Earlier this year, Christchurch suffered a fairly major earthquake. I was amazed at how resilient our tech infrastructure was. The phone lines were jammed but I still managed to put a post on facebook letting friends and family know I was alive.

By that evening, I even had some 3g coverage again and could check the internet. I lost power to my house for nearly 2 weeks but when it came back on, my cable internet was still running.

In short, as EvilTesla-RG said, if the event in question is severe enough to significantly damage your comms, you have more important things to worry about.

Earlier this year, Christchurch suffered a fairly major earthquake. I was amazed at how resilient our tech infrastructure was. The phone lines were jammed but I still managed to put a post on facebook letting friends and family know I was alive.

By that evening, I even had some 3g coverage again and could check the internet. I lost power to my house for nearly 2 weeks but when it came back on, my cable internet was still running.

In short, as EvilTesla-RG said, if the event in question is severe enough to significantly damage your comms, you have more important things to worry about.

Good to know. So in the event of a zombie outbreak, we can have real-time updates of the spreading infection through people's tweets.

1) If alot of the DNS servers go down, how would you connect to various websites? 1a) Would it actually be worth it to record the static IP addresses of the sites? 1b) How can you find out the static IP addresses?

1) I would write the IP until network backs up. 1a) I actually used to do that. 1b) During the blackout? You're busted AFAIK.

2) If the above scenario was to occur, how would you best prepare if you lived in Texas or someplace physically sheltered from the damage, but effected digitally?

I would just wait for the net to come back to operation. What's the problem? ;P

3) If the main internet web hosts go down, how would you stay connected to the rest of the country or world? 3a) Would you use the old newsgroup systems, #irc channels, specific TOR destinations, or what? 3b) How would you go about preparing now, to stay connected then?

3) I will just miss the damaged hosts... what's the problem with the others? 3a) Yes, if they work. Which I believe to be likely. 3b) My best bet is getting a low-power diesel power supply, just enough to trick the solar inverter in thinking there's grid... I have to work out the problem with surplus. Also considering a 20+ dBi wireless panel and a 2 W wifi amplificator.
I already have a couple of weeks of long-lasting protein and carbohydrate food as well as a reasonably efficient way to purify water.

4) If Microsoft's (and Apple's) authentication servers go down, will Windows Vista and Windows 7 copies act as unauthenticated, and lock itself down thinking it's pirated, because it continually can't reach the authentication servers for months on end? 4a) Will everyone be forced to move to Ubuntu?

4) This is a real problem! 4a) No. They are more likely to just use their smartphones. ;P

5) If cell phone network magically goes down, due to whatever, how will you reach your loved ones and stay in contact?

Wired calls? At the worse, I will physically reach them. Which is likely anyway considering the disaster.