Losing the Internet (cost, community, America, communities)

[SimplySagacious]

Originally Posted by ss20ts

Myself and my husband would be out of jobs without the internet! I work from home part time and he works from home full time....all on the internet.

We use the internet for work too. Without it, we would just do something else.

[Caleb Longstreet]

Originally Posted by TerraDown

What do you guys think of losing the internet?

Going back to land lines, a real phone...could it be done? If so, what service would you use?

Ham/Short Wave Radios? of course, power sources are a must ; ) Then again, could a solar panel charge a battery sufficiently and regularly to do it??? Answer: Yes.

[arwenmark]

There is a library down the street but I expect they have fewer and fewer books all the time. I have a lot of books many on How to etc. Years of Mother Earth News etc. I plan to keep all my books they will be valuable to have if the power goes out.
Not quite on topic but I also have several hand crank or treadle sewing machines. those will be valuable too.

[ss20ts]

Originally Posted by SimplySagacious

We use the internet for work too. Without it, we would just do something else.

Neither one of us would be able to have our jobs without the internet. We would absolutely struggle to find something else with the same salary. We also save quite a bit of money because we only have 1 vehicle and we don't drive to offices everyday.

[Colorado Rambler]

I would not just tell my Internet provider to go to hell as long as Internet remains available. I use the Internet for just about everything - staying in touch with friends, researching information on everything from drylands farming to the latest antics of our so-called "representatives" in Congress - the list could go on forever. I even use the Internet to watch programs and stations that were once only available on cable (cable sux where I live - one of the most remote areas of Colorado). I have formed the habit of streaming music from radio stations in different parts of the country, so one afternoon I get to live in New Orleans, the next in the Kentucky mountains, then Seattle, etc. It gives me a feel for what's going on around the country that I'd never get anywhere else.

I'm an old-timer - graduated with a degree in library science in 1980. At that time the Internet was still in its infancy, and people had barely heard of personal computers. A few here may remember how huge and clunky computers used to be - they'd take up rooms of space. I went to a great school, and they were already requiring that you had to take at least 4 classes in automation and computers to graduate. I got hired before the ink was dry on my diploma by a college library which needed someone who could come in and begin bringing the library into the 21st century. It's been wonderful to watch how the Internet has developed, and I'm proud of the fact that I helped my students to become part of this brave, new world.

That said, if for some reason the Internet was no longer available, I'd miss it, but I think I could pretty easily return to the book as the source for information and entertainment. I love books! (after all I'm a librarian ). I still read 3 or 4 books a week, and I buy books that contain important information - like Moore's invaluable Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, and I also buy books just for sheer love of their words like Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets - beautiful translated into English and stunning in the original Spanish. I could go on all day about my favorite books. I'm a greedy thing - I want books and the Internet and life in the rural Southwest. How lucky am I to live in a time when I can have it all!

[Rabrrita]

Originally Posted by ognend

Yes but for people that actually understand how de-centralized the Internet is and how it works, this whole thread is a non-question. It would almost be akin to asking "what would happen if circles all of a sudden all became square".

True! A scenario that would amount to the entire Internet going down (versus a localize outage or stoppage) is along the lines of government suddenly disappearing and Mad Max appears. We can see the likely impact of widespread communications outages similar to an Internet collapse by looking back to March 17 2015. That day came and went yet here we are, and I bet few even saw any difference in their communications.

However, even localize problems can have widespread impacts if that's a system one depends on. Recently we were without internet at work due to a fiber cable being severed. Fortunately we have a copper backup so it wasn't that big a deal for us. But, some VOIP users were without communications, you couldn't use a specific bank's cards at ATMs, some sports channels went black at the restaurant/bars during lunch, the traffic monitoring cameras were blank, and I heard even the library loss service. I'm sure there were a lot of people just standing around scratching their heads. Yet, as has happen hundreds of thousands of times before, it was repaired and life continued with only a slight hiccup if one even noticed.

[ukrkoz]

Dove mail is too advanced. I vote for smoke signs and drums.
Btw, Romans had ridiculously fast mail system with mirrors.

[bigpaul]

Originally Posted by Rabrrita

True! A scenario that would amount to the entire Internet going down (versus a localize outage or stoppage) is along the lines of government suddenly disappearing and Mad Max appears.

yes, maybe, until the day it does, just because it has never happened dosent mean it never will.
an open mind to possible future events is better than a permanently closed one.

[Nonesuch]

Originally Posted by bigpaul

yes, maybe, until the day it does, just because it has never happened dosent mean it never will.
an open mind to possible future events is better than a permanently closed one.

I prefer to prioritize preparedness based on the objective probability of an event.

A scenario may be fun to think about (if only for how it will give all those pod people their comeuppance), but when it is unlikely to happen in your lifetime, actually preparing for it is a poor use of resources.

Over the next decade, the chance of my personal home Internet going down for a day is 100%, of widespread sporadic outages spanning multiple days is maybe 5%, and of the entire global public network going down and staying down is about as likely as my winning Powerball.

Are you prepared to win Powerball?

[bigpaul]

i'm in the UK, we have "the national lottery" here ("the lotto" and "thunderball" are the main ones).
as for the internet, i'm very suspicious that anything man made is liable to fail at any time, in fact I believe SHTF will be caused by man made failures rather than anything natural.