If Aliens Are Real, What Internet Should You Use?

If aliens showed up tomorrow, nobody knows what they'd do to the internet. But we know exactly what knocks home internet offline today: power loss, cut cables, overloaded cell towers and, occasionally, the Sun. So the honest answer to a fun question is a practical one. The internet that keeps working is the one with the fewest single points of failure, backed by a second connection that breaks for different reasons. For the record, NASA's independent study of unidentified anomalous phenomena (September 2023) said there are too few high-quality observations to draw firm scientific conclusions. Treat this as a thought experiment built on real network physics.

The physics doesn't care who's calling

Every connection is limited by the speed of light, about 299,792 km per second. That's why distance matters so much. Here's how long a "hello" takes to travel, from a long fiber run to the nearest star.

Signal path	Distance	Light-speed delay	What it means for you
1,000 km of fiber optic cable	1,000 km (about 620 miles)	About 4.9 ms one way, 9.8 ms round trip	Light in glass moves roughly 32% slower than in a vacuum, but fiber paths are short and direct
LEO satellite: Starlink	About 480 to 550 km up	About 6 to 7 ms round trip, at minimum	Starlink reports a 25.7 ms median peak-hour latency for U.S. customers (June 2025)
LEO satellite: Amazon Leo	590 to 630 km up	About 8 ms round trip, at minimum	Still rolling out; not orderable at most household addresses
GEO satellite: Viasat, HughesNet	35,786 km up	About 480 to 540 ms round trip, at minimum, depending on your location	Add processing and routing, and real-world round trips commonly reach about 600 ms or more
The Moon	384,400 km (average)	About 1.3 seconds one way	A video call with the Moon would have a built-in 2.6-second pause
The Sun	About 150 million km	About 8 minutes 20 seconds one way	The sunlight you see left the Sun before you finished your coffee
Mars	54.6 million to 401.4 million km	About 3 to 22 minutes one way	A question and answer can take 6 to 44 minutes
Voyager 1 (on Nov. 18, 2026)	About 25.9 billion km	24 hours one way	NASA projects that Voyager 1 will reach one light-day from Earth on November 18, 2026
Proxima Centauri, the nearest star	About 4.24 light-years	4.24 years one way	Any "hello" from the nearest star system would be more than four years old when it arrived

Minimum delays calculated by RSINC from the speed of light and a typical fiber group index of about 1.468. Satellite minimums count four trips (dish to satellite to ground station, then back) with the satellite directly overhead. Space distances and delays from NASA; satellite altitudes from SpaceX and Amazon; Starlink latency from Starlink's network update. Checked October 7, 2026.

The takeaway: altitude is destiny for satellite internet. A geostationary satellite sits about 65 times higher than a Starlink satellite, so even a perfect GEO network can't beat about half a second of round-trip delay. If you want the full breakdown, see our guide to LEO vs GEO satellite internet.

Every internet type, compared for a very bad day

Internet type	Delay (latency)	Biggest outage risks	When your power goes out	Good backup partner
Fiber	Lowest. Distance adds only about 5 ms per 1,000 km	Cut lines (digging, falling trees on overhead lines), flooded equipment	Many fiber networks use unpowered splitters in the neighborhood, so service often keeps working if you can power your fiber box and router	5G home internet or a phone hotspot, plus a battery backup
Cable	Low	Powered amplifiers and nodes in the neighborhood; storm damage to overhead lines	Neighborhood equipment needs electricity, and its battery backup is usually limited	5G home internet or LEO satellite
DSL	Low to moderate	Aging copper lines and powered roadside cabinets; fewer providers still sell it	Roadside equipment and your modem need power	5G home internet or LEO satellite
5G home internet	Low to moderate; changes with signal strength and network traffic	Cell site power and backhaul; heavy traffic when everyone gets online in an emergency	Depends on the tower's backup power, and your gateway needs power too	A wired line, which fails for different reasons
LEO satellite	Low (Starlink: 25.7 ms U.S. median)	Blocked view of the sky, heavy snow or rain, rare space-weather events	No local wires to break, but the dish needs power: 75 to 100 W average for Starlink Standard, 25 to 40 W for Starlink Mini	A wired line or 5G home internet
GEO satellite	High (about 600 ms or more)	Rain fade, dish alignment, and a few large satellites serving huge areas	Dish and modem need power	LEO satellite or 5G home internet, if available

Starlink power figures from Starlink's Standard and Mini specification sheets; latency figures as above. Checked October 7, 2026. Speeds, prices and coverage vary by address.

Fiber from providers like Google Fiber, Verizon Fios, AT&T and Frontier has the shortest, most direct path. Cable from Xfinity or Spectrum is close behind on delay, but it depends on more powered equipment along the street. 5G home internet from T-Mobile or Verizon has no wire to your house, which helps when a tree takes down a line, but it shares the tower with every phone nearby. Starlink leads LEO satellite today, while Amazon Leo is still building out and is not orderable at most homes. Viasat and HughesNet use GEO satellites, which reach almost anywhere but with the most delay.

What a solar storm would actually do

The closest real-world event to a sci-fi attack on the internet is a severe geomagnetic storm. In May 2024, NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center observed an extreme (G5) storm, the first since October 2003. On NOAA's scale, a G5 storm can cause widespread voltage-control problems on power grids, possible blackouts and transformer damage, satellite tracking and orientation problems, and satellite navigation errors that can last for days.

• Fiber's surprise strength: glass doesn't conduct electricity, so storm-induced currents don't flow through the fiber itself. A 2021 ACM SIGCOMM study, "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse," found the bigger risk is the powered repeaters on long-haul cables, especially undersea cables.
• Your bigger risk is the power grid. If the power is out and you have no backup, it doesn't matter how tough your connection is.
• Satellites feel it too. In February 2022, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites on February 3. A geomagnetic storm the next day raised atmospheric drag by up to 50%, and SpaceX said up to 40 of them would reenter. They were brand-new satellites in a very low starting orbit (about 210 km), not the working network above them. During 2026, SpaceX has been lowering about 4,400 Starlink satellites from about 550 km to about 480 km, which it says improves space safety.

Storms hit the ground in more familiar ways too. Our guide to weather-related fiber outages covers what wind, ice and flooding do to fiber lines.

What NASA does to talk to far-away places

NASA's Deep Space Network is a good model for an outage-resistant setup. It has three antenna complexes, near Goldstone, California; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia, spaced about 120 degrees apart. Before a spacecraft sinks below the horizon at one site, another picks up the signal, so Earth's rotation never cuts the link. Even with that design, NASA plans for blackouts: about every 26 months, the Sun sits between Earth and Mars and blocks direct communication with Mars missions for roughly two to three weeks.

The home version of that lesson is diversity. Use two connections that don't share the same weak spot, like a buried fiber line and a cell tower, or a cable line and a satellite dish, and give both a way to stay powered.

Build an outage-proof setup: checklist

1. Start with the best wired line at your address. Fiber first if you can get it, then cable. For latency basics, see internet latency explained.
2. Add a backup that fails differently. Pair wired with wireless or satellite. Two services on the same utility pole are not real redundancy.
3. Use automatic failover. A router with a second WAN port or built-in cellular backup switches over without you lifting a finger.
4. Do the battery math. Battery watt-hours divided by device watts gives rough runtime. A 1,000 Wh power station could run a Starlink Standard (75 to 100 W average) for about 10 to 13 hours, or a Starlink Mini (25 to 40 W) for about 25 to 40 hours, before conversion losses. Check the wattage label on your modem and router power adapters too.
5. Put your modem or fiber box, router and network switch on a UPS (uninterruptible power supply), so brief flickers don't reboot everything.
6. Know your phone's satellite options. As of October 7, 2026, T-Mobile currently lists T-Satellite at a limited-time $10 a month per line, or included with Experience Beyond plans. It works outdoors where you can see the sky. T-Mobile also says anyone with an eligible phone can use its text to 911 via satellite for free.
7. Keeping a spare Starlink? Starlink's Standby Mode gives unlimited low-speed data, up to 500 Kbps, for emergency messaging, at a small monthly fee. It isn't meant for everyday use, it doesn't hold your place on a Residential plan, and it isn't available on V5 hardware.
8. Prepare for no internet at all: offline maps, a battery radio and a written list of phone numbers.
9. Test it every season. Unplug your main modem and confirm the backup takes over. Then bookmark these real-time outage maps.

Live somewhere with hurricane season? Our hurricane backup internet plan covers storm-specific prep and generator safety.

Which internet should you use? Recommendations by situation

Your situation	Main connection	Backup	Why
City or suburb with fiber available	Fiber	5G home internet or a phone hotspot, plus a battery backup	Lowest delay, and wired and wireless rarely fail at the same moment
Cable is your only wired option	Cable	5G home internet or LEO satellite	Cable relies on powered neighborhood equipment; a wireless backup fails differently
Rural, no wired service	LEO satellite (Starlink)	Phone hotspot or satellite texting on your phone	LEO delay is a small fraction of GEO's
Trees or hills block most of the sky	5G home internet, or GEO if 5G isn't available	Phone hotspot	A GEO dish needs one clear line to a fixed point in the sky; a LEO dish needs a wide, open view
Online gaming or lots of video calls	Fiber, then cable	Any second connection	About 600 ms on GEO makes games and calls feel laggy
Frequent power outages	Any of the above	A portable power station sized to your equipment	Power is the most common single point of failure at home
Off-grid cabin or RV	Starlink Mini (25 to 40 W average)	Satellite texting on your phone	Low enough power draw for battery and solar setups
The aliens actually land	Your best wired line	A wireless or satellite connection plus battery power	It's the same plan that works for hurricanes, solar storms and backhoes

General recommendations based on the physics and equipment figures above, as of October 7, 2026. Availability depends on your exact address.

Frequently asked questions

Would fiber or satellite internet hold up better in a solar storm?

Fiber itself doesn't carry storm-induced currents, because glass doesn't conduct electricity. The weak points are the power grid and powered equipment. Satellites can face drag and orientation problems in severe storms. A wired line plus a satellite or 5G backup, with battery power, covers the most scenarios.

Does Starlink work during a power outage?

Yes, if you can power it. Starlink lists average power use of 75 to 100 W for the Standard kit and 25 to 40 W for the Mini, so a portable power station or generator can keep it online.

Why is GEO satellite internet so laggy?

GEO satellites orbit 35,786 km above the equator. A request has to go up and down twice, so the light-speed minimum alone is about 480 to 540 ms. With processing and routing, real round trips commonly reach about 600 ms or more. Starlink reports a 25.7 ms U.S. median.

How long does a message take to reach Mars?

NASA says about 3 to 22 minutes one way, depending on where the two planets are in their orbits. A question and its answer can take 6 to 44 minutes.

Is Amazon Leo available for home internet yet?

Not at most addresses. Amazon began a limited enterprise preview in November 2025, ahead of a wider rollout. Its public home-internet site does not yet give most households a service date or an orderable plan. Its satellites orbit 590 to 630 km up, similar to Starlink.