A volcanic eruption erupted in the mountains of Tonga. Here’s what it will take to reconnect.

“There is something very important that the first cable needs to be installed,” says Madory. Countries pay less for repairs first. When one of the ships arrives at the site, which can take several days, it drops its hook to break the ropes that run through the sea. The tow line, which sits in the deep sea, is as thin as a normal field pipe, wrapped around the top of the ship, where technicians work to repair the cracks. “Self-driving is not a very strong thing. Then it is slowly lowered into the water,” Kaufmann said.

There are, of course, additional factors that can make the task difficult. Tonga needs to be surrounded by ships that want to provide assistance to the country, which could mean using the internet to lag behind to save lives, restore energy, and provide much-needed food and water. The exact location of the fracture can also make things difficult: usually, the long exit comes from the beach, the deep rope – and it is very difficult to reach and pull from the ground. That is why we do not consider it necessary to have access to the cable networks of coastline, which facilitates the interconnectedness of the Internet. Madory states: “Tonga is a far cry from the internet. “When you go out in the middle of the internet, you will have fewer choices.”

The end of the internet shows how the global internet can rely on a single failure. “It is one of the myths that disputes the myth that the internet was designed to fight nuclear war,” says Alan Woodward, a professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey in the UK. “Chewing gum ties a lot.” Woodward points out that recurring events such as volcanic eruptions are difficult to resolve, but countries should work to save unemployment through much of the seawater, as well as those that follow different routes so that what is happening does not affect several lines.

However, layoffs are not cheap, especially in a small country of more than 100,000 people like Tonga. Also, in the case of a massive eruption, the movement of the lake would cause every second cord to break, even if placed on the other side of Tonga.

Andrew Bennett, an internet analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said: “While the UK or US will not be like Tonga, there are tensions between countries and conflicts.[around] discussing things like underwater ropes that push us to the most broken places. You do not want to be in a place where you have independent cords attached to each other’s wires. ”

Bennett demonstrates two ways to close the communication gap. One is the rapid depletion of satellite internet — and satellite star clusters are being released into the atmosphere as we speak. Someone is contributing a lot of money to the problem. “If you look at online services as a way to help people, countries that can afford to pay for it and give it to others,” he said. Closing digital distribution around the world by 2030 is possible and only 0.2% of total national revenue of OECD countries annually, according to the agency.

Since the internet appears to be the fourth most important activity, along with heat, energy, and water, the long-term outflow of 100,000 people is a catastrophe — including the immediate effects of the explosion. And it shows the weakness of other parts of the internet, especially outside the rich Western countries. Woodward notes: “The Internet is not a dead end. “But it’s always a little confusing on the edge.”