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In October The New York Times put out a report on the possibility of under sea internet cables being under threat from Russian ships and submarines. The report said that while there was no evidence of such an attack the US military was increasingly concerned about Russia's maritime activities along the cables which have been on the rise. On Wednesday's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert told us how to prepare a kit in case of such a dire situation. A "deep sea internet spill" he added will have consequences like getting "data of the pelicans".

This threat to internet cables is interesting though because those cables reportedly carry 95% of America's internet communication, as well as transporting what counts as "the internet" to much of the rest of the world.

In 2008, there was a massive internet blackout in India along with the middle east which was reportedly caused by severed cables. The popular suspect was a ship's anchor. It was reported then that damage to these cables is frequent and not a rare occurrence.

An ABC News report on the matter reads, "This kind of damage is rarely such a deep concern in the United States and Europe. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are crisscrossed so completely with fast fiber networks that a break in one area typically has no significant effect. Net traffic simply uses one of many possible alternate destinations to reach its goal. Not so with the route connecting Europe to Egypt, and from there to the Middle East... A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling." Sharks and other sea creature are known to cause damage along with friction from rocks under the sea floor, as also anchors, as India has shown us.

And indeed laying undersea cables has never been easy. Watch this vintage video of underwater cable laying:

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