What would things be like without the satellites that we use for communication?

Wifi isn’t satellite based.

On the other hand, if Russia does that, that may lead to far worse problems for human convenience (and survival), in the aftermath of whatever escalated warfare erupts.

Too many to attempt to list.

We would be in a world of shit.

We’re FAR too dependent on so much technology for our basic needs, but we left those techs vulnerable to attack.

China is alleged to have a cyber attack at the gates. Officials have just finished speaking about the reality that China could turn off the lights, whenever they want.

There are little, to no alternative plans, if there are large scale cyber attacks on our infrastructures.
If you want to know why on Earth we didn’t spend the money to ensure our tech was protected, just look at the USS Gerald Ford (Aircraft Carrier.)
$13,000,000,000 just to build it.

Two more are currently under construction.

We just gave up on a multi-billion dollar helicopter. That type of crap happens ALL the time.

Would be like 1850’s. Little House on the Prairie.

I mean, if Russia deploys the weapon and destroys western satellites, it will coincide with a simultaneous destruction of under-sea communication cables (if they are competent, of course, which is not a given), which will cripple international terrestrial communications.

^World of shit.

@MrGrimm888 China wouldn’t just turn off the lights, it’s also our heat plus all of communications rely on power, electric power, power to charge batteries, etc. Forget it. In winter, it would be dystopian.

It is actually a direct threat to Elon Musk and his Starlink system. In some ways, Russia is retaliating against Ukraine, Ukraine has used Starlink to keep line of communication open during the war.

Hit or miss with the internet. Many sites will be down, many cell providers will have issues. But, some stuff will still work fine. The internet is a patchwork of communication transport technologies such as ROADM, SONET, Microwave, and even RF. Old TDM based tech will be in trouble as many require GPS for timing sync but fortunately telecom companies have mostly moved to packet based technology that will be unaffected. Some old TDM may be running with cesium clocks and will be fine. Down traffic will be rerouted to the circuits that still work but that will slow them down greatly. We’ll mostly be fine though.

@jca2 I get it. Power. Water. Everything.

The Amish will be mostly unaffected. Doomsday preppers will be mostly fine.

@Blackwater_Park I’m not concerned about long term. The short term could be rough.

All of the above, plus the medical world would be largely incapacitated. Not just ICU and all the other machines, but medical records would be inaccessible. Docs would have to rely on paper records…if there are any, and little old people trying to remember what’s wrong with them and when such and such happened.

I remember working in a medical office and some of the older ladies, when asked what medications they take, would say, “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s a little yellow pill.”

@MrGrimm888 short-term will be just fine. There is hardly any Internet going over satellites. Like half a percent. There is not much bandwidth. You could knock out all of them and the big issue will be TDM based systems that use GPS for timing. That’ll knock out a patchwork of things but it’ll just slow things down for most people. Civilians probably won’t even notice. It would be hard to knock down the whole GPS constellation. Russia would knock out satellites to cripple military comms and surveillance.

Well, pretty much as they were before we had them—right? Or is nothing really reversible?

@Blackwater _Park That’s some good information. I am most concerned with a scenario where the power just goes out in major cities. And or local water access/sanitation.
@smudges makes excellent points too.
I’m worried about the American people.
Kansas City couldn’t celebrate a SuperBowl in their home city, without a mass shooting. I am 100% certain that there were likely many arrests, and small fights that didn’t make the news.

CHAOS.

Chaos is humanity’s default setting. In America, there are more guns than people. Certainly exponentially more bullets.
Many people who have stockpiled weapons will be itching to use them.

For those who have seen one or all of the “Purge” movies (there’s a series too,) THAT is exactly what would happen if the power was out for a week or two.

Small business owners will start shooting looters, and there would be general civil unrest in most denser populated areas. Even if the hospitals somehow remain functional (and they would be, to a degree,) it would be potentially dangerous to travel to population centers for medical care.
Drug addicts would be storming pharmacies, and veterinary hospitals for opiods.
I never get to use the word “pandemonium.” That is what I, and no doubt many others think will happen.
Survivalists/prepers, whatever you call them, would likely see the first week as an opportunity to get ahead in the new dystopian country.

Personally. I would probably have to try to aquire the rare medicine I need to survive my liver transplant. If that means stealing or killing for it, that’s my only option.
Only with a surplus of that med, could I then flee civilization. Which would be my goal.

How many people are in a boat, like mine?

How many parents will raid pharmacies for their children’s meds, or steal baby formula/food?
How many homeless, and neglected mentally ill people would come out from America’s massive homeless population and roam cities they have been displaced from?

With no ability to access electronic banking services, there will be a LOT of people with probably zero cash. If banks DO work, they’d have to shutter their doors or too many people would take their money out. THAT would bankrupt a lot of wealthy people. People who mainly profit from society’s misfortunes.

Every summer (hurricane season) here in Charleston SC, we usually have a hurricane heading our direction that causes a portion of locals to flee inland. This typically results in complete gridlock on the only major roadways out. It’s not uncommon for many thousands of people/families to be stuck on I-26 for a couple days.
Gas stations run out of gas. Bottled water becomes expensive. Sales of generators skyrocket.
After a bad storm, it can be weeks before you get power, water, and other services back.
Anyways. It’s just not human nature, to handle mass adversity well.

Katrina, and N.O. comes instantly to mind. In that case, the US government simply abandoned a major US city. The defenseless, poor, old, handicapped or neglected were left to die.

When the storm was over, our republican president (GWB,) could/would not coordinate efforts to help the city until videos of the plight and crime got the attention of the international community.
But there were people shooting at rescue helicopters. The criminal and/or strong elements of the city took over.

”...Kansas City couldn’t celebrate a SuperBowl in their home city, without a mass shooting.”

That’s got nothing to do with satellites or even the Internet. On average, there has been more than one mass shooting every day this year and last in the US. Stay on topic.

Statistically, the colonies can not go a day without at least one mass shooting. If communications and services shut down on a global level, the already uncivilised population will descend into outright barbarism.

@MrGrimm888, maybe Ted Koppel’s book Lights Out. A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath would answer your questions.

It came out in 2016, and I read it then. Sure, there have been some changes since then, but I would expect that most of it is still applicable. Certainly the depictions of evacuating the cities are harrowing enough, as is the picture of what the power grid actually looks like.

No GPS, slow Internet, poor long distance phone calls. At least the distribution of Internet ads will also be slowed. Yay!

@zenvelo The shooting is an example of our society, in good times.
In my opinion, people who carry guns, are a great concern, in a time of despair.

Observing that mass shootings do occur with such frequency, can give us an idea of how things would be, in the type of nation this would potentially become if the poo hits the fan.

As you are not the OP, AND this thread is in Social, the topic can wander.

We would not be able to send and receive messages and such from overseas with any rapidity. Everything would have to be sent via ocean cables, like back in the 50’s before the first satellites.

@kritiper Ocean cables are fiber optic these days. It’s speed of light fast through the medium and microseconds of delay through regen hops. Less than 1% of the internet goes over satellite. Satellite has a small bandwidth.

Akamai distributes internet ads via satellite so that everyone gets the same ads at the same time. Without satellites, you might get stale ads or see placeholder squares while the ads come through hard lines.

Satellite is faster yes, there are fewer hops. Just little B.W. I know some stock trading is done over microwave networks because it beats the fiberoptic based systems in terms of speed.

^Communication can be done through laser now. That’s supposed to be what we will use to communicate the vast distances of space.
But I suppose that would require “line of sight.” So. The satellite array is set up to keep line of sight, right? Because we can’t communicate wireless without something to bounce the signals around the curvature of the Earth.
I’m not a communications expert. But that’s my loose understanding of how it works.

Maybe the US should have ancient-like fire towers, to communicate over distances without wires or satellites.

I bet some drone hobbyists could throw something together pretty fast, in an emergency.
They’ve been amazingly useful in the war in Ukraine.

We have that, it’s called microwave communications.

^I gotta read up on that.

Microwave comm – 30 miles at a time. Satellite comm covers the whole country at once.

That can’t be right, the earth is flat

Hahaha ha! :)