What would happen if the entire internet just stopped working worldwide & there was no E.T.A for restoral?

Question

I think we're far dependant on the internet...and the world, at this point, does not seem to have a backup plan that I know of. I think the stocks market would go ballistic, business would suffer. Some businesses would try to go back to the phone, fax, and snail mail.
Whats worse is with gas prices being what they are, the internet saves us from much driving...so we could not drive as much as we did before the internet was a major factor.
The internet is our air, nowadays, and without it..we'd suffer.

why'd that guy get so technical..?
use your imagination

Answer 1

if you want the short version i would have to say we'll be completely screwed.

Hoped that answered your question.

Answer 2

Yes, it would be massively bad.

Fortunately, it won't happen. For starters, there is no one thing that is the internet. The internet is a collection of hundred or thousands of seperate networks. When you browse a page at Yahoo, the page you're looking to hops through a dozen computer systems between their server and your machine. And if one of those (or many of them) went down, it would find another way through the maze of routers and backbones. No one company owns or runs these. No one entity or government maintains them. If one or two companies shut down their entire network, internet traffic still gets through (provided that company isn't your Internet Service Provider--then all the traffic but yours gets through)

As a comparison, compare airports and air travel. If one airport shuts down indefinately (because of weather, this often happens), the local economy would suffer. Travellers and cargo would have to travel by truck. Things would slow down. But over all, everything would still run well. People and packages would fly to other nearby airports and business would proceed more or less as usual. But if every airport shut down at the same time (as happened after 9/11) you'd have a major problem. It's just incredibly unlikley.

Answer 3

well bad things would happen

Answer 4

it would suck