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What happens to the data service in the event of societal collapse and ground control systems are offline indefinitely? Will subscribers instantly lose data se
by pkraft 4y ago
What happens to the data service in the event of societal collapse and ground control systems are offline indefinitely? Will subscribers instantly lose data service or will they have access until they reach the end of their paid subscription?
- pjc50 4y agoObviously it's doomed, but I can't imagine the line of thinking under which this is a useful question.
- lsaferite 4y agoI do find it to be an oddly interesting thought though. What services would continue without interruption until they failed?
- UncleEntity 4y agoProbably all the ones which could be reasonably maintained. I think in the event of ‘societal collapse’ people would have bigger problems with trying to feed themselves than if some satellites or twitter went offline.
- pkraft 4y agoCoordinating with loved ones that are scattered around a region. Lora radio is one option but the range is limited.
- ianburrell 4y agoI’m disappointed that LTE Direct didn’t take off. It sounds like it has to be builtin to firmware or even requires hardware changes, and manufacturers didn’t add it. Probably cause couldn’t see way to make money. It would be perfect for short-range comms, replacing walkie-talkies and messaging. It would work with phones that people already have. For mid-range, cell towers on hilltops with link to other places would work. Except I heard cell towers need a lot of network infrastructure to work. And may consume too much power to work off solar. Simple solar-powered, self-contained cell sites would be useful for disasters and other events.
- Nextgrid 4y agoAfter a societal collapse there's probably still a need for valuable infrastructure such as power grid, etc which would require comms - and due to reduced manpower (or other hazardous conditions outside), satellite-based comms might actually become preferable to terrestrial/wire-based comms.
- UncleEntity 4y agoSure, but I doubt “survive zombie apocalypse” is a line item on any private satellite provider’s execution plan.
- mynameisvlad 4y agoI’m sure they have a BCDR plan, and I’m sure it says something like “in case of everything going down, we have bigger problems on our hands”. We never had an “apocalypse” scenario, but we had an “all of our dependent services are permanently down” to which the response was :shrug:
- ianburrell 4y agoBig problem is that all the satellite services need ground stations that need power and likely depend on the internet. It would be good if they worked without internet but that would take work that won’t be done without incentives. Ham radio would be fallback. The problem is that the technology is old and the bandwidth is limited. Long distance radio is in HF band, and the whole band is slightly bigger than Wifi channel. It also isn’t reliable cause depends on the ionosphere. It would be like going back 30 years.
- H8crilA 4y agoFarming in remote areas. Cities are death traps when a full scale war happens and they lose supplies, it's the same story every time. A typical picture is of some city dweller trading their valuable jewelry for some potatoes. Most recently it happened between Crimea and Rostov-on-Don, for example Mariupol. Also every time there's a major war between roughly equal forces people rediscover all kinds of things: there aren't nearly enough munitions, there aren't enough bunkers, trenches are overpowered defensive structures, we need more water and food and fuel, air dominance or at least air denial is critical, tanks and mechanized/armour units are actually very good, etc. etc.
- VLM 4y agoMost likely situation is being cancelled for political reasons. Some guy you didn't vote for decides to start a war with another guy you didn't vote for, so you get shut down.
- H8crilA 4y agoAnd you're comparing the loss of your swarm modem to an artillery shell popping your house like a balloon? Not to even mention nukes.
- xbar 4y agoDo you have a use case where Swarm's data service is going to be top-of-mind in event of societal collapse, above getting food or fighting your neighbors for fuel?