Since the Internet isn’t centralized, destroying all at once would be very challenging. While you could cut individual wires and disrupt service, that wouldn’t work on an international scale.
An attack against the global web would likely be devastating, yet any one group seems unlikely to be capable of dismantling it in its entirety. Even if they could, what would this achieve?
Loss of Intelligence
The internet is made up of an interconnected system of wires, routers and servers connected by wires and designed to self-heal so any disruption in one spot won’t cause everything to collapse. Since there is no central point where its existence can be identified or destroyed it’s hard to do so but any attempt will only cause disruption of certain areas if something such as killing a server or router were successful in being eliminated – something which is impossible on such an expansive network like ours.
If you want to effectively shut down the internet, all of its computers must be destroyed – this would require much less effort but nonetheless requires enormous work.
If the computers that make up the internet were to suddenly go offline, society would face serious hardships. Individuals would no longer be able to shop, communicate with friends and family or access information; even government agencies that depend on sharing intelligence would suffer.
Loss of Education
Many people rely on the internet for education purposes. Many also use it socially and for leisure activities; without it, these services would become unavailable, leading to reduced communication and commitment between individuals.
Many educational experts view the Internet as a threat to traditional forms of education provision and practice. This is due to how it seems to promote self-determination, an end of institutionalized learning practices, and encourages ‘do it yourself’ learning practices.
However, this should not be taken to indicate that the Internet poses any threat to education; on the contrary it serves as an invaluable source of information and educational resources. There are various reasons for its immense value, among them allowing people to work and study without being bound by time and space limitations and providing a forum for debate; all these benefits make the Internet essential in our quest to understand our world better.
Loss of Business
Ultimately, without internet connectivity, businesses worldwide would come crashing to a standstill. Google and Facebook would lose millions in advertising revenue, phone services would stop operating smoothly, power grids used internet connectivity to communicate between themselves – leading to smart grid development for better efficiency and responsiveness than existing power grids.
Internet infrastructure isn’t centralized – it spans across thousands of networks and servers – making its destruction an extremely complex endeavor. Even then, though, its impact would likely only cause ripples rather than full collapse – further problems would likely ensue in other parts of the network anyway.
Loss of Money
Modern societies don’t exist in isolation from each other, and when disaster strikes in other parts of the world people typically offer assistance through networks like the internet. Without it, this would be more challenging.
To destroy the Internet you’d have to break its physical infrastructure. While jamming Wi-Fi and radio signals is an easy way to disrupt communication, doing more extensive damage would likely take nation states or highly capable terrorist groups with immense power to achieve.
As an example, 60 Hudson in New York houses equipment that links all web servers around the world together. If its destruction were to occur and all these connections severed, not only would it cripple internet speeds locally but it would erase all stored information — something which some users might take in stride while for others — such as online commerce businesses — it could be catastrophic. Luckily, however, the internet wasn’t designed to be destroyed – it would still work even then!
