On the back of a BBC News article “FBI arrest man over alleged Amazon centre bomb plot” Hong Kong Radio 3’s Phil Whelan asked me the question- Can you kill the internet”

The short answer is most probably Yes!

Countries regularly turn off the internet or limit acces to it, so politically it could and is being done.

Storms, tornadoes and other weather and nature calamities have been known to cause internet outages.

Culturally, some societies and religious observers ban or restrict internet usage, so again yes it can be done.

And what about the ultimate parental punishment, banning a child’s internet access as punishment for bad behaviour.

But despite these examples and the attempt of the bomber in the BBC article to blow up a server, these are all temporary or localised examples.

In reality anything is possible, but getting the internet genie back in the bottle, that’s a tough one.

98% of all internet traffic travels through about 380 underwater cables and 2% through satellites. The theory that cutting one cable takes it all out just doesn’t hold.

So what will kill the internet – newer, better, faster technology and one day it will come along, just as surely as LP records, 8 track, cassette tapes, and CD have all been supersseded.

But for now, despite an occasional hitch, slow down or outage its here to stay.

Have a listen now as Phil and I work our way through this conundrum and explore the impacts of a hypothetical permanent loss of the internet might cause.