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Maximum survival time without Internet?
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Time to be aggressive. Go after a tattooed Virgo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 04 2024, @06:11AM (1 child)
there are multiple conflicting answers, depending on what you mean by "survive", and what you mean by "internet".
literally, I and my family, and most of the people I know could survive indefinitely without any kind of internet.
but:
1. my job and the institute I work for would be impossible without interconnected computers. in principle it could be transformed into what it was before the internet, but it would be very hard (not sure anyone would pay for it). my bank account would be fine for a couple of years (but I'd need to figure out paying rent without internet).
2. I have ~200 euros cash in the house. I need electronic transactions to work. I'm pretty certain that if there's no internet, and I go physically to my bank to ask for cash, they would be unable to help in the short term (they wouldn't be able to access their database, would they? and the line would be around ten thousand people). I trust the local government to come up with a short term solution until a workaround is found.
3. I live with my immediate family, but everyone else is thousands of kilometers away. are the phones out too in this scenario of yours? we don't talk every day, but things would be very unpleasant without communications.
4. while I trust the local community and government, I'm pretty sure panic and chaos would take over the nearby metropolis fairly quickly, so unless the country itself is able to organize food, water and heating without internet, there would be serious disruptions, possibly life-threatening. I'm guessing your scenario won't break the laws of physics, and radios will still work, so organization on a larger scale would still be possible. as long as the government keeps cool, and provides a temporary system of "IOU" to everyone until banking information can be brought to where it's needed, everyone should be able to survive. well... I expect mortality to go up for the old and the sick at least short term, simply because they're being overlooked in the scramble.
PS: but Putin already has all this information, why are you asking? no, society will not come apart if the internet is gone. young idiots who won't normally take their eyes out of their phones will, when forced to look up, notice the gray haired who are doing fine, and most will probably be able to follow the instructions that they get from talking to them.
and a form of the internet will come back fairly quickly, as long as there's electricity to power the necessary things. I can see the neighbour's wifi, so we can join up in the local village if we want to, and someone will figure out how to use a radio to talk to the village next to us etc.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday May 13 2024, @02:09PM
Not sure how your bank in particular works, or banks in general. But for healthcare the largest vendor of medical record systems (by market share), Epic, has provisions for local machines to store read-only copies of an entire hospital or region's tables for treatment. And seldom tested (or used) procedures for network outages - at least on the field operation level. But yeah, I've been to a bank experiencing connectivity issues and they were pretty much boned - "I can't do that right now."
I'd bet a lot of the crowd here remembers the days of using a manual imprinter for credit cards. Fill out the slip, put the card on the platen and the slip of that, pull the handle back and forth - shonk SHONK! Then get the customer to sign it. Oh, and telephone for a Code 50 authorization number if the charge was over $50.00 on the landline. Turn the slips in with your deposit and wait for your share of the money to be deposited. :)
I've got ham radios and a license..... I can theoretically talk to people 1, 5, 50, 500, or 5000 miles away. The American Radio Relay League's Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARRL-ARES, what a mouthful!) trademarked "When All Else Fails," because ham radio can still work. But by and large the Simpsons nailed it, those who do for the most part just say "I've got a ham radio!" with it. Unless you've got an actual plan and need, what good will it do but psychological prophylaxis? Still fun, but even now part of the cutting edge of ham radio now requires Internet.
This sig for rent.