Comment by sim7c00
i like that you speak towards humans not being hopeless without the internet. its true. they depend on it a lot, but can easily adapt..
i do beleive though that it would be only a temporary thing.
on a local level you can likely still enable a lot of stuff. the internet would most likely die due to a decision to disable it rather than mass equipment failure. also very unlikely, as a ton of people must disable it at the same time, knowing all full well the result of doing so...
if they do that so u can try to get a radio broadcast up with some equipment thats strapped to houses and appartment buildings eveywhere these days. see if some antennas can be enabled for telephony locally etc. get the spark going for getting a network back up. for isp equipment the same. you can enable and if needed reprogram/configure a lot of field equipment and enable local networks. perhaps depending on your locality even more (internet exchange and isp data centers are close to some people atleast).
quite sure it would be up and running again in no time locally. at some point networks would merge and an internet would form again...
all in all there's really not a lot anyone can do about it if people want to use these existing networks and equipment. unless they start cutting power to very large areas etc. etc., remove the equipment everywhere, or ourposefuly destroy it... - this line of thought is extremely unrealistic.