According to New Scientist, when widespread power cuts hit Spain and Portugal earlier this year, emergency services couldn’t take calls, traffic signals failed, and even telecom networks in Morocco and Greenland went down due to their reliance on Spanish servers. This revealed there appears to be no official government plan for catastrophic internet failure, prompting Linux legend Valerie Aurora and about 150 cybersecurity experts, hackers, and volunteers to form the world’s only Internet Resiliency Club. The group is currently stress-testing Meshtastic radio devices that use unlicensed spectrum to send text messages across cities via mesh networks, with each device having a range of just a few hundred meters in urban environments. They’re exploring whether these solar-powered radios could help coordinate recovery efforts when traditional communication fails completely.
The bootstrap problem
Here’s the thing that keeps these volunteers up at night: what Aurora calls “the bootstrap problem.” How do you coordinate to fix the internet when the very tools you’d use to coordinate—email, messaging, video calls—all require the internet to work? It’s like trying to build a ladder when you’re already at the bottom of the hole.
During those Spanish power outages, some experts actually had satellite phones. Great, right? Except they didn’t have printed contact lists for the people they needed to reach. Their fancy communication gear was basically useless without the basic information we all take for granted being available online. That’s the kind of failure mode these hackers are trying to anticipate.
The mesh dream meets reality
The Meshtastic devices they’re testing sound promising in theory. They use little power, can be solar-charged, and create mesh networks where each device passes messages along. But the reality check is hitting hard. Those claimed 10-kilometer ranges? More like a few hundred meters in cities with buildings and interference. To cover Amsterdam, you’d need hundreds of these things mounted everywhere.
And good luck getting permission to stick radio devices all over historic Amsterdam buildings. As Trammell Hudson admits, these are “very much for the hobbyists and hackers” rather than something regular people could just pick up and use. We’re talking about bare circuit boards with exposed chips, not consumer-friendly gadgets.
Testing in the real world
What I find refreshing is their commitment to actual testing rather than just theoretical planning. They’re considering running exercises where dozens of volunteers leave their phones at home and try to coordinate something as simple as a picnic using only these radios. As Joe Abley puts it, “No backup is any good unless you test it.”
They’re learning from Ukraine’s experience, where despite heavy reliance on Starlink, there’s recognition that independent solutions are crucial. But let’s be honest—testing emergency internet recovery during an actual war isn’t exactly practical.
The bigger picture nobody’s talking about
What strikes me as both admirable and terrifying is that this is all happening through volunteer effort. Aurora says if governments have official recovery plans, they’re “successfully being kept secret from everybody who should know.” Given how underfunded and unprepared many cybersecurity agencies are, I’m not holding my breath for a competent government response.
The threats are very real—from solar storms like the Carrington Event that could fry infrastructure worldwide, to targeted attacks on undersea cables, to good old-fashioned natural disasters. We’ve built this incredibly complex system that runs our banks, utilities, and communications, but we haven’t built the safety net.
So while the Internet Resiliency Club might seem like a group of hobbyists playing with radio gadgets, they’re actually addressing one of the most critical vulnerabilities in modern society. Their work with Meshtastic and other low-tech solutions might just be what stands between us and complete communication blackout when—not if—the big one hits.
