Foone🏳️⚧️
I wonder exactly how much of the internet would evaporate instantly if you detonated a high-altitude nuclear weapon over the bay area?
I'm not saying it'd be a good idea to destroy silicon valley in a flash of nuclear fire, but just EMPing the area would take out a frightening amount of servers all at once.
Foone🏳️⚧️
I mean, Amazon would keep a lot of stuff online because you wouldn't be hitting their Seattle or east coast datacenters.
And Google would remain online because they build out network centers like they're specifically trying to survive ww3
Foone🏳️⚧️
Maybe that's their longterm plan?
Like those trees that poison the soil so they don't have to compete with weeds and stuff, because they're big enough to survive the poison, and a couple dandelions aren't.
Google is going to build network centers in every city and then ignite ww3, knowing they can survive it, but Yahoo and Bing can't.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Android is going to win the smartphone war because Google has fallout shelters in every area code and Cupertino got leveled by a dozen direct hits like it's Cheyenne Mountain.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Anyway as for servers in the bay area: while I've seen a lot of stuff move out of the bay, it is still very common for companies to have their main backend here. They'll have webservers and such elsewhere, but then all the batch processes and primary databases are still located here, because that's where their techs are.
Foone🏳️⚧️
Even some primarily-cloud-based companies still try to keep their main systems near here, for lower latency to their HQ
Foone🏳️⚧️
So probably what you'd see if the bay got EMP'd is that a lot of sites would still be up, but would quickly break as overnight batch processes and backend databases weren't working anymore
Foone🏳️⚧️
Like, ebay: you could probably still browse the listings, but I bet making new auctions wouldn't work anymore because it's trying to make an RPC call into a server that's lost all its magic smoke
Foone🏳️⚧️
@static Max Zorin is the only bond villain I root for
Briala
@foone Sounds like the plot of James Bond movie. Wait...
Foone🏳️⚧️
But if you really wanted to turn off the internet, you'd just need two warheads: SV and US-EAST, and you're good.
Foone🏳️⚧️
And before you think this is impossible, consider that the overall cost of the Manhattan project was about 34 billion (in 2023 dollars), and Google's annual revenue is around 300 billion.
Starting a minor nuclear war is just good business sense at this point.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@swetland that's where my VPSes are!
My roommate's polycule Minecraft server will be instantly destroyed, backups and all, if Google starts the Net War!
Brian Swetland
@foone Now I'm thinking maybe I should spin up a second VPS in a non-Fremont Linode datacenter in case you give people any ideas.
Foone🏳️⚧️
@flyingsaceur and especially if it was a real war and not just an emp'ing: how many of the people who know how to restore from off-site backups just got vaporized?
AN/CRM-114
@foone You’d think that there would be disaster recovery sites and replicatio. On the other hand, how well is all that tested and kept up to date?
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷
@foone I mean YOU are not saying it
Foone🏳️⚧️
@larsmb well obviously. You can't work in the bay area tech scene for a decade without having some Opinions about if it'd be a good thing for this whole area to get suddenly evaporated
Foone🏳️⚧️
@dolmen in the bay area? That'll never happen!
Olivier Mengué
@foone What about a major earthquake?
Foone🏳️⚧️
@quixoticgeek YUP
Quixoticgeek
@foone i remember a comment at srecon a couple of years ago. "We've taken a job that can be done from anywhere with an internet connection. And concentrated it ten square miles. In an earthquake zone "
０７６萌ＳＮＳ is a social network, courtesy of ０７６. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-beta0, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All ０７６萌ＳＮＳ content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.