Internet Down & Thinking on the Need for Old School Skills

I'm writing this blog post, and yet I have no idea when I will be able to post it.

You see, our internet service is out.

A first world problem, to be sure, but this experience has me thinking about the fragility of our modern life.

I was watching Netflix when it happened. The movie stopped streaming, and I happened to notice a red light on the router.

The word next to the red light?

Service.

OK, so I go into troubleshooting mode. I switch off the router, count to 10 slowly, and turn it back on.

After it resets, still no service.

I check the WiFi signals I can pick up from my house...it looks like everyone else is still connected...then again, my devices still show I'm connected.

I decided to walk to the clubhouse for our community. I discover that they too have lost their Wi-Fi.

As I mentioned before, the loss of Internet service is most definitely a first world problem. Honestly, the loss of other modern conveniences would have been a lot more uncomfortable.

There is a heat advisory all week, the temperature is currently over 100°F, and as someone who doesn't care that much for the heat, the loss of electricity and therefore air-conditioning would make life much more uncomfortable today. (I know, another first world convenience.)

This situation got me thinking about what a huge single point of failure my dependency on the Internet is. I'm always asking Alexa for a weather report, or asking Siri to play a favorite song.

We are moving across the country in less than a week, our satellite service has been put on hold, and we packed away our Blu-ray player and discs. If I really wanted to watch a movie, I couldn't do it without streaming from the Internet.

Let me think… What music do I have downloaded on any of my devices? That's what I'm limited to right now.

More importantly, what about an emergency situation? How would I get information? How prepared are we as a family to handle a variety of different situations that may arise?

This experience also got me to thinking about all of the advertisements I've seen for primitive skills classes. I think I'm going to look at those more closely now.

I guess I've been blessed with potentially compromising situations, that we're not very severe in nature. Those potentially compromising situations point out holes in the systems we use every day. This is just another example.

Maybe I need to move that hand crank emergency radio to the top of my wish list...

At any rate, I feel blessed to have had an opportunity to do some serious thinking about dependence on tech, and some brainstorming about how to get some backup systems in place.

Service is back now, so I'm going to finish that movie.