This is a topic I've thought about for many months, and with increasing restrictions on current Internet usage, it is becoming more relevant. The thought was triggered by a personal project by @JackG and I'd be interested to know how he got on with it. He was attempting to find a new block using a pencil and paper. Obviously this was just done to improve his understanding of Bitcoin, and not in the expectation of making any gains. I suspect that submitting a new block via the postal services may not be the most efficient way to claim a reward. However, it is my understanding that the essential mechanism of Bitcoin is not based on the Internet. The Internet is just used as a convenient method of communication between nodes and miners. The mining is done on local machines, and the blockchain is also stored on thousand of local machines. The Internet is just a fast and convenient way to communicate between nodes. I did look at LoRa to see if there were possibilities there in the even of an Internet outage, but it is too local and slow.. Satellite services may provide a better alternative. However if those were to be used in parallel with the existing Internet, then nodes would need to monitor two channels to keep the blockchain synchronised.
Do you guys think that this will be a viable option in the future, or will governments refuse to allow it to happen?