Imagine waking up one morning, scrolling through your phone, and suddenly—nothing. You try to open your favorite Po*nTube and you see only darkness. No Wi-Fi, no mobile data, and not even a single bar of reception.
The internet, the thing we’ve built our lives (and the whole world) around, has gone completely silent. Zero. Zilch!
If an apocalyptic event struck, for example, a massive solar flare, a global cyberattack, or something more bizarre like a reality glitch—the first few hours and days would be complete and utter chaos.
Banks, stock markets, social media, streaming services— everything down. Governments would totally scramble, sending out emergency radio broadcasts, assuming those still worked.
The more dependent a country is on digital infrastructure, the harder it would be hit. Places like Estonia, where even voting is done online, would be thrown into pure confusion and chaos. Well, the same would happen with every developed country.
So, first, let’s see what actually makes the internet. How do we have constant connections from almost anywhere?
Interesting fact: The Carrington Event of 1859 was a massive solar storm that fried telegraph lines. If it happened today, it could wipe out satellites and internet infrastructure worldwide.
What Makes Up the Internet?
Many people think of the internet as Wi-Fi signals and websites that are floating somewhere in the cloud, but in reality, it’s a huge physical network.
Here’s a rough breakdown of what keeps it running:
| Component | Estimated Quantity Worldwide |
| Data Centers | ~8,000 major facilities |
| Undersea Cables | ~500, covering 1.3 million km |
| Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) | ~700 globally |
| Fiber Optic Cables | Millions of km in land networks |
| Routers and Switches | Billions across networks |
| Satellites | 10000+ communication satellites (including Starlink) |
| Power Stations for Data Centers | Thousands needed to sustain uptime |
| DNS Root Servers | 13 main root servers worldwide |
| Web Servers | Hundreds of millions and perhaps more than a billion |
Some of those parts are more important than others. But if you destroy key elements —like undersea cables or data centers, well then the internet becomes fragmented or collapses entirely.
However, the internet infrastructure is so interconnected and redundant that something truly catastrophic would need to occur for internet to stop functioning globally or across entire continents.
So, what could that be?
Interesting fact: The first undersea cable was laid in 1858, connecting the U.S. and the U.K. via telegraph.
What Kind of Apocalypse Would Shut Down the Internet?
Not all apocalypses would kill the internet. Asteroid impact might completely wreck cities, but some satellites and underground data centers could keep working for a while.
For a true internet collapse, we’d need something that attacks the core infrastructure—power grids, communication lines, and satellites.
For example:
Solar Storms
A massive solar flare, like the Carrington Event of 1859, could fry satellites and electrical grids worldwide. Without power, servers, routers, and fiber optic networks would go offline.
And unlike a cyberattack, which targets specific systems, this would be like erasing all connections at once.
Interesting fact: The 1989 Quebec blackout was caused by a solar storm, proving our power grids are vulnerable to space weather.
Cyberwarfare
A coordinated cyberattack from a rogue nation or AI gone rogue could really cripple the internet. Malware targeting root DNS servers—the internet’s address book—could make websites unreachable.
Additionally, if hackers somehow gain control of undersea cables, they could isolate entire continents.
Interesting fact: In 2007, Estonia suffered a massive cyberattack that took down banks, media, and government websites for days.
EMP Attack
A high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (EMP), caused by a nuclear explosion in space, would fry electronics across an entire continent. Computers, cell towers, and data centers would be reduced to scrap.
Unlike a normal blackout, this wouldn’t be a temporary outage—it would take months if not years to recover.
Interesting fact: The Starfish Prime test in 1962 knocked out electronics in Hawaii, 900 miles away from the detonation site.
AI Takeover
This is a weird one but let’s go with it. What if AI decided humans were a problem? If an advanced AI gained control of key systems, it could shut down global internet access, cut power to cities, and manipulate information.
Whether through malevolence or a misguided attempt to “fix” the world, an AI apocalypse wouldn’t involve explosions—just silence.
However, in this case, AI would most likely destroy itself also as it can not function without the internet.
Yet.
Mass Infrastructure Collapse
If society crumbled due to economic collapse, disease, or resource depletion, the internet would slowly fall apart. Data centers need technicians, power, and cooling. Without maintenance, even the biggest servers would overheat and fail. Within months, the internet would really be a relic of the past.
Interesting fact: The Library of Alexandria was the greatest knowledge repository of its time. It burned and almost everything was destroyed. Well, we could look at today’s internet as some kind of global knowledge repository and it could get destroyed one day.
How Humanity Would Collapse Without the Internet?
If the internet vanished, modern civilization wouldn’t just slow down—it would completely disentangle. Almost everything that we use today is in one way or another related to the internet.
So, let’s look at just a few potential consequences as listing them all would take an entire book.
Money Becomes Worthless
With no internet, banks wouldn’t function. ATMs would stop working. Credit cards would be useless. People might panic at first, but after a few days, stores would stop accepting money entirely because they wouldn’t be able to verify balances or restock supplies.
Interesting fact: During the Greek financial crisis, people resorted to barter markets where they traded food, clothes, and even medical services.
Gas Stations Run Dry
Most gas stations rely on digital payment systems. No internet means no credit card transactions. Fuel trucks, guided by GPS and online logistics, would stop deliveries. Within days, cities would grind to a complete halt as cars, trucks, and even emergency vehicles run out of gas.
Interesting fact: After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, gas stations in New York and New Jersey ran dry, causing mile-long lines and fights at the pumps.
The Power Grid Shuts Down
Power plants rely on online monitoring and automated control systems. Without them, maintenance becomes impossible. Blackouts would start as minor disruptions but would soon become permanent in many areas. Factories would stop producing, and hospitals would run out of backup power.
Interesting fact: In 2003, a software glitch led to a massive blackout across the U.S. and Canada, affecting 50 million people. It took just one system failure to trigger it.
Sewage Floods the Streets
Cities depend on automated water treatment and sewage systems. No internet means no remote monitoring, and with power failing, pumps would stop working. Sewage would back up, flooding streets with human waste. Clean water would stop flowing from taps. Diseases would follow.
Interesting fact: During the 1995 Chicago heatwave, power failures knocked out water pumps, leaving thousands without drinking water.
Theft and Violence
Supermarkets would empty within days. Pharmacies would be robbed for medicine. With no police communication systems working, law enforcement would be overwhelmed. Gangs would take over parts of cities. Those without weapons or supplies would be at the mercy of whoever had them.
Interesting fact: After Hurricane Katrina, looting spread across New Orleans, with people stealing everything from food to luxury cars.
A Slow Collapse of Everything
With no internet, society wouldn’t collapse in one day. It would be a slow-motion disaster. Cities would break down first. Rural areas might last longer but would eventually suffer from supply chain failures. Some communities might rebuild using local resources, but global civilization as we know it would be over.
So, for now, we listed the biggest worldly consequences of the internet collapsing, however, let’s also spend some time on the internet itself.
Starting with the obvious ones – the websites.
Interesting fact: After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe entered the Dark Ages, where trade, literacy, and infrastructure crumbled for centuries.
What Would Happen to Websites?
Without power, servers hosting websites would start shutting down. Some would last longer—data centers with backup generators might keep Facebook or Google running for a while. But without fuel deliveries, even those would go dark.
And as mentioned, the internet isn’t a single thing; it’s millions of machines talking to each other. If one goes down, no big deal.
But if power grids fail worldwide, the dominoes start falling. Websites wouldn’t just “go offline”—they’d rot, like abandoned buildings, full of dead links and missing images.
The most visited places on the internet—Google, Wikipedia, Amazon—would turn into useless husks.
Interesting fact: There’s a bunker in Norway called the Arctic World Archive that stores copies of important websites and data on film reels, meant to last for centuries.
Social Media in the Apocalypse
Twitter, Facebook, TikTok—gone. But for a while, remnants would remain. Offline caches on phones and computers would let people scroll through old posts, reading yesterday’s arguments about trivial nonsense.
Some would laugh at the absurdity; others would sink into withdrawal. The world’s most addicted internet users would experience something worse than nicotine withdrawal.
With no new content, influencers would become irrelevant. You could have 10 million followers, but if the internet is dead, you’re just another person looking for food and shelter.
Interesting fact: In 1977, the Voyager Golden Record was launched into space with sounds and images from Earth. If aliens find it, they might assume we all listen to whale songs and Chuck Berry.
The Black Market Internet
Not everyone would accept the death of the internet. Somewhere, in a bunker or a basement, tech-savvy survivors would build a black market internet. Picture old-school dial-up networks, ham radio signals carrying code, and pirate satellites repurposed for secret communication.
The government—what’s left of it—might try to control access, but hackers and rogue engineers would certainly keep the digital flame alive.
Local mesh networks—small, localized internet alternatives—might emerge in cities and towns.
If you had an old router, a bit of know-how, and enough people connected, you could create a miniature version of the internet, at least for trading information or sharing survival tips in your neighborhood.
Interesting fact: During the Arab Spring, activists used mesh networks and Bluetooth communication to bypass internet shutdowns.
The Weird Scenario
If there’s one thing history teaches us, it’s that humans are weird. In a full collapse, you’d get strange internet survivors—groups treating old data centers like temples, worshipping YouTube (and Po*nTube) videos as relics of the past.
Maybe someone would stumble upon a half-functioning server and discover the last preserved TikTok dance, treating it as an ancient ritual.
Others might try to create a digital time capsule—burning the entirety of Wikipedia, Reddit, and 4chan onto hard drives, sealing them away in vaults for future generations to find.
Whether those future people would understand any of it is another question. What if all they found was a backup of Twitter (X)?
Would they think we were all insane?
Most likely.
Anyhow at the end, one question remains…
Interesting fact: Scientists have stored data in strands of DNA, meaning in theory, all human knowledge could be encoded into something as small as a sugar cube.
Could We Rebuild the Internet?
Let’s say humanity survives. Would we get the internet back? Maybe, but it wouldn’t be the same. The infrastructure would take years to rebuild.
Who would control it? Governments? A powerful tech elite? Some new ruling class of underground hackers?
The internet of the future might be smaller, localized, and heavily guarded. Access might become a privilege, reserved for elites or secret societies.
Or maybe it would be rebuilt from scratch—simpler, decentralized, and free from the corporate chokeholds of the past.
Or, if we’re really unlucky, the internet returns but only as a tool of control— every login monitored, every search tracked, every action dictated by whoever holds the digital keys.
Hmm, isn’t it already like that?
Maybe, in the end, losing the internet wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.
