3 ms·

Would a Google Doc survive nuclear war?

5 points by ilamont 4y ago

theandrewbailey 4y ago
Nuclear war? All it takes for your Google doc to go away is a bot deciding to not like you today, and close your account. Remember to pick up your takeout before that. https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/
twawaaay 4y ago
It is not a matter of "number of locations". The problem is that each location just to function requires so much infrastructure to operate and be available that it is very unlikely that it would be possible to continue any of these services.
LinuxBender 4y ago
Would a Google Doc survive nuclear war? A full scale nuclear war? No, not be any stretch of the imagination. All datacenters/POPs/Telco/ISP's above ground and/or connected directly to the grid would be conflagrated paper-weights after receiving upwards of 50,000 volts per meter [1] of induced energy. The EMF would easily jump all surge absorbing devices and isolation transformers. The cost of EMP hardening all of the infrastructure end-to-end would instant-sticker-shock any investors away from the idea. Google have a patent on EMP protection but I have no idea if they have implemented this on Google Docs. [2] Reading through the patent this appears to be for uses cases of regional / tactical EMP and not a global nuclear war. I can not find any documentation showing they implemented data replication for Google Docs in this manor, meaning that all content is replicated everywhere around the world. It would be great if someone from Google could say for certain how far this was implemented and who paid for it. Even better, if there is an API to query to show what regions specific data was replicated to and how they managed to side-step regulations like GDPR. I should add that this assumes nobody is using "Super-EMP" weapons. These theoretical devices could induce upwards of 200,000V/meter. China and Russia are purported to have experimented with these. Cue Fallout NV playlist [3] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse [2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100250497A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100250497A1/en [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MreKzYQ9uxc&list=PLE9B1B519657DCF3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MreKzYQ9uxc&list=PLE9B1B5196...
neverartful 4y ago
Let's keep it as an academic exercise and not find out.

5 points by ilamont 4y ago

Nuclear war? All it takes for your Google doc to go away is a bot deciding to not like you today, and close your account. Remember to pick up your takeout before that. https://takeout.google.com/ https://takeout.google.com/

twawaaay 4y ago

It is not a matter of "number of locations". The problem is that each location just to function requires so much infrastructure to operate and be available that it is very unlikely that it would be possible to continue any of these services.

LinuxBender 4y ago

Would a Google Doc survive nuclear war? A full scale nuclear war? No, not be any stretch of the imagination. All datacenters/POPs/Telco/ISP's above ground and/or connected directly to the grid would be conflagrated paper-weights after receiving upwards of 50,000 volts per meter [1] of induced energy. The EMF would easily jump all surge absorbing devices and isolation transformers. The cost of EMP hardening all of the infrastructure end-to-end would instant-sticker-shock any investors away from the idea. Google have a patent on EMP protection but I have no idea if they have implemented this on Google Docs. [2] Reading through the patent this appears to be for uses cases of regional / tactical EMP and not a global nuclear war. I can not find any documentation showing they implemented data replication for Google Docs in this manor, meaning that all content is replicated everywhere around the world. It would be great if someone from Google could say for certain how far this was implemented and who paid for it. Even better, if there is an API to query to show what regions specific data was replicated to and how they managed to side-step regulations like GDPR. I should add that this assumes nobody is using "Super-EMP" weapons. These theoretical devices could induce upwards of 200,000V/meter. China and Russia are purported to have experimented with these. Cue Fallout NV playlist [3] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse [2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100250497A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20100250497A1/en [3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MreKzYQ9uxc&list=PLE9B1B519657DCF3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MreKzYQ9uxc&list=PLE9B1B5196...

neverartful 4y ago

Let's keep it as an academic exercise and not find out.