What would happen if all satellites stopped working?

A lot of people would like to stay away from the media for a while, as well as being able to take a vacation from that non-stop phone. When all of this is planned, detoxification can be very productive. But what if this “offline life” was suddenly forced, with a widespread breakdown in every communication satellite in the world?

The threats are real. Solar storms, collision with space debris and meteors or even a cyber attack could take satellites out of operation. And according to BBC Future, this kind of scenario creates images in our minds that at first even look romantic: people away from the screen, enjoying a sunny day. But we are much more dependent on satellites orbiting our planet than we think.

A morning without satellites

According to Richard Hollingham's article, the morning of the first day without communication satellites would be quiet. Airplanes would not crash and city infrastructure, such as lighting and water supply, would not be damaged.

Some people would miss television, but assume that this is a temporary problem. Radio stations could not count on international correspondents, but no one would panic over that. However, this would already cause immediate risk situations in other areas of the planet.

Somewhere in the United States, for example, a group of soldiers could completely lose communication with a drone flying over an area under surveillance. The situation would be even worse if this unmanned aircraft was armed with missiles or bombs.

As if that were not enough, military aircraft and ships would be without communication with their commanders and completely vulnerable to attack. World leaders would suffer to communicate and try to calm the situation.

Image Source: Reproduction / Aviantion News

Over time, thousands of people would feel isolated from the rest of the world: workers who work in remote places, freighters in the middle of the ocean, commercial aircraft that cannot communicate with the towers, etc.

Without GPS, chaos

Another big loss would be the Global Positioning System (GPS), which today helps companies deliver orders faster, as well as helping emergency responders reach any hidden lives-saving alley.

And GPS is not just for that. It is also a cornerstone for time-based operations such as financial transactions and even communication over computer networks such as the internet. With a confusion of time between machines, all communication would be impaired, including backup or cloud services.

Afternoon full of complications

Later in the afternoon, there would be the first power outages, as without communication the electricity service would not be able to balance the supply evenly, providing more load to the areas with the most demand, for example. Cities with computerized water supplies would also have problems, and engineers would have to re-control it manually.

Traffic lights would be constantly in the red, making all traffic and transport quite slow. Cell phones would eventually collapse and airlines would be forced to cancel their activities so as not to endanger the lives of passengers.

Another service that would be unavailable is weather forecasting, which would even affect agronomy and food transport.

Would the night announce the end of chaos?

After we lost communication, transportation, electricity, computer systems, and the world paralyzed financial and business transactions, governments would have to implement emergency measures to maintain public order.

If the absence of satellites continued, the population would face new challenges daily. Even rescuing people in disasters would be more difficult as images of the region could not be so easily generated.

But of course the whole scenario described here would only happen if all satellites failed at the same time, which is very unlikely to happen. Failures of this type are more likely to affect only part of orbiting equipment. But one thing is certain: we are increasingly dependent on this kind of technology, to the point where the world changes dramatically without it.