This actually happens from time to time in the real world, so it is possible. And at least back in the early 00's when I was working in this industry, there were only 2 ships in the entire Pacific capable of doing repairs. It was not unusual to wait 3-4 weeks before a break could be repaired. Luckily they are very rare, but if an intentional act was carried out to destroy many of them at the same time, the internet would grind immediately to a halt. The satellite bandwidth available is tiny by comparison.
Easier to claim a CME destroyed a bunch of repeaters though. Same problem. Same time to fix. But much more plausible way to get rid of many at the same time. A single high placed technician working on direct authority of the CEO could manually disable multiple repeaters, and chances are once they were marked as down with the CME explanation, nobody would ever think they to check if they were intentionally switched off. Only 2 people in the entire company would ever know. With actual breaks, there would be an entire legion of people to pay off with multiple possible whistle blowers.
If the internet does go down, I expect some variation of this story. And I don't believe for an instant it genuinely will be due to natural causes.
This actually happens from time to time in the real world, so it is possible. And at least back in the early 00's when I was working in this industry, there were only 2 ships in the entire Pacific capable of doing repairs. It was not unusual to wait 3-4 weeks before a break could be repaired. Luckily they are very rare, but if an intentional act was carried out to destroy many of them at the same time, the internet would grind immediately to a halt. The satellite bandwidth available is tiny by comparison.
Easier to claim a CME destroyed a bunch of repeaters though. Same problem. Same time to fix. But much more plausible way to get rid of many at the same time. A single high placed technician working on direct authority of the CEO could manually disable multiple repeaters, and chances are once they were marked as down with the CME explanation, nobody would ever think they to check if they were intentionally switched off. Only 2 people in the entire company would ever know. With actual breaks, there would be an entire legion of people to pay off with multiple possible whistle blowers.
If the internet does go down, I expect some variation of this story. And I don't believe for an instant it genuinely will be due to natural causes.