Bitcoin Forum

What would happen to bitcoin if the planet for some astronomically small chance got a world wide power outage for a day? Would the network and block chain survive such crash or would everything get irreversibly messed up?

The only way this could happen is by a solar flare and then we'd have more things to worry about, for instance that all electronic devices just got fried.

Yes, in the event of a world wide power outage, bitcoin would be the least of your worries!  It is then time to Lock and Load, the old reliable AK with all the ammo you purchased while your miners were running!  That would be TEOTAWAKI (the end of the world as we all know it!)  Yes, I was a y2ker and I would have survived no matter what happened!!

As above, if only for one day, then when the power came back, the bitcoin network would return and resume exactly where it left off.

Agreed.

What about if the US Government shut down the internet same thing?

in case of global powerotage btc would be the last to think of. I would be more concerned with the hundreds of nuclear plants melting down because the cooling would stop. Global poweroutage is an extinction-event. Btc is not relevant in that scenario.

You'd also have real difficulty getting at the electronic funds in your regular bank account. (Not to mention the whole apocalyptic scenario described above)

Junk silver stackers would be a ok though. (apart from the meltdown of civilization as we know it)

I hate nuke plants but on most the backup generators should kick on

Dollars would probably be long gone as well, the currency of choice would be ammo meds and weapons, I doubt that many store owners would be willing to exchange their food for worthless papers knowing they could be stuck without new arrivals for months.

in a world wide power outage,
FIAT=useless
cryptocurrency=useless
gold=useless
guy with a shotgun=gets anything he wants.....

That solar flame happened already 24h ago. We're exepting it hit the earth. I'm not trolling.
Google it up

We'd have more serious things to worry about than bitcoin not working for day ....

It would never happen without man going back to the Stone Age.

Any catastrophe large enough to take down power on a global scale would also wipe out the majority of mankind.

Our planet has never experienced a solar flare strong enough to do it. A nuclear explosion big enough to do it would irradiate the whole earth, and I am not sure that such a device could be built. Global Nuclear war might cause a few problem but if it happened then I doubt if I would be caring if Bitcoin still worked, ditto the eruption of a super volcano.

Wish it were so but not sure it is. Backup generators (if they were not fried by a EMP/solar flare) can sustain for awhile but they need a lot of fuel. All fuel runs from and to the refineries by the grid power. One would hope the powers that be would find a way to keep them all running indefinitely but it is a leap of faith, there are a lot of them.

I live near the largest one in the US, just outside of Phoenix. Not much water so they run the city's sewage through the reactors to cool. Clever (and kind of the nastiest place on earth if you add it all up) but I can't help but think if the grid was down for a long time there is no way they could run the whole plant and the sewage pumping and everything attached to that without a weak link somewhere.

Hope we never have to find out. We are very much dependent on the grid, but elsewhere I saw a thread that they are launching cubesats for bitcoin transactions so that is a good start on redundancy.

Op id get my glock and come hide out with you, one way or another.

The longer the outage, the greater affect on the network. When everyone's nodes fired up again, all they'd notice was a long period of low hashrate (no blocks solved) which would then reduce network difficulty at the next retarget. This could reduce difficulty by up to a maximum of 75%.

tl;dr A long term world wide electricity outage would reduce the network mining difficulty by up to 75% when if the electricity got turned back on.

The world as we know it would end, but network difficulty down 75% - yeah!!

Haha great reading =) Anyway, I only meant in a very technical way how bitcoin network works and how much it relies on active online nodes but I think that has been answered, thanks. I totally agree that bitcoin would be least of all worries! I can recommend the movie "Aftermath: Population Zero" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1264068/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1264068/).

Remember that the blockchain is saved on hundreds or thousands of places around the world. If you turn off your computer and let it sit a day and then turn it back on then bitcoin starts back up just fine. Imagine if everybody happened to turn off their computers for a day - there would be a large gap between two blocks, and people waiting for confirms would be a little impatient, but it would pick back up right where it let off.

The one issue I can think of is that as people restart their systems it might take some time for the whole network to coalesce, so you might want to wait for a few extra confirmations for important transactions done right when you restart.

Sounds like the bitcoin network is impossible to kill then and will live it´s own life for a very long time; at least as long as there is a need for it. Whoever came up with that original idea must be a pure genious! As long as there is no serious "51% attack" it must mean there is at least 51% good vs. evil in the world  ;D

Bitcoin will be your last problem that day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

Cool. I'm glad you are balanced and not more worried about bitcoin than "survival" :)

Uh, I don't mean to offend but given your previous abilities to create altcoin havok, does that mean you're about to do something to reduce difficulty by oooh, about 75%?

Define "mess with" ? :)

You'd have to mess with the world wide grid. Are those people as bad as bad bitcoin people?

As far as I know, there are only national grids, not world wide power grids. But I might be wrong ;)

Ha! Everything is run by the Illuminati, even national power grids. Shows what you know.

There would be much MUCH bigger things to worry about than bitcoin collapsing if there was a worldwide power outage.

Normal banks would obviously be fine in this situation. 

Pretty sure someone will have backup power for their internet and computers...but if something really was able to disable even that I think we would have worse problems then whether or not our bitcoins worked lol. 

That someone should be your ISP, your TSP, You.