How One Cloudflare Outage Shows We All Truly Need a Real Backup Plan...

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Think back to that awkward moment earlier this month when Cloudflare sneezed and half the internet fainted: ChatGPT, X, transit infrastructure dashboards, and a hundred other dignified web things blinked out like a Christmas tree with a bad breaker... 

If you felt naked without your streaming queue, congratulations — you’ve just met the modern definition of vulnerability. 

If you didn’t, congratulations — you’ve either already prepped or you’re blissfully, dangerously unaware.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked 7,525 Americans how they’d handle a disaster in its 2024 survey and got back a resounding shrug: 57% aren’t prepared and aren’t planning to be. 

That’s a lot of people banking on Good Omens and working Wi-Fi... 

That’s also the precise moment Robert Siciliano, author and security analyst, rolled his eyes so hard he could see the grid. 

As he put it, “I don’t think it is a matter of ‘if,’ it is simply a matter of ‘when.’ The electrical grid, as we know it, is only about 120 years old. And it is scattered in such a way that local or regional brownouts or total failures are happening too often.” 

In other words: someday your cloud will cough, and you’ll realize you were storing your life in someone else’s attic.

So what do you do while the web is on a coffee break? 

Hopefully you prepared ahead of time like a sensible techno-hippie. 

Sean Gold — emergency manager turned prepper and owner of TruePrepper — calls it basic contingency: “Preparing for individual internet disruptions and power outages is straightforward – you need backup internet access methods and/or the ability to generate energy on your own.” 

His gear list reads like a shopping spree for slightly paranoid minimalists: hotspots, Starlink terminals, portable power stations, and memory of how to match socks in the dark. 

Sean warns that a phone hotspot is handy for a day or two, but in a regional outage overloaded towers will fail faster than your patience. 

Which is why many modern preppers are buying satellite ISP access — yes, even in cities.

Starlink fans will nod: the service can rescue you from landline oblivion, but it will cost you (prompted prices: $80–$120/month plus $349 for the gear). 

Want a cheaper safety net? 

Starlink’s Roam option runs about $50/month after you front $500 for hardware; pause it, and you won’t pay until you unpause. 

Hughesnet and Viasat offer alternatives (plans starting around $49.99 and $69.99 respectively) — but remember: satellites can get grumpy in severe weather too.

Power is the infrastructure of online life. 

Gold recommends portable power stations instead of fuel-guzzling generators for many households — less smelly, less lethal if you forget to ventilate, and perfectly acceptable for powering devices and a hotspot for days. 

Pack a power bank, buy a flashlight that doesn’t die in the first blink, and consider a battery-operated radio so you aren’t wholly at the mercy of the most dramatic neighbors.

Money matters, too... 

Chris Reynolds (American Public University System) warns that “Nearly everyone across the nation accesses their bank accounts via the internet” and suggests storing a small amount of emergency cash in a waterproof place. 

An informal neighborhood fund or local grocery co-op setup? Also smart and dramatically more neighborly than doomscrolling together.

And for families: Jeremy Gocke, CEO of Entropy Survival, urges a “pre-internet failure family plan.” 

Pick a meet-up spot, pick a check-in rhythm, and laminate the plan if you enjoy the tactile warmth of old-school planning. 

He sums it up like this: “Start by accepting that if it can go down, it might. Once you accept that, your brain and your preparedness become your most valuable tech.” 

Laminated plan handouts optional; common sense is mandatory!

So yes — Cloudflare had a bad day and the internet forgot how to be itself. 

But the real takeaway isn’t to rage-tweet at a content delivery network; it’s to accept that our digital life is gloriously convenient and gloriously fragile. 

Prep a hotspot, stash a $20 bill, learn where your extra batteries are, and maybe, just maybe, build the faintly heroic habit of being a little less surprised when the cloud goes down.


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#CloudflareOutage #InternetPrep #GridReality #RobertSiciliano #SeanGold #TruePrepper #Starlink #SatelliteISP #PowerStations #EmergencyCash #FEMAstats #PrepperPractical #FamilyPlan #EntropySurvival #HotspotHustle

Sources (brief): FEMA 2024 disaster-preparedness survey; quotes and advice from security analyst Robert Siciliano; Sean Gold (TruePrepper) on backup internet and Starlink; Starlink pricing and Roam plan details; Hughesnet and Viasat consumer plan starting prices; emergency-finance guidance from Chris Reynolds (American Public University System); family-plan advice from Jeremy Gocke (Entropy Survival).

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