Your internet runs underwater

Satellites carry less than 1% of international internet traffic — the rest travels through over 600 submarine fiber optic cables spanning 1.5 million kilometers on the ocean floor. Each cable is roughly garden-hose-sized, containing glass fibers thinner than a human hair that carry laser pulses at hundreds of terabits per second. Signal repeaters every 70-80 km keep data moving, powered by electrical current sent from distant land stations. When cables are damaged, entire regions can lose connectivity — as happened to Tonga in 2020, which was offline for 38 days after a volcanic eruption severed its single cable. With only ~60 specialized repair ships worldwide, multiple simultaneous failures create dangerous queues, leaving this critical global infrastructure largely unprotected on the seabed.