Ask HN: Should society practice for an internet outage?
Given the possibility of a solar flare or EMP, I wonder if "we" should take a day each year to practice not having the internet. Thoughts?
Finding what I'm looking for is still a challenge though. I tried taking those offline a few years ago using YaCy, which didn't work so well. Maybe elasticsearch? People say nice things about it.
I was actually thinking more in terms of the more passive items we rely on that would be knocked out by a solar flare similar to the Carrington Solar event of the 1850's (1).
For intance, a lot of people have gone completely digital. TV/local news is through the internet (no analog antenna), phones are cellular (no analog phone), banking is digital (no cash, checks, or now plastic cards) and so forth. And society is starting to meld around the assumption that the internet is ALWAYS up and running, so we feel safer working remotely, living further from hospitals, access to prescription drugs, or brick and mortar banks. There are a number of these weird little reliances that have emerged, not to mention things we rely on that we're not directly involved with as individuals (e.g. smart power grid management, complex logistics systems that govern land/sea/air global trade, banking, systems that manage hospitals/medical records).
I'm not even sure it's possible for the internet to shut down for an hour, let alone a day without wreaking havoc of societal stability.
Shouldn't we be practicing for such an event - just in case? Maybe 1 day a year?
The importance of this is much higher than the DR angle. Moving digital life back into our own equipment, and away from the valley's all-seeing eye, is vital to the future of mankind.