The economy has no offline mode.
Businesses moved everything online and threw out the paper backup. When the systems go down, most can’t switch to doing it by hand, so they just stop. A long enough outage could sink the economy.
One day without internet would cost the U.S. roughly $11 billion.1 In July 2024 a single faulty CrowdStrike update grounded flights, froze hospital systems and halted banks, costing the 500 biggest U.S. companies an estimated $5.4 billion.2
One day without the internet would cost the U.S. economy about $11 billion (Atlas VPN).
More numbers
organizations disrupted for about 15 hours when one Amazon Web Services region in Virginia failed in October 2025.3
upper estimate of losses to U.S. companies from that single outage.4
of daily GDP lost by a highly connected country for each day its internet is fully shut down (global).5
The damage from the October 2025 AWS outage “easily reaches hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint
The other side
Most outages last hours, not days, and large companies increasingly spread systems across regions and providers.
estimated insured losses from the October 2025 AWS outage, rated a moderate impact for insurers. CyberCube via OutageCost ↗
Why Anthony still holds this view
Insured losses are a fraction of the total damage, and the next outage could last longer.
For marketers
Have an offline playbook. Know how you would sell, serve customers and communicate if your platforms went down for a day.
For you
Keep some cash and a written list of key phone numbers at home.