I have been sending somebody Garmin tracks tonight of a walk through Turkey. I thought I would also download new maps, but Garmin is down. Rumours are that they have been hit by ransomware. Apparently it has hit the app used by some small aircraft as well.
What would happen if that was along term problem? I see Russia has not tested an anti-satellite weapon (honest guv). I wonder how many people could find their way around the country without GPS. How many ships could navigate without GPS?
I remember just over 20 years ago we were preparing for the millenium disaster. It made me realise how dependent we were on this sort of technology. A lot of modern equipment uses GPS just to get an accurate time signal.
A glitch in the GPS system would mess up our world. And the USA has a switch that makes their GPS system fuzzy for others (it used to be switched on). This is one reason Europe has been putting up the Galileo GPS system – to make sure there is another option, just in case.
I remember looking at the result of the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident. The wind was blowing away from Tokyo. If the wind had blown toward Tokyo there would not have been many more people harmed, but the effect on the economy of Japan and the world economy could easily have broken the worlds financial systems.
I know a lot of people are worried about this virus killing people, but that doesn’t worry me so much. What worries me more is how close to the dark ages we are. In five minutes we could be launched back to the dark ages, it would not take much. The system of feeding the rich world has created a thinly stretched supply system where a small glitch can have such a big effect.