🌐 What “the internet” actually is
The internet isn’t a single switch or server. It’s:
- millions of private networks
- owned by governments, companies, universities, and individuals
- connected through fiber cables, satellites, data centers, and routers
No one entity controls it all.
🔌 Ways the internet can be shut down
🏛️ Government shutdowns (common)
Countries can and do shut down access by:
- ordering ISPs to disconnect
- blocking routing (BGP filtering)
- cutting mobile data networks
Examples: Iran, Myanmar, India, Egypt, Russia
Result: national or regional blackout — not global.
🧵 Physical cable cuts
- Subsea fiber-optic cables carry ~95% of international data
- They do get cut accidentally or sabotaged
Impact:
- regional slowdowns or outages
- traffic rerouted through other paths
Global internet survives because of redundancy.
💥 Cyberattacks
- DDoS attacks can knock major services offline
- Attacks on DNS providers (like the 2016 Dyn attack) caused widespread disruption
Still:
- services fail, not the internet itself
- usually temporary
☄️ Extreme space weather
- A Carrington-scale solar storm could damage satellites and long cables
- Could cause multi-region outages
Even then:
- not total global silence
- recovery would take days to weeks, not permanent
🌍 War or global catastrophe
Only a planet-scale event could take down most of the internet at once:
- massive global war
- coordinated destruction of core infrastructure
- extreme solar or cosmic event
Even then, some networks would likely survive.
❌ What cannot realistically happen
- A single button turning off the internet
- One government shutting down the global internet
- Permanent worldwide blackout from hacking alone
That’s movie logic.
🧠 Bottom line
The internet is fragile locally, resilient globally.
It can be:
- censored
- disrupted
- fragmented
But fully shutting it down everywhere at once is extraordinarily difficult.
