I agree with you that if we couldn't get the internet back up then it would likely imply civilizational collapse, especially given that the internet was especially designed around rerouting protocols that should bypass major points of failure. As I understand it, 'survivability in the face of failure' was one of DARPA's principle design criteria for ARPANET/internet, if that didn't happen or couldn’t be sustained then things would be pretty terrible.

Let me backtrack for a moment, the title of the original article is 'What Would You Do If The Internet Went Away?' As there is little of substance in the article to cover the many of the potential issues raised in the title, I based my comments (a) principally to address that title, which I did in the context of a Gedanken experiment where the title alone set the conditions/limits on my reply; and, (b) as I was also replying to mikewarot's post, my comments also had to address what he said within that context. The fact that mikewarot also threw in the matter of a world without computers complicated matters because the thought experiment would allow for a world where there were computers and no internet. In fact, my initial draft rely omitted computers; I only added them later to avoid being accused of avoiding his point.

In essence, the thrust of my reply was only to consider a world without the internet, at no time was it my intention to omit any communications facility or service that was in existence up until immediately prior to the introduction of the internet. That's to say my premise was to assume that we would be returning to a world that was essentially identical to the one we had around the mid 1980s (i.e.: the remnants of the telegraph/telex service, facsimile, telephone, radio broadcasting, radio communications including HF/long distance shortwave, television, communications satellites and submarine cables were all still in existence). If I had not assumed this then I'd fully agree with you that my optimism would have been badly misplaced.

The issue of Eric Flint's 1632 series and the rebooting of society from that level is a bridge too far for my rather limited brain to contemplate in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, I have given some contemplation to how far back in years that our present-day society with its knowledge of the internet would, in terms of technology, have to revert before the mid 1980s point before society would break down. I think that point is some 50 years earlier in the mid 1930s, that's the point where AM radio and AM radio broadcasting had reached maturity and where the supporting infrastructure was sufficiently developed to communicate with most of the world. I base this on the remarkable but horrible success that Goebbels and Nazis had in galvanizing the German population, which they did with little more than the cheap, simple-to-build Volksempfänger AM radio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger. (For years, I've considered AM radio to be one of the most important and pivotal technologies of the 20th Century, it's simple, cheap and allows effective worldwide communications. It would be the first and most important of the electronics technologies that would be re-established after any civilizational collapse.)*

"<…> there were plans in place from the Army Industrial College, and their graduates including Dwight Eisenhower who had done surveys in advance to figure out the logistics of turning the manufacturing base around. <…> For Example, there is a Vocational School in Chicago that taught how to work on airplane avionics for the Navy during the war."

Right, but that turnaround would not have happened (or happened within sufficient time) had it not been for a small but brilliant and very influential group of experts such as Alfred Lee Loomis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Lee_Loomis; Vannevar Bush, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush and others. In my opinion, that photograph of Loomis, Bush, Lawrence and others is one of the most significant of the war as only a handful of other people had such an influential effect on the war as they did.

"<…> Heck, Lincoln used telegraph to manage the Civil War in the US."

You may be interested in this 1865 Civil War photograph that's on the Library of Congress (LOC) website titled 'Alexandria, Virginia. Soldiers' Rest' https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/civwar/item/20186722.... At first, it looks completely unremarkable, and seemingly the only reason why it's on the LOC website is that it's a Civil War photograph. However, some years back when I was mucking about trying to find the ideal gamma curves to optimize the problems with the crushed grayscales caused by the fact that those old collodion emulsions were only sensitive to blue light (meaning reds turn out overly dark or black), I discovered by accident that there's more to this photograph than meets the eye. The photograph as it appears on the LOC website is somewhat over exposed and the sky is washed out (the fault is with the original not the scan—LOC scans are always excellent).

When this over exposure is corrected for, you will see three telegraph wires seemingly appear out of nowhere, they completely span the width of the photograph, not only that but you can also see where one of the wires has been neatly joined midway. Discovering the telegraph wires in this image give it new meaning and importance (given the then newness of the telegraph and its importance in that War). I am unaware if anyone else has discovered† the fact. [To view the telegraph wires, from the link first select the high resolution TIF file, 89.6MB (in the lower resolution photos the wires are indistinct). To make the wires visible I'd suggest using Photoshop. Under 'Adjustments', select 'Shadow/Highlight' then tick 'Show More Options', now under 'Highlights' increase 'Amount' and decrease 'Total Width' until they appear.]

"<…> and have no desire to return to those days, they sucked!'* Agree totally, nevertheless we actually managed to live though them successfully. ;-)

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† Discovering seemingly hidden items in LOC's old Civil War photographs can be fun. I've found what I reckon is the oldest photograph in existence containing images of rat poo (1865) and I challenge anyone to find an earlier one. If anyone wants details of the photo's/LOC's reference number then I'll provide it and suggest where to look (as it's not easy to find).