What would happen if the internet collapsed?

What do you think would happen if the internet collapsed? There doesn't have to be a reason...

I know the government keep important files amongst other things on the internet, and it is amongst on of the easiest way of communication as well as tele-communications.


[edit on 28-4-2008 by CoNsPiRaCy PhReAk]

if the internet collasped, my telephone bill would go up and i would spend much of my time at the library. i love to read.

i do believe the internet (created by the military) will also be limited to what you are willing to spend and then sites will be hijacked and inaccessible.

I would probably lose 10 pounds and have a better relationship with my wife hahahaha. I think maybe we would be more in tune with our local going ons.

I would die. Literally I think.

I do so much online - so much.
School, Work and communicate with my family and friends. Some off my closest friends are literaly thousands and thousands of miles away and in other countries. I communicate with them daily if not thruout the day online. If I couldnt do this, I just couldnt handle anything. lol

The internet is a life saver for many people!

reply to post by CoNsPiRaCy PhReAk


I would save about $45.00 a month. If the government took over and censored the internet, I would probably still drop the service. I would be more concerned if we lost the whole power grid from an EMP. Southpark did a parody on this topic and people had to drive to the west coast for 40 seconds of service. I guess some people are internet addicts?

[edit on 28-4-2008 by aleon1018]

A lot of people would save money, but they would find new ways to spend it, and probably even more. It is cheap entertainment.

If the net collapsed, I would probably be working more on my other projects and have less anxiety over what is happening in the world.

I've noticed that since getting online the first time back in 95' that I tend to know more about what is going on in the world than I ever did before, and it isn't necessarily for the better. It seems our awareness has increased, but less and less is actually being done about things.

Originally posted by aleon1018
reply to post by CoNsPiRaCy PhReAk

 

Southpark did a parody on this topic and people had to drive to the west coast for 40 seconds of service. I guess some people are internet addicts?

[edit on 28-4-2008 by aleon1018]

That was by far their best episode. LMAO!!

I need to go find it and post the link to it


Here it is:
www.southparkstudios.com...




I laugh my arse off watching this.

[edit on 28-4-2008 by greeneyedleo]

Originally posted by CoNsPiRaCy PhReAk
What do you think would happen if the internet collapsed? There doesn't have to be a reason...

I know the government keep important files amongst other things on the internet, and it is amongst on of the easiest way of communication as well as tele-communications.

The Internet is big. Bigger than what you see with just the WWW addresses. There is a part of for e-mail. There is a part of it for use-net (News) groups.
There are FTP servers. There are "intranets" within the internet that the internet serves just as a gateway for access. Even P2P (person to person) protocols are part of the internet's function. Any of these can go collapse and you still have functional parts.

There is even going to be a totally separate, faster internet only for university and military functions.

The government keeps very low level files or general information files on computers that have full internet capability. People will argue this point about hackers and such, but the government has its own "intranet" that it uses for higher security stuff.

But let's just say something happens to knockout the entire internet structure by physically breaking the wires. People would quickly have to learn to read a book and talk to one another in person. News and happenings around the world would be slower with the population learning of events. Chances are, computers in general would not work, so people would have to learn to write without spell checker. But most of all, it would be a bad situation that causes this and many people probably would not survive.

It would be a devistating event. Not just because people would not be able to get their daily online fix, but because so many business functions are dependant upon it. A large amount of business and commerce are so heavily reliant upon internet connectivity that any sustained interruption would be destabilising to the economy.

Sooner or later a major outage will occur in the US, and people will find out just how much more the internet means to us than surfing and downloading.

Personally, I think that if martial law is ever declared, all public IP's will be immediately blocked from access (in order to ensure our safety of course).

I stopped at a gas station a month or so ago and their electricity was out and they said they couldn't sell me anything. All I wanted was a coke. So I could only imagine what would happen if the Internet collapsed. People would lose their jobs that depend on the Internet. If the the phone lines were still available they would all be tied up with everyone calling instead of emailing or messaging. Greeneyedleo would die and that would be a tragedy.

Originally posted by ben91069
If the net collapsed, I would probably be working more on my other projects and have less anxiety over what is happening in the world.

less anxiety for sure. i'm not anxious about what is to come. i have accepted what is to come. my anxiety comes from those who are unprepared.

It seems our awareness has increased, but less and less is actually being done about things. less and less. you are right on the mark w/this one. what can you do?

Why does everyone think "life" would be over. I mean I grew up in the 80's before the advent of the internet. Times were happier then !!! Business, commerce, etc. all functioned fine without it, we have gotten so comfortable with the convenience we've become reliant on the internet.

You ask me we're better off without it. If it were to be shut down, the first thing you'd see would be children in neighborhoods, OUTSIDE PLAYING !! Teens hanging out at the mall....Imagine that. I don't need to though, I lived it. I loved it. I miss it.

The internet will survive after humans.

Originally posted by _DISAVOWED_
Why does everyone think "life" would be over. I mean I grew up in the 80's before the advent of the internet. Times were happier then !!! Business, commerce, etc. all functioned fine without it, we have gotten so comfortable with the convenience we've become reliant on the internet.

You ask me we're better off without it. If it were to be shut down, the first thing you'd see would be children in neighborhoods, OUTSIDE PLAYING !! Teens hanging out at the mall....Imagine that. I don't need to though, I lived it. I loved it. I miss it.

I think the internet is a big way of life for people now and people would be affraid.

Also there are alot of jobs relying on the internet.

reply to post by _DISAVOWED_


I wonder if these internet kids would know what to do outside? I grew up without internet too, and the only time you saw me at home was supper time. You may be right about kids not having internet, but businesses are built with internet, no going out to talk to people included. The internet has definetly made this big world small.

P.S. I miss it too DISAVOWED, those were the best times.

[edit on 4/28/2008 by Solarskye]

How many of you know how the internet actually works? Here's a question for you: Why is it called the World Wide Web ? Another question: What was the original function of the Internet?

Last question first. The internet was created to maintain communications in the event of a full-scale nuclear war! You think some terrorists are going to take it out?

Second question next. It is called the world wide WEB because, when you draw out how it ACTUALLY connects, it looks like a giant spider web that covers the entire earth.

Here's how the internet actually works (greatly, greatly simplified). Lets say you have city A. City A is in the middle of an area with 4 other cities. Let's call them N, E, W, and S. (each letter representing the direction from city A, of course). City A connects to EACH of those cities. Now, each of those cities also connects to ALL the other cities. DRAW IT OUT ON PAPER TO VISUALIZE IT PROPERLY. What happens when the line between City A, and City N gets cut? Internet traffic AUTOMATICALLY REROUTES THROUGH CITIES E, W, and S TO GET TO CITY N. (Which way it routes depends on the routing protocol). To isolate city A, you would have to either destroy all 5 cities, or sever all 5 connections (again, greatly simplified). If you have drawn it out, you see how complex it is with just 5 cities. Now imagine THOUSANDS of cities.

*IF* the network is provisioned right, you may see a drop in performance, but not an outage. A PROPERLY SET UP INTERNET SERVICE WILL ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST TWO BACKBONE PROVIDERS. THOSE BACKBONES WILL PHYSICALLY ROUTE TO TWO DIFFERENT PLACES. If the primary link should go down, traffic is automatically routed through the backup link. Sometimes, they just load-balance, and use both connections simultaneously, with one connection taking up all the traffic, if the other should fail.

Are you beginning to see how "terrorists" could never even have a hope of partially taking down the internet? A single internet provider can go down (meaning that potentially tens of thousands of customers can't get onto the internet), but other providers will stay up.

There are several ways I can envision the internet "collapsing". Almost all of them have to do with intentional collapse from government instructions to do so (whether "shadow government" or not). The other would involve hundreds of thousands, possibly tens of millions, of people not noticing a problem for more than 48 hours before the internet would collapse (Do you see the almost impossible probability of that happening?)

If the internet "collapses", there is a VERY GREAT PROBABILITY it has "collapsed" due to collusion in the government and/or private sector. Don't believe otherwise.

[edit on 28-4-2008 by sir_chancealot]

[edit on 28-4-2008 by sir_chancealot]

Originally posted by sir_chancealot
How many of you know how the internet actually works? Here's a question for you: Why is it called the World Wide Web ? Another question: What was the original function of the Internet?

Last question first. The internet was created to maintain communications in the event of a full-scale nuclear war! You think some terrorists are going to take it out?

Second question next. It is called the world wide WEB because, when you draw out how it ACTUALLY connects, it looks like a giant spider web that covers the entire earth.

Here's how the internet actually works (greatly, greatly simplified). Lets say you have city A. City A is in the middle of an area with 4 other cities. Let's call them N, E, W, and S. (each letter representing the direction from city A, of course). City A connects to EACH of those cities. Now, each of those cities also connects to ALL the other cities. DRAW IT OUT ON PAPER TO VISUALIZE IT PROPERLY. What happens when the line between City A, and City N gets cut? Internet traffic AUTOMATICALLY REROUTES THROUGH CITIES E, W, and S TO GET TO CITY N. (Which way it routes depends on the routing protocol). To isolate city A, you would have to either destroy all 5 cities, or sever all 5 connections (again, greatly simplified). If you have drawn it out, you see how complex it is with just 5 cities. Now imagine THOUSANDS of cities.

*IF* the network is provisioned right, you may see a drop in performance, but not an outage. A PROPERLY SET UP INTERNET SERVICE WILL ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST TWO BACKBONE PROVIDERS. THOSE BACKBONES WILL PHYSICALLY ROUTE TO TWO DIFFERENT PLACES. If the primary link should go down, traffic is automatically routed through the backup link. Sometimes, they just load-balance, and use both connections simultaneously, with one connection taking up all the traffic, if the other should fail.

Are you beginning to see how "terrorists" could never even have a hope of partially taking down the internet? A single internet provider can go down (meaning that potentially tens of thousands of customers can't get onto the internet), but other providers will stay up.

There are several ways I can envision the internet "collapsing". Almost all of them have to do with intentional collapse from government instructions to do so (whether "shadow government" or not). The other would involve hundreds of thousands, possibly tens of millions, of people not noticing a problem for more than 48 hours before the internet would collapse (Do you see the almost impossible probability of that happening?)

If the internet "collapses", there is a VERY GREAT PROBABILITY it has "collapsed" due to collusion in the government and/or private sector. Don't believe otherwise.

[edit on 28-4-2008 by sir_chancealot]

[edit on 28-4-2008 by sir_chancealot]

Interesting...

reply to post by _DISAVOWED_



Amen to that, I still remember neighborhood "water balloon wars" between us kids of different neighborhoods, I remember tree house, biking and playing on a nearby construction site with friends when everyone was gone and I remember being in enviable top physical shape. It was just like that movie "the sand lot". I made myself the promise that I would make sure not to have my kids have the same experience and not fall too easily by the charm and degradation that the net brings.

The WoW kids would have a rampage and most likely go into hibernation until they fixed the internetz haha

Other then that it would be somewhat of a disaster. It's funny to see how the internet has changed the world within the past years.

Iam a self proclaimed Internet Junkie. I literally spend 4-6 hours a day online, usually here at ATS.
I WOULD GO INSANE without it.
however, hasn't all this been discussed before..as in a little Y2K bug..
Why are we rehashing this?