If this is accurate, 97% of global internet data is carried through undersea cables.
Satellite systems for general, consumer (non military) internet purposes do exist, but their total bandwidth is essentially negligible in this scenario.
What would happen is:
First, everything on the internet would dramatically slow down and/or 404 due to built in auto timeout failures.
As BGP kicks in, this may lessen very slightly, but systems that mirror data across servers on different continents would basically be unable to synchronize.
Systems with servers in only one location would basically be unnaccessible to anyone more than … ballpark, a few hundred miles away.
International banking and transactions and would be forced to stop, otherwise they’d be getting massively out of date info, wrecking the legitimacy of their balance sheets.
International video calls stop working.
International voice only calls and email may work, but with great delay for emails, and a roulette wheel spin for your call going through and being intelligble and not dropping.
You’re basically looking at the Tracer Tong ending from Deus Ex, maybe not quite as bad in certain areas that effectively prioritize certain kinds of traffic and rapidly enact effective mitigation strategies…
But best case, for probably a very long time, you’re looking at an internet that is mostly fragmented and highly geographically localized.
… and thats assuming the world’s highly globalized and interdependent economy doesn’t just collapse and never really come back.
Almost all modern logistics is now impossible, and almost all modern logistics runs on the Just In Time paradigm… ot is very fragile, very reliant on things working on time, with very little margin of error and stored emergency reserves.
Remember when the Evergrande EDIT:(lol wrong name) Ever Given blocked the Suez, and this caused logistics nightmares around the world that persisted for years?
Imagine that multiplied by about 10,000 or 100,000.
That’s quite a rosy outlook.
https://sofrep.com/news/how-global-internet-access-relies-on-a-few-hundred-vulnerable-undersea-cables/
If this is accurate, 97% of global internet data is carried through undersea cables.
Satellite systems for general, consumer (non military) internet purposes do exist, but their total bandwidth is essentially negligible in this scenario.
What would happen is:
First, everything on the internet would dramatically slow down and/or 404 due to built in auto timeout failures.
As BGP kicks in, this may lessen very slightly, but systems that mirror data across servers on different continents would basically be unable to synchronize.
Systems with servers in only one location would basically be unnaccessible to anyone more than … ballpark, a few hundred miles away.
International banking and transactions and would be forced to stop, otherwise they’d be getting massively out of date info, wrecking the legitimacy of their balance sheets.
International video calls stop working.
International voice only calls and email may work, but with great delay for emails, and a roulette wheel spin for your call going through and being intelligble and not dropping.
You’re basically looking at the Tracer Tong ending from Deus Ex, maybe not quite as bad in certain areas that effectively prioritize certain kinds of traffic and rapidly enact effective mitigation strategies…
But best case, for probably a very long time, you’re looking at an internet that is mostly fragmented and highly geographically localized.
… and thats assuming the world’s highly globalized and interdependent economy doesn’t just collapse and never really come back.
Almost all modern logistics is now impossible, and almost all modern logistics runs on the Just In Time paradigm… ot is very fragile, very reliant on things working on time, with very little margin of error and stored emergency reserves.
Remember when the
EvergrandeEDIT:(lol wrong name) Ever Given blocked the Suez, and this caused logistics nightmares around the world that persisted for years?Imagine that multiplied by about 10,000 or 100,000.