Taking an inventory of what Internet connections are available to potential telecommuters would also be a good idea now, he advised.

Dire predictions about the Internet's fate did not surface during a U.S. version of the Davos simulation that was held in March in Washington under the auspices of Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Health Transformation, a group founded by former House speaker Newt Gingrich that supports using IT to improve health care and reduce costs.

Robert Egge, project manager at the center, said there were telecommunications industry participants in the exercise, but the question of Internet survivability was not addressed in detail and no specific predictions were made. However, "the exercise was less about making predictions than about talking to each other about the different challenges that a pandemic would present," he explained.

Actually, if any of the other predictions that arose from the Davos simulation bear out, the fate of the Internet may be the least of anyone's worries. The war game indicated that by the 28th day of a pandemic, the social infrastructure would have disappeared and governments would have to declare martial law to maintain basic services. To that end, they would probably end up conscripting those who had caught the flu and survived, since those people would continue to be around.

Hopefully, you'll read about it on the Internet.