HACKER Q&A
📣 truckerbill

What happens if the transatlantic undersea cables are severed one day?


Is the global internet our economies rely on dependent on these cables functioning? Or is there some amount of resiliency?

Would there be incentive for another nation to do so in a cold war scenario?

  👤 withinboredom Accepted Answer ✓
Traffic would have to go by a different route. You’d see ridiculous latency, but there are ways without going across the Atlantic.

See https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

👤 tony-allan
Most countries have backup routes but not always -- your country could be cutoff from the world...

Tonga volcano: Internet restored five weeks after eruption

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60458303

👤 Mayzie
Curiously, could Starlink be the failsafe the world would use in such a scenario? As far as I am aware, Starlink is currently being used to provide connectivity to remote mobile / cellular towers in some countries.
👤 Havoc
There are loads of cables especially on key routes like us to Europe. So it is quite unlikely

If all of them are down then I’d imagine world economy collapses. Stock markets, derivatives, wires etc. None of that stuff works without coms

👤 Friday_
In cold war no, there is no incentive to cut cables

In hot war, your connection to internet will probably go down before anyone severes the backbone cables.

First your cellular network, then other types of connection.

Then you lose electricity and stuff.

So no internet only sneakernet and maybe local networks with local power supply will be resilient enough. Yeah and radio.

👤 gostsamo
the moment the first cable is cut, you have a war.