I have two posts to make this evening - this one is kind of the "brooding" one...

As I mentioned in the intro thread, I re-trained & returned to the workforce as a pharmacy technician, and will return to IM part-time.

Part of the reason for that was that I wanted something I felt was more secure than working strictly over the Internet. I know there are no truly secure jobs, but I think health care related jobs will be among the last to go if things ever got that bad Honestly, I'm still in post-divorce financial recovery nearly 8 years on, and at 47, I have a lot of catching up to do for retirement, etc. Therefore I felt I needed more stability than what I've found in IM. And having some decent benefits (relatively speaking) thrown in doesn't hurt anything.

Anyway, this leads me to wonder, how many here have something to fall back on in case there were ever prolonged network outages across wide geographical areas?

Whether caused by natural disaster, terror, human error, hacking, hardware failure, or whatever other means, it's possible (for example) for a major backbone , maybe several, to be out or disrupted for days, weeks, even months at a time. Granted it's not that likely due to redundancies, but it's certainly possible.

My way of preparing for that, just in case, is to not rely on the Internet for my primary income - everything I earn online will be gravy. For those that do work online full time though, do you have alternate plans & income sources in place? Is this something that concerns you as well, or does it sound like chicken little?

Whether you do or don't have alternatives, this is yet one more point in favor of Kurt's approach to site building & SEO. Hosting many sites on multiple IPs / servers / hosting companies, in widely diversified geographic areas, will help keep at least part of your business online should the worst occur.

Along similar, but happier, lines, how many here have thought about or actually planned an exit strategy? Assuming you don't want to do IM forever of course!

Jeff