What if the Internet was switched off?

“Email, telephone and television services would go dark, media organisations become unable to gather and disseminate news, governments struggle to communicate emergency information, commerce grinds to a halt, shops run out of food, the transport system collapses and electricity supplies are be severely disrupted” Says an article in the Independent.

Linx - the London Internet Exchange - handles 80 per cent of our internet traffic. What if it was taken out? What if other key connections to the rest of the world were taken out? Undersea cables and satellite stations could be physically sabotaged, of flooded with data from foreign “botnets”.

The UK has the ability in times of emergency to shut the Internet. But what if it was done for us? What crime could be performed even during a temporary outage of the Internet?
The Independent has an article (mentioned above) about some of the scenarios. But who really knows what would happen? Is it a Postman with an IT background?

Recently  thefts, estimated to have cost financial institutions $86 million, were perpertrated by one man. See Kingpin: How one hacker took over the billion-dollar cybercrime underground by Kevin Poulsen. (New Scentist review). What could be done with this money?

Maybe you would like to read my book "Cold Suspenders" with some more muses about this and other things?
Read an extract Here

http://www.coldsuspenders.com/ 
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/alvin+finch/cold+suspenders/6295639/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-Suspenders-Alvin-Finch/dp/1906210896
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