I was going to put this under jokes and humor , but what do you think the reaction would be if really the internet suddenly wasn't there ? what do you think would happen ? how would people react ?

I was thinking of how all our power went out a few years ago for a few days and what if you were stuck in ? God we pay our bills via the internet !

http://gawker.com/380877/south-park-the-da...l?autoplay=true

Well, for us "old folks" (who lived just fine before the internet BTW) we'd simply return to paying our bills with regular checks, use the paper back up for our bank accounts (my bank sends me a statement every month), send stuff via snail mail...and as for Youtube and Myspace...no problem there!

I hear ya Lilly, take me back to when things were a touch slower.

But on statements & bill payments etc etc etc (correct me if i'm wrong here) but the old paper filing system would be well & truly dead & gone(no turning back)...Wouldn't banks, businesses etc need the 'internet' to just stay alive, I mean the whole system would collapse in an instant, everything is connected via ''www'' (world wide web)?

Gotta love South Park, couldnt watch all the good scenes without You-Tube.

I'd cry like a baby if I didnt have UM, and ummmmmmmmmmmm would hate to miss out on all of the interesting stuff on the internet.

then there would be no UM! Noooooooooooooooooooo!

As Lilly said, us "old timers" did without it. Getting back to basics is fine, but now that we have the internet I think it would be difficult to go back to the old ways....I used to watch the news on tv, but very rarely tune into it now...First thing in the morn. I'm checking everything out, relaxed, having my coffee....We had problems a few weeks ago, where our internet was down for a day, and that's when I realized I would really miss it... I love to shop on line, and the best part is being able to go to tons of sites and finding articles that you wouldn't find in the mall...click a button and you can find any information you need....Sure beats those old Encyclopedia Brittanicas

Let me guess Goalie, your an eBayholic eh? lol!!!

''Chop up them credit cards!''

well I'm in my 40's ( that really leaves a bad taste in my mouth ) I've for years paid my bills via money order/checks. I've started paying my bills online once I became ill. Made it easier . yeah I could go back since I receive my paper bills still .

Still . I've never had a payment lost online like I have via the mail. And if I forget and it's due the next day or so I know with the internet it will be there on time compared to snail mail.




agreed !

I'm in my 40's and that would really suck if the internet went away... I wouldn't have a job anymore...

You know how much stuff would be royally messed up if we had no internet? I think it would impact lives far more than we initially think it would. Some telephones would stop working, some credit/ATM card transactions at retailers would stop working (some still do use copper phone lines), those instant ticketing kiosks in airports would stop running, e-mail would stop working *gasp*, TONS of issues we never thought of would pop up. My mother wouldn't be able to run her yoga studio because all her students payments, credits and information are all online.

Mortgage and loan brokers would even suffer greatly... many of their transactions happen over the internet these days. Real Estate would suffer a lot too... these days, most MLS listings are online and that's the only way agents can see new listings. God, Icould come up with hundreds of problems if there was no internet anymore.

Wanna know one really kind of weird thing I love about online shopping? Knowing that what I've received has never been tried on by anyone else. It's truly brand new. LOL

Just curious...

Is it possible to destroy the Internet, say by a hacker even a band of hackers working together, kinda like a powerful Digital WWW Doomsday Bug/s with the ability to permanently jam or destroy connections?


Should write a book about it & get movie rights go on Larry King.....

Actually REBEL, that's a pretty good idea. You could get Wil Smith and Jeff Goldblum to play the parts of the guys who save the world...wait a minute, I think that's already been done!

this has never occured to me that their could be no internet, FRIGGGIN HELL................ NO INTERNET

NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD
NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD
NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD
NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD NO INTERNET MAKE CHEMICAL- LICKER MAD

How about if all the business and financial records on the internet disappeared and the social stuff remained intact? Every time someone tried to reenter a financial record it could self destruct...

Wordly chaos as most of the people on earth can't live without the internet, but a lot of people will just hail up their shoulders and use papermail.

I'm an eBayholic, Facebook-holic, and Windows Live Messenger-holic. so I think if the internet ever dissapeared, the world would just implode lol.

It was be pretty tough, if not impossible. The internet is a distributed network, and not a single entity. You could potentially knock some areas out temporarily, but not for long.

For example, way back in the early 90's, there was a fire at the San Jose network HUB in California that effectively knocked internet out on the West coast of the USA for a few days. Of course, it didn't impact a ton of people, except us uber geeks who were connected at the time. But, within a few days, they had all the traffic re-routed and on the go again. This wouldn't happen today, the network is much larger and stronger than it was back then, and a push of a button can re-route traffic away from a damaged HUB. Back then San Jose was one of only a handful of HUBS on the West coast.

9-11 knocked out a lot of internet communications in New York, but again, it was up and running in fairly short order.

You'd pretty much need a physical attack on thousands of HUBS internationally these days to bring the internet down.

I personally think the days of monster viruses like Melissa are over. The OS's have become good enough to stop them, along with the 3rd party applications that prevent them as well. Not too mention, users are smarter now too. Melissa did nearly bring the internet down when it broke out. Bringing the internet down would require a massive distributed attack even bigger than Melissa. I find it hard to think that would happen again.

The internet was originally designed by the military, who wanted to create a communications system that couldn't be taken out by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I think it's designed to be indestructible. That was it's initial point.

Who would have imagined that a massive world of freewheeling joy and chaos could come out of a military invention?

'Tis true BlueZone. It was originaly envisaged as a reliable and robust way of giving launch instructions to America's land-based missile silo's.

As you say, whod'a thunk it back then that it would end up like it has ?

Meow Purr.