What would happen to you, your business, your community and even all the UK if all the UK communications networks went silent for three days?

• Nice one, you think if you happen to be at home with a well-stocked larder and all your nearest and dearest are safe and close to hand; just relax, enjoying the peace and quiet.
• But how long before the power fails too and the beer or wine is no longer cool and you can't cook and, in any case, the fridge and freezer are off so your food is slowly rotting, and your central heating stops working.
• Not so nice if you have children away at school - are they safe? when will they come home? will they be able to get home safely?
• And what if you and/or your partner are also out of the house and maybe too far away to walk home as the transport systems, at first over-crowded, slowly grind to a halt and the roads gridlock?
• And it is getting dark and the hotels are full; where is it safe to rest and wouldn't it be nice to find something to eat and drink?
• And what if you have an elderly relative who depends on your regular calls or those of a professional carer?
• And a fire breaks out down the street and noone can call the Fire service or the Police when the corner shop is looted.
• And you walk to a local supermarket to find the shelves empty and there is no petrol.
• And the water taps slow to a trickle.
• And our Police and Military would be very thin on the ground if serious disruption occurred.

Fortunately in the UK this is not a very likely scenario but our dependence on communications systems is increasing to the point where, at least in the short-term, we value communications more highly than water.

And this progression will inevitably occur if the outage persists long enough.

• In past times, we might all have watched BBC1 on analogue TV but now only 4 million can view BBC1 on digital FreeView, with Sky and Virgin Media needed to get up to similar coverage and limitations occur due to dependence on networks for contributions and distribution.
• In earlier times, we would have reverted to listening to Long Wave AM - still there on (some) Radio 4, but increasingly being displaced by FM and DAB; would enough people still have LW radios and are there network dependencies here too?

How well could the Police and Government track the situation and how well can they now communicate with us at home and in the streets and other public places? Could the Emergency Services cope?

• Would centralised messages to "stay indoors and remain calm" be enough any more?
• How can 60 million people pass on "I'm OK" or "Help me" messages?
• How much damage would be inflicted on our interconnected economy before some form of normality is reinstated?
• How much of our internationally mobile businesses would we have lost, possibly forever?
• How close to a post-earthquake Haiti would we descend?

A few days outage may well take several weeks to restore, longer and it could be months; are we prepared as individuals, families, businesses?

Our expectations may need to change:

• Maybe restoring SMS-based Twitter might be far more effective than restoring broadcast TV or introducing a reverse-999 system?
• Maybe restoring limited local power is easier and faster than restoring a fully-synchronised national grid?
• And getting hospitals and related emergency services back into action
• And then there's restoring basic food distribution, care services ...
• And FaceBook access may now be more urgent than voice services.

Or can we just assume that our communications networks are sufficiently diverse and resilient that the above is a worse than worse case scenario?

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