It's not only hardware wallet that can be used to store bitcoin. We also have hot wallets which I believe that's what majority of newbies with little bitcoin are using currently.
However, we can still store our bitcoin in a cold storage and not compulsory that it must be a hardware wallet. Electrum cold storage is a good wallet to store your bitcoin offline. You only need to download it and generate your keys in an air gapped device and never connect it to the internet.
All you need is an old PC to set it up and create a watch only wallet to sign track and monitor your transactions.
Electrum cold storage
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OP is not talking about if internet is no longer working how we can send and receive bitcoin. You need a wallet to store your bitcoin in the blockchain and to also unlock your bitcoin in order to spend them.