CURIOUS MIND: What If the Internet Shut Down... What does that mean for Steemit and the Crypto world?

Access to the internet has become a basic need for man in this century. Like air, water, clothing; the internet also is almost indispensable to our well-being. What if we get denied this access? What happens to our lives, our bitcoins? If you are reading this, then the internet is still up or back up. Congratulations!

As usual, I urge you to take 1 minute meditation to think about this question before proceeding to the main discussion. WHAT IF THE INTERNET SHUT DOWN, EVEN TEMPORARILY?

This sounds weird at first, I know. I also think it should be impossible to shut down the internet. But remember Curious Mind is aimed at getting you to think “Why?”, “What If?”, “How”.

I like to understand this possibility as the life of a 30year old. He is expected to become sick sometimes, explains the glitches that have been experienced with the internet in the past. What if a serious health condition hits him and makes him unconscious for some time, maybe few minutes, hours or days. That is a possibility right? But for the internet we make ourselves believe it is an impossibility.

After the question struck my mind, I ran to the internet (lol) to see if anyone had thought of something similar. Behold! It looks like many people are giving this weird thought some consideration. Not bad to explore this possibility. 

Enjoy the ride!

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How big the internet is in terms of data flow is difficult to quantify. It is bigger than we actually think because all statistics available only represent a fraction of the data on the internet. Results of data flow as assessed on August 12, 2017 11:02GMT is below.

• 47,348 GB of Internet traffic per second 
• 2,711 Skype calls per second
• 1,273 Tumblr posts per second
• 796 Instagram photos uploaded per second
• 7,715 Tweets sent per second
• 70,343 YouTube videos viewed per second
• 61,883 Google searches per second
• 2,613,953 Emails sent per second

According to internetworldstats.com, less than 1% of the world’s population was on the internet in 1995. As at March, 2017 the world usage statistics is 49.7%, an approximate number of 3,739,698,500 people now use the internet.

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The internet may be a decentralized system, it is next to impossible to shut it down completely. However, the internet is not immutable to mistakes and effect of forces in outer space.

Solar flare can take down our power grids, satellites, and computers. This can cause a total internet blackout for months, even years. David Eagleman said, 

What bombs and terrorism can’t do might be accomplished in moments by a solar flare

A serious threat towards a nation can cause the government to shut down their internet. Egypt, Turkey, Iran among others have experienced similar situations in the past.

Submarine cables that carry massive internet traffic between continents could be cut. How that is possible may be unthinkable at the moment but certainly not an impossibility. Asia experienced a major shutdown in the year 2008. This could only be a beginning to what is coming. 

Cyberwars and Cyberattacks can lead to shutdowns. Companies affected by the recent WannaCry virus already know how devastating cyberattacks can be. What if this was only a test (like countries carry out nuclear test). What if the main attack will be immutable to all controls and able to take down mainframe computers, bringing down a large amount of the internet connectivity.

What is the most frightening apocalypse you had seen in movies? The result of internet collapse will be worse. I do not have enough vocabulary to describe what I believe it will look like.

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The least that should be expected is;

1. Communication Breakdown: All IMs, Social Media and Email services rely on the internet to get information across. Collapse of the internet means cell phones will just be cameras, game boxes or document readers. 
2. The world economy is no longer dependent on paper records like in past centuries. Everything is done on the internet. If the internet decides to go on a short break, our economy may just collapse. You won’t be able to use your credit cards or get your money out of banks.
3. Social vices will increase astronomically. Many will use the advantage of security breakdown to do away with others’ properties.
4. If terrorists know about the shutdown beforehand, they can strike very hard. This may lead to the fall of great nations, putting the whole humanity at a great risk.
5. People may have to do shopping the traditional way. No more internet to place orders and get them delivered to us at home. Developing countries may not feel this as very few of the population enjoy such.
6. People whose jobs rely on the internet will become redundant. There will be massive layoff from likes of Google, Amazon, Paypal, etc.
7. The longest traffic jam was 100 kilometres long and lasted for 10 days in China (August, 2010). If the internet shut down, the traffic systems will jam and cause a global standstill (except in less developed countries). It is going to be epic. 
8. For cryptocurrency users, this may be devastating depending on how long the shutdown lasts. Bitcoin may be resilient to attacks, yet it only survives on the internet. The implication is once the internet goes down, Bitcoin and other digital currencies go down with it. Mark in this article said;

“As a Bitcoin user, you wouldn’t be able to move your bitcoins unless you had communications with the miners. Even if you did sign a transaction you would have to find a way to broadcast it to them. If the internet was shutoff for a few days or weeks, miners could potentially develop a radio frequency communication channel, or even take transactions by mail.”

Did he say taking transactions by mail? That is like travelling across continents on a camel’s back. The truth be told, if the internet shuts down today, we will have more critcal issues to deal with than money or cryptocurrencies. When the interenet comes back on, we will just be as fine as before since no-one can tamper with the blockchain offline.

If there is no chance for the internet to go offline at a point, however how slim, then there is no need for discussions on how to revive it should this happen. This means even the government recognise that thinking the internet is inviolable may be a fatal assumption, especially for a man-made system.

There may be an impending ‘Blue Skies’ danger on the internet. The financial institutions had experienced this in the past, everyone thought it was always going to be ‘Blue Skies’. But the stock market in the US collapsed and was devastating. Is the internet up for the same?

I really want to know what your thoughts are. Please drop your comments below.

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Previous posts:

• https://steemit.com/life/@stevenomole/why-do-we-clap-some-interesting-things-you-don-t-know
• https://steemit.com/life/@stevenomole/curious-mind-history-of-birthday-cakes-lit-candles-and-birthday-celebration
• https://steemit.com/health/@stevenomole/curious-mind-the-life-of-a-color-blind-person-test-included-facebook-is-mostly-blue-because-mark-zuckerberg-is-green-red-color

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