a pretty big hiccup. (Of course, for a company like FedEx, they’d pretty much have to completely stop their business (shipping packages) in the very short term until things get sorted out. Which means their inflow of cash would drop precipitously to zero. Which, even if that was only going to last a week, might be enough to totally wreck their finances…) So that doesn’t sound so bad, right? But the key thing here is that EVERY SINGLE COMPANY AND ORGANIZATION IS EXPERIENCING THIS AT ONCE. This is bad for various reasons: (a) as xtisme has pointed out many times, whatever resources are suddenly going to be called on to fix everyone’s companies are going to be in 10,000 times more demand than they were the day before. There just won’t be enough to go around (b) bad economic things often snowball. If you’re a company that provides widgets to 20 other companies and one of them hiccups and doesn’t order widgets for a while, that’s bad. If they ALL hiccup, then even if you somehow aren’t affected at all, you’re being hit by this massive sudden dip in income. Maybe you’re super-economically stable and can ride it out. But in the meantime, you aren’t buying the widget-components from your suppliers, etc. So the ripples travel around, and SOME of those companies are probably already in shaky financial states and start having massive layoffs, etc., and so on and so on and so on So at least 3 important things are happening simultaneously: (1) the human psyche of the population is experiencing something basically unprecedented in the human experience, something which questions the very basis of our entire society (2) an entire industry will collapse incredibly quickly (3) every other company outside that industry will experience a massive hiccup (at best) or a crushing blow to its operations (at worst), all at the same time If that’s not a recipe for stock market crash, massive bankruptcies and layoffs, and worse, I don’t know what is. Another way to think about this economic interdependence is… suppose that we randomly select x% of the corporations in the US at once and make them fail. If x = 100, then that’s obviously complete economic destruction, by definition. And if x = 0.0001, then that’s basically an average day or week or year (haven’t bothered to really do the math). The question is, though, how high does x have to be before the snowballing failures cause a massive catastrophic depression? I think the answer is, not very high… (Note I haven’t even touched on the further impacts that come from non-corporate cell phone use… that is, individual people (probably the least relevant, as far as actually CAUSING a catastrophe is concerned, but the massive disruption in people’s routines certainly won’t help, psychologically), the public safety sector, government, and so forth. Whatever safety nets there are that normally keep the economy from collapsing, they will also be experiencing various effects of various sorts…) ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/99 "2010-08-26T23:09:02Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > To a certain extent, my basic answer is, what xtisme said. I think he’s pretty much right about everything he has said. But speaking on a broader level, I think that the world economy, particularly right now, is both shaky enough and interdependent enough that it’s not all THAT hard to cause a massive economic catastrophe. Why did the government bail out the car companies? Because having companies that big go out of business would have massive reprecussions all across the economy as a whole. > So even ignoring everything xtisme has said, there’s the fact that however many billions of dollars are involved in the business of cell phones, from Verizon to technology companies writing cell phone software to the companies that manufacture the physical parts, print the manuals, etc., to all the thousands of storefronts across America, whoever leases and owns all the cell phone towers, etc… that’s a whole lot of money doing a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people will just stop overnight. (Obviously cell phones all not working doesn’t mean Verizon ceases to exist as a corporate entity in one day. It DOES mean that it won’t be long before Verizon’s stock is selling for zero, however.) I wonder what percentage of business is literally and primarily in the business of making and servicing cell phones? I guess I’m vaguely aware that stores relating to them are everywhere. The notion that the world could topple, not because of their work being somewhat more difficult, but because some large percentage of “everyone” becomes suddenly and _directly_ unemployed…I’m not sure has been adequately explored in this thread. Are cell phone companies ‘bigger’ than american car companies were to America? Are Verizon’s TV, Landline, and internet divisions so small a percentage of their operations that the entire buisiness would fold, taking the other services out with them? (The last is relevent because loss of internet would, itself, be a society-crippling disaster.) Hmm. This is of course a separate issue from the ‘panic’ and ‘work is harder’ and ‘play is harder’ effects, but there is merit to the idea it could do damage - assuming cell phone manufacture and suppore really do dominate large sectors of american business. And of course, the effect of this might also depend on the prior state of the economy. Were we not already scraping bottom, the failure of american car companies might not have been as large a problem; I don’t know. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Something left vague in the initial hypothetical, which is somewhat relevant, is what is causing this stoppage, and to what extent it is understood. If tomorrow there is a massive sunspot and scientists immediately realize that it is shooting out Q-band radiation that interferes with cell phones and nothing else, but we’ll never be able to fix it… well, that’s one thing. But if they all just stop, like the premise for some kind of Stephen King novel, there are the ethical/philosophical/religious aspects to consider, and the impact this mysterious failure will have on the general human psyche. I’ve been conceding the possiblity of mass panic for reasons unrelated to the actual inconvenience of the loss of the phones for as long as I focused on it as a possiblity. Yes, pandemonium coupled with paranoia could _easily_ erupt, which (presuming the worst case) could singlehandedly destroy the economy. Of course, the same thing could happen if the electric can openers died. Or if televisions all started mysteriously turning into reruns of The Twilight Zone. Or if Jesus made his second coming. It’s not really _specifically_ a cell phone issue. And it depends a _lot_ on circumstances, as you note. In theory, with knowledge and facts coming in quick and fast and with the steady hand of a leader (and no Fox News), this could alternatively be a complete non-problem. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > But really, the key issue is the one xtisme has been talking about, which is the actual disruption from people and businesses suddenly not having access to a technology they depend on. You know how there are always jokes about “Dow plunges 500 on rumors that Jupiter really has 19 moons instead of 18”? Well, that’s because the economy as a whole is very skittish. And as we’ve seen many times over the years, once things start going bad, once people start panicking and selling stock and stuff, they tend to keep doing so. There are lots of parts of the economy that are kind of like dominoes… one failing making things worse for another, etc. > > If you apply this hypothetical to only a single company, ie, “what would happen to FedEx if all its cell phones suddenly stopped working”, the answer is probably at least somewhat similar to the type of thing you’ve been arguing for. Massive confusion at first, with a huge backlog of packages that can’t be sent. Followed by confusion. Followed by reorganization and retooling and so forth. Followed by limping along, and then gradually approaching current capacity. How bad that would be would vary company-by-company and industry-by-industry, but very very few companies wouldn’t at least experience a pretty big hiccup. > > (Of course, for a company like FedEx, they’d pretty much have to completely stop their business (shipping packages) in the very short term until things get sorted out. Which means their inflow of cash would drop precipitously to zero. Which, even if that was only going to last a week, might be enough to totally wreck their finances…) > > So that doesn’t sound so bad, right? But the key thing here is that EVERY SINGLE COMPANY AND ORGANIZATION IS EXPERIENCING THIS AT ONCE. This is bad for various reasons: > (a) as xtisme has pointed out many times, whatever resources are suddenly going to be called on to fix everyone’s companies are going to be in 10,000 times more demand than they were the day before. There just won’t be enough to go around > (b) bad economic things often snowball. If you’re a company that provides widgets to 20 other companies and one of them hiccups and doesn’t order widgets for a while, that’s bad. If they ALL hiccup, then even if you somehow aren’t affected at all, you’re being hit by this massive sudden dip in income. Maybe you’re super-economically stable and can ride it out. But in the meantime, you aren’t buying the widget-components from your suppliers, etc. So the ripples travel around, and SOME of those companies are probably already in shaky financial states and start having massive layoffs, etc., and so on and so on and so on And this, I don’t buy. Firstly, I’m having a hard time believing that my little company is the ONLY company in the universe that is not 100% dependent on cell phones for its internal communications. (Which I will note is the assertion made when you say EVERY in all caps.) Rather obviously, the more companies like **xtisme** and the fewer like mine there are, the worse it will be; and the reverse is also true. He and I both ( **both** ) are myopically arguing from our own microcosm; does anybody have some _stats_? Do people poll for this? What percentage of companies do _not_ give their companies land lines in any form? How is this distrubuted between the teeny companies that nobody cares about and the ones Too Large To Fail? Because if 50% of companies don’t eschew land lines, that cuts the problem in half right there. Secondly, cell phones do not exist in a vacuum. There’s still Parkay -I mean, _computers_. Wireless networks. Email. Text messages. Voip. Possibly even pagers, depending. What percentage of companies have these on hand? Even if they’re not _currently_ using them as their primary communication method, they’re going to start looking pretty good when peak oil -I mean, peak cellphones hits. Yes, I understand that they’re not perfect substitutes; most of these things aren’t pocket-sized and portable. They won’t save **xtisme** from missing the memo to go to D instead of C. But they _will_ mitigate the “We don’t have any phones at all!” problem. The loss of cell phones won’t devolve us back to the age of carrier pidgeons. And the degree to which this devolution occurs further shrinks the problem. Thirdly, _they’re just f’ng cell phones_. We’re not talking about making all of everyone’s computers, or cars, or spleens vanish. (Or even their can openers - false equivalences are equal opportunity.) They may be in prevalent use but, as evinced by the truly _pathetic_ attempts here to iterate specific examples of cell-phone-loss-incited reductions in work efficiency, the are not **that** vital to most american businesses. Verizon, yes. Your average company or government, no. Even when the alternative is to have _no phones at all_… a not-insignificant percentage of people can still do their jobs as well, or nearly as well, or as well with slightly more work. Especially if they still have computers and e-mail. So the remaining slice of trouble after the first two sliced were removed…how much is left, really? Now, a caveat on all three points - this all depends on what caused the outage. For the extreme example, if all the cell phones are gone because the planet exploded, then yeah, the economy won’t be doing so well. If the laws of physics changed and electromagnetic radiation can no longer carry a signal, there again too, even if we _do_ survive. If somebody blew up all the cell phone companies, taking out their other services too (land line, cable, internet provider), then economic collapse would follow as well, as much or more because of the other services. (If they’re not literally blown up the government will prop them up to retain the other services, we both know it.) But if _only_ the cell phones are effected, then yeah. I’m thinking that, while not an 0.0001% disruption, it’s likely more in the neighborhood of 0.001%, taking into account the above three points and continuing the fine tradition of rectally originated statistics. (This figure doesn’t count whining and bitching either.) > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > So at least 3 important things are happening simultaneously: > (1) the human psyche of the population is experiencing something basically unprecedented in the human experience, something which questions the very basis of our entire society > (2) an entire industry will collapse incredibly quickly > (3) every other company outside that industry will experience a massive hiccup (at best) or a crushing blow to its operations (at worst), all at the same time > > If that’s not a recipe for stock market crash, massive bankruptcies and layoffs, and worse, I don’t know what is. Two things happening simultaneously. Possibly one thing, if the scientists and our leaders manaage to stem a panic. Or maybe no things, if the government steps in to prop up large cell companies that provide additional services. This isn’t to say there’d be no fallout - that store down the block dedicated to selling cell phones and nothing else is unlikely to stay solvent selling paperweights, and **xtisme** will have to work nights and weekends for all the extra driving. But I stand firm that point 3 would not be _that_ big a deal on its own, and the other two at least _could_ be mitigated, depending on circumstances. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Another way to think about this economic interdependence is… suppose that we randomly select x% of the corporations in the US at once and make them fail. If x = 100, then that’s obviously complete economic destruction, by definition. And if x = 0.0001, then that’s basically an average day or week or year (haven’t bothered to really do the math). The question is, though, how high does x have to be before the snowballing failures cause a massive catastrophic depression? I think the answer is, not very high… And I think you’re drastically underestimating the readily-available alternatives. Note that in my above counters I _did not even address_ the benefits that could be gained by filling in holes in people phone systems with new land lines or voips. This could be done eventually, of course; but even if there _were_ adequate supplies of the hardware already manufactured and sitting on store shelves, it couldn’t be purchased and installed in time to mitigate the productivity crash if it was going to be that bad to start with, But I can have three reasons why the crash won’t be as bad as Mr. Worst Case presents it, which I think are compelling argument that society could survive the loss of productivity even _without_ installing new systems. > [@MaxTheVool](#): > > (Note I haven’t even touched on the further impacts that come from non-corporate cell phone use… that is, individual people (probably the least relevant, as far as actually CAUSING a catastrophe is concerned, but the massive disruption in people’s routines certainly won’t help, psychologically), the public safety sector, government, and so forth. Whatever safety nets there are that normally keep the economy from collapsing, they will also be experiencing various effects of various sorts…) The psychological stuff is what’s most likely to get you. And if it gets you you’re hosed - even if there were no actual loss of productivity at all. Guess we’d better hope the governement can come up with an explanation right quick, eh? I do wonder how dependent you phone-using lot _actually_ are, though. I do know at least one person who has nothing but a cell phone. (More connected, my left cheek.) She’d have to buy a land-line phone - possibly. I don’t think she’d _panic_, though, not even if she couldn’t find one on a store shelf for months. Not unless something else was afoot. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2010, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141/100 "2010-08-26T23:57:58Z")
Ah…stats! Good idea! I know I said I was going to back out of the discussion, but was curious so did some Googling for some of the data (not sure how to find everything, since my Google-Fu is weak), but here are some of the results: A quick Google search turned up [this](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933605.html#axzz0xkz91GN2) cite with the number of cell phone users (by country) world wide. These are old stats, but it kind of shows the scale…we are talking about billions (with a ‘b’…my rough count is showing something between 3-4 billion cell phones in service) of people that would be effected. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Wireless) is a Wiki article on Verison. While they list some non-cellular services (notable satellite phone rentals/sales), the majority of their product line seems to me to be related to one type of cellular service or another. Of course, one has to acknowledge that ‘wireless’ cellular networks encompass more than simply phones. Even if we are looking at ‘just’ cellular phones, I’m guessing that this makes up half or more of Verison’s business (they don’t break it down here, however). Here is a Wiki article on the history of cell phones. It lists some of the many companies who make and sell cell phones: > [@](#): > > Market share > Mobile phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants 1997–2007 > > The world’s largest individual mobile operator is China Mobile with over 500 million mobile phone subscribers[citation needed]. The world’s largest mobile operator group by subscribers is UK based Vodafone[citation needed]. There are over 600 mobile operators and carriers in commercial production worldwide[citation needed]. Over 50 mobile operators have over 10 million subscribers each, and over 150 mobile operators have at least one million subscribers by the end of 2009 (source wireless intelligence). > Other manufacturers include Apple Inc., Audiovox (now UTStarcom), CECT, HTC Corporation, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Panasonic, Palm, Matsushita, Pantech Wireless Inc., Philips, Qualcomm Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), Sagem, Sanyo, Sharp, Sierra Wireless, SK Teletech, T&A Alcatel, Huawei, Trium, Toshiba and Vidalco. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from) mobile phones. This is not an exhaustive list, obviously. However, consider if each of these companies stocks fell due to no more cell phones. Leave aside that some of them would probably go completely out of business, and just consider what losing, oh, say 10% of their business overnight would do to them (of course, ‘10%’ is probably grossly conservative, and companies like Palm, HTC, Nokia and Verizon to name a few would probably go completely tits up). I’m not sure how to find the percentage of the economy that cell phone companies provide, but I did a quick look of some of the companies listed in the Wiki article about cell phones and I’d say a conservative estimate would be half a trillion at least (Verizon, as noted, was a $48 billion dollar a year company in 2008…Nokia seems to be in a similar league…the other ranged from a couple billion a year to a few tens of billions. For instance, [here](http://www.chrispalsho.com/2010/04/apples-revenue-breakdown.html) is how Apple’s revenue breaks down…looks like about a third of their total revenue is due to iPhone sales alone. Microsoft is much less, but it’s still a significant revenue stream for them which would suddenly disappear. And this is the direct revenue hits they and the economy would take…it doesn’t even count how disruptive the loss of cell phones would be in addition to that that direct hit. [Here](http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/AT&T_%28T%29/Data/Revenue_Breakdown) is the revenue break down of one of those stogy ‘Land. Line’ companies…AT&T, presumably one of the companies that would save us all from disaster by sweeping in to save the day. Unfortunately, it looks like a rather large percentage of their current revenue is also in the ‘wireless’ category (it looks like $70 billion to me). Again, disregarding the inevitable hit to THEIR business processes due to the same sorts of disruptions I talked about that would effect humble old XT et al. Not going to go back and edit, but found a newer cite for cell phone usage world wide in 2009…and I was wrong. It’s between [4-5 billion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use) cell phones in use today (well, some of the data is from 2010, some from 2009 or even 2008). We are talking about more than half of the people on the planet having a phone, basically…and a lot of those folks who have and use those phones, who actually rely and depend on them, are in some of the most critical sectors of our collective economies. -XT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-the-mobile-phones-just-stopped-working/551141.md?page=6)