If the internet suddenly crashed today what would happen

a reply to: uninfluenced

No phone, no computers, no food deleivered to stores, no gas, no lights, heat...you name it. A dark look down your block and no calling home or your friends or that ride coming for you at that high school football game in the neighboring city...it would just be SILENT. Just start walking in the dark....and thats jsut your immediate area....

Everything we now use daily...is somehow hooked to the net...hospitals, medicines, police, fire depts....one EMP Pulse weapon used against us....and you can see it wouldnt be a pretty picture.

Try to call your folks? Nope. Help? Nope? Your friends houses? Nope. Get on line to find out if...nope! Go to a store for foo...oops...nope? Turn on the tv for...nope. Try the radio and guess what? Nope. Try to get some things from the store? Nope.

Pretty soon those nice neighbors of yours will be breaking down your front door for YOUR food, meds, clothes...whatever they need...SO? Of course! Call the police to...oops. Nope.

You see? At least you can for now while the net is powering and linking the world...

you would have to resort to this:

a reply to: FlyersFan

EVERYTHING is run by internet now

Well come down here to Indonesia (one of the bottom internet countries), and you will find that things still work the old fashioned way without the internet. They use (phone, paper, pencil, mail) remember them, and they are working just fine.

If the entire world wide web went down, you'd better hope you have plenty of cash on hand because you won't be buying food with your debit card... nor will you be able to withdraw funds at your local bank branch, not even in person.

As other people have already pointed out, our entire modern day society is now 100% dependent on internet/intranet communications and connectivity.

20 years ago, it wouldn't have been a big deal.
Today, it would be a huge deal.


Case in point: How much cash do you have in your wallet right now ?

There's so many backups and generators and other safety measures in place that a total crash of the internet would be near damn inconceivable. The only possible way is if ALL electricity everywhere on the globe is disabled, for instance due to a solar event, the one thing feared the most. Then every circuit could be fried beyond repair, backups too, generators broken...life would come to a standstill, mass casualties...ultimate doom.

For now, internet won't totally fail. May be locally/regionally but have you seen the world charts of the internet infrastructure and how it's controlled? There have been major outages in regions, for instance after the Japan earthquake, but we've hardly noticed because traffic is derouted immediately and options for derouting are multitude while max load can be increased (normal level is not max).

IF, not, but IF internet goes down, it'll take some time get it back up again. In the meantime we'll manage. In a few days biggest metropolitan areas will be online, in a week or so areas around it, worldwide will take some longer.

No worries there, except for that dreaded solar event. (huge GRB especially)

I think it is a good question.

I've not thought on it before, yet I grew up without the internet.

I suppose the first question I asked was "Am I better off than I was before"

Would I cope with going back to the old ways . Likely, with a touch of frustration mixed with joy no one can call me text me facebook or tweet me randomly.

Would kids and Gen Y cope? probably not . But then they are resilient.

There would be initial mayhem business /banking/ education /communication wise.

I personally love google and don't want to go back to Encyclopaedia Britannica

edit to add:
mum and dad would never know there was a world crisis. they own no cell and have never turned on a computer....They survived the depression, world war 2,communism, immigrating to a new country, raised 4 kids and more grandkids, own their homes outright. Maybe I can too.

a reply to: Richardus

I think most of you people here are looking at this the wrong way -

What if the PTB make the internet go down? They plan it.

1 month and it will be mayhem - civil war and revolution - especially through the first world countries -

Their "banking system" is failing - let a lot of people die - Isn't that their plan anyway with "depopulation"?

If you were prepared, you would be living your life now as if the internet was down for at least 6 months - most of us, aren't.

What would happen if the internet went down today? Millions of people would have to resort to old-fashioned ways to access porn for a start.

Suddenly a number of people would be without friends. Because they have failed to learn how to communicate otherwise..............

a reply to: James1982

You have a point. Although, I don't really see it as doomsday still. I imagine there would be a very painful adjustment period, and people would quickly adapt to the devolution. If anything, who knows... it might actually be for the better.

Although the interconnectedness and communication is par none. Without it, I think the human race lacks a lot of potential. For people born in this era it would really suck because they would know what it's like to live with both. For people of the next generation though, they would just be ignorant fools and wouldn't bother them in the least.

What would happen if the internet went down?

It would be fixed.

Seriously, that is what would happen....but then again the internet being down and staying down, is a unlikely thing, considering what makes up the internet. It's just too massive to be taken out by anyone thing.

Except for something like another Carrington Event....and then we're going to have a lot more to worry about than just the internet being gone at that point.

But, if the internet did go down and could not be fixed easily, then yes, we would revert back to doing things the old way, and no, it's not impossible.

Let me give you some examples: Power, Water and Gas. Sure, many of these are controlled by the internet. However, everything used to generate, clean or deliver those things are still there. Power generators, transformers, power transmission lines are all still there.

Large businesses: Walmart. Yes they use the internet. Yes it's used to communicate to the Walmart distributing warehouses to get stuff to the stores......but: yes, the DO still have land lines. (someone said you had to have a rotary phone. Rubbish! As long as you have electricity, your wireless phone will still work hooked to a land line). Even WITH the internet, they use land lines to confirm orders, change orders, etc.

Phone system: People with cell phones or smart phones would be the most impacted with the loss of the internet. However, land line systems are still there, and not all of them are controlled by the internet.

Banks: you wouldn't loose your money. You just would not be able to access it right away. However, your account information would still be on their servers. It would simply be a mater of getting that information back off of them.

It wouldn't be the end of the world. It would be a highly annoying thing, and would complicate things for a few months. Things would be replaced to cope with the loss.

But I really can not see anyway for the internet to be suddenly gone, without it being due to massive damage caused by something that would not only take out the internet.......but would have to take out a lot of other things too, in which we'll all be a LOT more worried about.

originally posted by: CranialSponge
If the entire world wide web went down, you'd better hope you have plenty of cash on hand because you won't be buying food with your debit card... nor will you be able to withdraw funds at your local bank branch, not even in person.

Although you are right about debit and credit cards not working, how long do you really think that money will be worth anything once all the stores are empty, and people are fighting for survival?

If someone knocks down your door and ready to kill for food...how much do you think he'll take in $$$ instead of food for himself and family...."NONE - BANG" is the likely answer...if this happens, money will be worthless in no time! If it were me, I wouldn't care for money since I would not be able to spend it for necessities anyway!

quote]originally posted by: Teye22

originally posted by: CranialSponge
If the entire world wide web went down, you'd better hope you have plenty of cash on hand because you won't be buying food with your debit card... nor will you be able to withdraw funds at your local bank branch, not even in person.

Although you are right about debit and credit cards not working, how long do you really think that money will be worth anything once all the stores are empty, and people are fighting for survival?

If someone knocks down your door and ready to kill for food...how much do you think he'll take in $$$ instead of food for himself and family...."NONE - BANG" is the likely answer...if this happens, money will be worthless in no time! If it were me, I wouldn't care for money since I would not be able to spend it for necessities anyway!



For obvious reasons what you said there brought this quote to mind.

`Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

a reply to: uninfluenced


In the world we live in today with the decades of progressive brainwashing at home and school it would be epic. Many people can not take care of themselves in any manner of the word. They need reassurance and helping hands for just about everything.


This is why so many never leave the house. The progressive mindset takes away self importance and self motivation. So if you were to take it away 75%-95% would crash and burn. The progressive mindset is a terrible thing that should be avoided especially in your household.

I think some people are being a little dramatic here... Many things claimed in this thread to suddenly explode if the internet goes down don't need internet. They may or may not be run by computers, or even servers as has been repeated. You think the nuclear plant down the street is remote controlled by internet from another place? No, it's a local system that would be completely unaffected by the internet shutting down. You think your modern car dials up the dealership's IP address through your wifi to ask permission to crank it's engine? Nope. Cellular phones don't use your cable modem connection last I checked, and phone companies obviously have telephones that they can use to conduct their business and keep the rest of the phones going. Gas pumps don't need to check with DC before filling up your car, and many rural gas stations still don't use computers at all. Truckers are dispatched by phone and GPS. Banks? Go inside, I'm pretty sure they too (especially credit unions) have local servers that can operate independent of the internet if necessary. Sure there are going to be some P/O'd people at distribution centers and retail stores pulling the paper out of their printers to actually write things down, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. If you want to talk about the electrical infrastructure being taken out, that's a completely different story.

Besides that, the internet as you know it is simply what we have accepted it to be, a global network. I could easily create my own local (neighborhood) "internet" as long as we still had electricity, complete with websites and message boards and some guy typing up an encyclopedia with a nice little search function. Which would soon (with the help of other nerds) merge into larger and larger networks and before you know it, the internet is back. The technology is here and isn't going anywhere. If the infrastructure gets taken out (which is almost completely impossible on a larger than city-wide scale) it would be quickly rebuilt on local levels. All those servers would still contain all the data they do now, they'd just have to be linked up to a different network.

Yes, it would hurt. But it wouldn't have to be mass pandemonium.

All my Farmville crops would wilt and I would cry. Then I would pull myself together and go out and work on my real garden instead of wasting hours on the computer.

What would happen to society depends on how long the internet is out. If only for a few days or so, people would make do as best they could like when the electric goes out. If for the long term, people would just have to learn to live with out it again. Today everything is so reliant on the internet. It would take awhile to bring back other modes of doing things, but it would happen.

All my Farmville crops would wilt and I would cry. Then I would pull myself together and go out and work on my real garden instead of wasting hours on the computer.

What would happen to society depends on how long the internet is out. If only for a few days or so, people would make do as best they could like when the electric goes out. If for the long term, people would just have to learn to live with out it again. Today everything is so reliant on the internet. It would take awhile to bring back other modes of doing things, but it would happen.

If the internet suddenly crashed today what would happen

I would get my grass cut, wood pile moved, roof fixed and backyard cleaned up

the fact that so many people think that internet = facebook, tweeter or ATS is very sad


The importance of internet is Logistic... it keep the supply chain running at fast speed. And you need that speed in big urban areas/big populated areas.

When the things start breaking you will notice for sure

The sale of pornography magazines will go through the roof