When the Internet Really Crashes

I'm predicting that your life would suddenly be limited to interactions that you could conduct in-person, locally and — in short order — only at locations which you could access by foot, bicycle or other means not requiring consumption of gasoline.

Let's look at just this one transaction - buying gasoline - as a example of how much our lives are Internet-dependent well beyond routine activities like email. Gas stations will only have a certain amount of fuel on hand and they probably can't order more without Internet access. They will only take cash for payment (and probably jack their prices way up) because their machines won't be able to approve credit cards. You'll be limited to cash on hand, because you won't be able to get more cash from an ATM when your bank's Internet-dependent system can't verify how much money you have.

In March 2007, Britain's Scotland Yard uncovered evidence that Al-Qaeda had been plotting to bring down the UK's Internet by targeting a high-security Internet hub in London. In numerous regional conflicts over the past couple of years, hackers on both sides have done their best to create partial or complete interruptions of Internet service.

For crisis communications and business continuity purposes, it's moot whether a worst-case scenario is caused by terrorists or more generic hackers . The impact on our personal and professional lives will be profound even if the disruption is as short as two days.

And few of us are ready.

It was only when the idea for this article came to me that I realized just how unprepared I am, and I'm a crisis management professional. I not only need, for example, to have food and water for a week, as I already do because I live in earthquake-prone Southern California, but I also need to have enough cash to get through a period when I can't access my bank account. I should make sure that my seldom-used bicycle stays reasonably in tune and that my non-resident loved ones and I have a backup plan for contact in the event of such a situation. As for my business, I couldn't conduct it without Internet or at least telephone access, and phone systems are heavily dependent on Internet communication and my provider — cellular and landline — may or may not have a backup plan sufficient to mitigate such a crisis.

This contingency is not one for which organizations or individuals routinely plan, but I think the time has come to change that. I am hopeful that continuity professionals have some solutions, and invite those amongst my readership to submit relevant articles. At this point, I think it's a very low probability that the Internet, globally, could be "crashed." But on a large regional or even country-wide basis, as they determined in the UK, it's a painfully realistic possibility.