Quote from: forever-d on May 17, 2011, 10:19:06 PM

Bitcoin only needs a very rudimentary low bandwidth internet to keep going. For the internet to stop working totally and permanently, the world would have to be so fucked that it would be the end of "civilized history" as you put it. In that kind of Madmax scenario, gold too would lose its usefulness for above reasons.

That's a colorful way to put it. And as I have already pointed out, once even one full node is on a satillite in orbit, even the Madmax scenario couldn't kill Bitcoin even if there were no living humans left to make use of it.

Quote

Bitcoin is perfectly capable of surviving a temporary breakdown of the internet as a result of war or natural disaster. The blockchain is duplicated on millions of machines around the world. It is sufficient for just of few of them to survive in order to reboot the Bitcoin network.

Actually, it only takes one full copy of the blockchain somewhere accessible. It's the Many-Copies-Keeps-Data-Safe method, and might mean that the blockchain is, or soon will be, more safe than the text of the Bible.

Quote

A few people would lose their wallets of course but not those who backed them up diligently. For instance, a QR code of an encrypted version of your private key, printed on a piece of paper, even engraved on a sheet of metal, could easily survive an EMP.

For that matter, a copy of your wallet file on a CD-R or a flash drive kept in a steel safety deposit box should be plenty safe from an EMP.