{"id":8217,"date":"2016-04-04T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T07:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8217"},"modified":"2016-04-02T11:16:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-02T18:16:50","slug":"we-interrupt-this-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=8217","title":{"rendered":"We Interrupt This Connection . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

In what the government considers a surprise attack, North Korea today shut down all Internet access throughout the world. All sites are offline. No data can be sent or received. So how are you reading this post?
\n
\nObviously, the North Koreans haven’t shut down the Internet, though it’s possible.<\/p>\n

Back in December of 2014, North Korea suddenly lost all it’s Internet access. They blamed the US<\/a> as a retaliation for the retaliation over the Seth Rogen\/James Franco film The Interview<\/em>. So I believe such a thing is possible software-wise.<\/p>\n

Whether it happens or not, and who does it, is speculation. But the other day, I was wondering what the effect would be.<\/p>\n

Consider that it’s 10:00 in the morning. America is at work or school. People are going about their day. Suddenly, all Internet access stops.<\/p>\n

Your first impression would be that the “web is down.” It’s annoying, but you don’t suspect anything is up. You may check the modem. It seems okay. The local network is working, but that “No Internet Connection” icon looms large in the Windows Notification area.<\/p>\n

Maybe you call your ISP. No: You can’t because your cell phone doesn’t work. You have a landline, but the number is busy. Even if you could connect, their<\/em> computers are down as well. They can’t help or troubleshoot.<\/p>\n

Some work items stop and wait for the Internet to come back. It’s a minor inconvenience, but things get done. Ditto for school.<\/p>\n

People getting gas notice that their debit\/credit cards are denied at the pump. Those stations that have a register will take cash. So people walk over to the ATM, but it doesn’t recognize anyone’s card.<\/p>\n

Some folks make it to the bank, but the bank’s records are all accessed via the Internet, so the bank has no way to know how much money is in your account. The banks close. That’s when the real panic starts.<\/p>\n

Would the power grid go offline? How about City water? A lot of those utilities use Internet monitoring, but they’d probably still function.<\/p>\n

First responders rely on the Internet, either to map out where to go or for communications. The 911 call centers use the Internet. That’s all down, so they resort to using radios. Minus a GPS, it takes longer for them to respond to calls. “Does anyone have a street map?”<\/p>\n

Looking for information, people turn to TV and radio. The TV stations doesn’t have answers because all their information also comes over the Internet. And for radio, forget it! Local Radio in the US is rare. Even the newspapers would have trouble getting regional or national news. Will people panic?<\/p>\n

The bigger question for me is, how fragile has the world become? Could such a thing really happen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Internet is down all over the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8217"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8224,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8217\/revisions\/8224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}