Ask HN: What happens if the transatlantic undersea cables are severed one day? | Hacker News Reader

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

6 pointstruckerbill12 comments

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?

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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/

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

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.

Maybe once there are more satellites with laser links. Most of the current ones can only route traffic between base stations and nearby clients, not between satellites.

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

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.

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

I don't think so. Russia has been cutting undersea cables for some time now, perfecting the techique. Search for 'russian yacht Ragnar' for example.

Just cutting cables is silly. More like that they are also tapping the cables.

If it was cut, it was most likely an accident.

I didn't find anything sea cable related to this yaht. I found a possible scenario in the UK Sun, but no actual report for an actual cutting. Actually, the Sun Article mentions that cutting such cable will have to be answered with torpedoing the submarine responsible or a cyber attack.

The sequence is more likely reversed. War and then the cables are cut.

The British did that in WW1 to force the Germans to use radio that the British could then receive also.

If there is a war, there would be cable cutting, however, cable cutting is so severe action, that it will require military response.

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