Finance with Don Fraser Fraser Farm Finance

Right at the start of lockdown, an article appeared in the New Zealand Herald setting out how the world would cope with failed internet through attack, failure on radiation from the sun.

It probably all sounds a bit far-fetched, but we were trained at university to consider such possibilities. Now I’m no expert on the internet and its complex working, but I can troll through all the possibilities and project how it all might look. It is clear there have already been many cyber attacks on countries. I think North Korea effectively shut down Sony when they threatened to publish something detrimental on North Korea. There is constant noise about US and Iran over cyber attacks on each other. A big bolt of radiation from the sun may shut down the world internet in seconds.

So, let’s just try to imagine how it might look, what might happen and maybe what the remedy might look like.

Everything, like everything, is now run by computers and the internet. Recently, during lockdown a digger went through a cable in Matamata taking out much of the greater Waikato on Vodafone. You could not work online, teachers could not connect with their students, all of our phones, including the landlines were down. It was quiet in our house for sure. Imagine banks being frozen, the internet not working, cashpoint machines not functioning; you could not pump petrol, your monthly dairy cheque could not be posted online, and the list goes on, and on. Nothing, like nothing would work. You would not be able to phone anybody, let alone deal with an emergency. You could not draw cash or know how much money you had in the bank. All the history held in the cloud would vanish.  Imagine that?

You have no cash, so how do you buy food? The food supply would grind to a halt. If you have a bit of cash, you could trade a little until your cash ran out. The petrol pumps would not work, and you’d be unable to pay for the gas in any event as everything is controlled by the internet, so you cannot go anywhere.

Power would cease and the lights would go out, everything would shut down. Remember dams and power systems are all run by the internet. Water would also cease to flow out of the tap as all the pumping systems are controlled by wi-fi and the internet. The nights would be a world blackout.

What is the first thing we run out of in a crisis? Not money, not food, but water!

This all sounds a little dystopian and I’m no doomsday person, but I am a realist and have a brain that considers all options. I do have a modest gravity-feed rainwater system at home, gas cookers and I always keep my vehicles full of fuel. Scary? Not really, but it is something to consider. It is important because our very wellbeing is increasingly dependant on the internet. The powers that be are trying to make us a cash-less society; they do not want us to even have cheques anymore.

Have we conveniently forgotten what we know? Have we become overrun with modernism? Have we forgotten the lessons we learnt?

Now, I’m not saying it is going to happen, but it could. Would it be worse than a pandemic?  Probably much worse. How would we survive it? The wealth of the world is dependant on trade. All that as we know it would come to a screaming halt.

I guess pilots would be able to land planes on manual, but could they see the runways if it was night-time or foggy? Older tractors and cars would go if you could get fuel, but by-and-large the world would come to a very ugly halt.

The remedy to get it all going again is way beyond my brain and do they have systems in place to restart it all? I hope so.

As I often say: my writing is not a statement of fact, it is an endeavour to make people think about life and the issues that we may face from time to time. It is to try to make you think about what could happen and what we may need to do ‘future-proof’ ourselves, our families, our businesses and our country. Could it be, that a world internet failure may well be more catastrophic than this pandemic?

Disclaimer – these are the opinions of Don Fraser of Fraser Farm Finance. Any decisions made should not be based on this article alone and appropriate professional assistance should be sought.

Don Fraser is principal of Fraser Farm Finance and a consultant to the farming industry.  Contact him on 021 777 675.