My own personal assessment of how much I 'trust' the internet during a crises.

When my wife and I moved off grid, we did an analysis of the risks associated with keeping money in the bank account.  We quickly realized that should the Interact network go down, access to the funds is gone unless we walk into the bank.  There is also the risk of the bank closing its door, the federal government taking the funds to bail out the banks, etc.  It was that point when I closed down all my bank accounts and the single account my wife has, has very little in it.  

When I do a similar assessment with other 'assets' that are stored on line, like steem and most other cryptos, I have deep concerns.  These concerns are not associated with the wonderful design of the steem blockchain, but rather rest with all the infrastructure we take for granted to gain access to that blockchain.  

We live out side the city, so communications is challenging at the best of times, but more challenging is the power.  Most people don't realize but even in Alberta, the cities get the priority when it comes to power generation.  It is not uncommon for rural areas to go without power for hours.  When we moved off grid, one of the first plans was to setup our own power system so that we were no longer dependent upon the power grid.  We also have contingencies should our power system fail.  

As I type this post, it is done with energy from the sun, captured by our solar system.  Our internet connection is through the cell network as other alternatives don't work here and satellite connection is still flaky and expensive.  So if the power goes out on the grid, could I still communicate with my wallet on this block chain?

Cell towers depend on electricity as well.  They have battery backups so that when the power goes out, the cell tower will continue to function for a number of hours.  However, if that power disruption runs too long, the cell tower will run out of power unless they have generator backups as well.  The local tower does not appear to have generator backup, so it is possible that it will go down.  Over the last 10 years, that tower has been down numerous times, a few instances it was down for two days.  

http://ups-battery-backup.com/cell-phone-ups.php

From the cell tower, communications may get bounced to a central office via microwave relay, fiber optic or perhaps even satellite connections.  Central offices also have generator and / or battery backup solutions.  However, if the power is down for an extended period of time, would the administrators of those offices be able to keep the generators topped up with fuel?  If there was a catastrophic financial system failure, would any fuel be distributed or would the government start hording the fuel for their own use?  Anybody who researches issues like 'continuity of government' will quickly realize that the governments first priority is to maintain the government.  It is NOT their priority to save people.  

Governments throughout history have always horded and controlled resources while putting people on rations when ever there was a crises.  As a result, the telecommunications network may or may not get fuel, depending on whether it serves the disaster recovery plans of the federal or provincial governments.  But even if they did, all the outlying infrastructure would be left to suffer if they don't fit the governments plans.   

I would also suggest that the government would also implement plans to severely restrict which applications, corporations and government agencies could use the internet in the event of a disaster like a financial crash.  They would seize assets from bank accounts, safety deposit boxes or anything else that they can get their hands on.  The Canadian government already has legislation in place to cease funds from peoples bank accounts to bail out the banks should they become insolvent.  

Think you are safe in the city?  They are the most dangerous places to live during a crises.  Cities only have enough food for 3 days, then they run out.  You may run out of water before the food runs out.  Government plans are to lock down the cities and then clean up the mess afterwards.  Money will not save you.

While I applaud the developers and witnesses for building a robust, distributed and decentralized platform upon which to build a blockchain, that blockchain is still dependent upon the existing infrastructure to ensure all users have access to the front end interfaces and those interfaces have access to the back end blockchain.  

Are you willing to bet your life on infrastructure being there when you need it most?  What if you have no power?  How will you run your computers, modems, cell phones, routers, etc to connect to the internet?  What if the government set off electromagnetic pulses (EMP) which would take out all electronics?  Do you depend on the power grid to access your accounts?  Do you store your wealth on line?  Would you be able to access your wealth should the Internet be unavailable?  Would you go hungry if you lost access to your wealth?  Do you depend on electronics for your very survival?  Do you know how to live without these tools?

These are all very important questions to ask, especially as global events become even more uncertain.  The situation in France and other countries in Europe, Venezuela, Brazil and almost every other region in the world is destabilizing.  My wife and I made plans to be able to survive even if it ALL shut down.  We worked hard to learn how to live off the land, collect clean water, grow our own food, build shelter, harvest food and medicine from the bush, etc.  We will not go hungry even if I lost access to my steem account, her bank account or even the land that we currently steward.  We have a much higher probability of surviving because we worked hard not to depend on any infrastructure outside of our own that we built.  The level of independence that I speak about goes far beyond building mesh networks or connecting to a satellite to transact cryptocurrencies.  

If we want to protect ourselves from our dependency on the system, we need to work on building our own infrastructure.  That includes but is not limited to our own power systems, connectivity for end users, backbones to connect all the mesh networks together, data centers, routers, towers, etc.  Corporations will fail when the financial collapse occurs.  How many of the front end and back end services are hosted on corporate data centers within their cloud computing offerings?  How many of those same systems are privately hosted with their own disaster recover plans, redundancies, etc?  How many users could access them if the main stream internet went down?  How many people have written disaster recover plans and tested them?  

When the financial system goes down, who is willing to maintain all this infrastructure without getting paid?  We seen in the US just how challenging it is to do ones job while the government shut down was in progress.  People were lined up at food banks looking for help because the government could not pay them their wages.  

I'm not willing to bet my life that those systems will be available when I need them most.  My life is far too valuable to trust and depend on others in this way.  I much rather put my life in the hands of Creator and Mother Earth.  Despite the complexity of man made systems, my food, clothing, shelter, water and the air I breath, always have and always will come from Mother Earth.  It is within her bosom that I put my faith, trust and life.  

If we really want to harden the crypto currency network and the entire internet, we need to replace the entire network with our own, end-to-end.  Period.  No government.  No Corporations.  Just us people!  I mean EVERYTHING, including the power systems that power it all.  This is a monumental task and until that is done, I will not trust any of it.  

To fully comprehend the scope of what I talk about when living 'off the grid', we must explore what the grid is.  I did a workshop a few years ago describing what the 'grid' actual is.  I give you that workshop here for free for those who want to really explore the full scope of what it means to live 'off grid'.