This actually happened once, in 2001, I think. But all systems were back up in about three days. So, it's not possible to destroy the Internet. People will just find ways to put it back up again, after the hackers destroy it. You can't shoot down the Internet and expect it to stay down. It's immortal, basically.

why would you want to destroy the internet?
even if someone found a way it will be their loss aswell as the planets

Hmmm, I think that you haven't spent enough time thinking about it there are so many anarchist groups all over the world and terrorist organizations who would certainly prefer to see internet going down. Opposite to the good sides of the internet like sharing of informations making contacts easier and of course business.

Important thing is that such groups prefer to harm people. I and you probably don't see good reasons or we see good reasons but we cannot understand them behind suicide bombers however such guys exist and they will stop at nothing to destroy foreign property (referring to property of foreign countries in theirs). And sometimes even against their own government. So you see terrorism has all the requirements one would have to destroy the internet.

On the other hand I have mentioned anarchist movements which would probably like to see internet destroyed since this would be the first step of spreading misinformations and other things that could push the world into anarchy. I hope you all get my point here.

And to conclude I would like to say that though many groups would prefer to see internet going down they probably lack organization and finances to organize and spread themselves all over the world to destroy it.

However remember if they lack support today it doesn't mean that they would lack support tomorrow.

Permanently? That would be permanent either... probably it will last as long as everyone re-booting there system. Yet, I am interested to know how such virus would infect every single computer connected to the internet at ones... what happens to those that where disconnected and connected later on after such event took place? Many question so little time. By the way... why would you would someone make such a virus... more likely who? The producers of Anti-Virus? XD

Yes, but this won't be happening. Because the fixers (or safers or whatever) are getting smarter every day as well. And there would be no way to send a virus to EVERYONE. At least not today

I don't think the internet can be destroyed.
Well.. actually it can be, but then, every harddisk, every Internet service provider, everyone who is connected including their pc's, every mobile phone on earth (Since you can go on internet with those too, just look at the iPhone) and every server pc, well almost anything related to computers that has some memory or some connection should be destroyed.

I don't think it's gonna happen.
Maybe by magic? Naaah..

I Think It's inpossible..
.. Well it's possible .. but I think it's inpossible for us to do the above thing.

-ReBrawl

The Internet is made of tubes. So if you kill every plumber in the world and demolish every sense and existence of plumbing...

Branching from the joke, that IS the key to killing the Internet: connectivity. The Internet is basically a massive global network of servers and clients. If you take down the medium that holds them all together: the fiber optics, the cables, the microwave dishes, the satellites, and all the sites that deal with those mediums, no one would be able to connect to each other, which is the essence of the Internet (connectivity).

What we know as the Internet is commonly misconstrued as the "world wide web," or what we see on the screen. But as I've said, if you remove any sort of connectivity option from every computer, every cell phone, or really, any device, any form of a network would cease to exist. You would not be able to dial/connect to your ISP, which gives you an IP address to identify yourself as a client to the Internet network, which means that you cannot send or request data through the non-existing network to servers across the world or even any servers or peer client machines right next to you.

So yes, it is possible. But in all reality, since we have such a dependency on being connected with each other, there would be no real incentive (unless there were radical extremist groups planning on returning an aspect of "normalcy" or for whatever cause it would support), and there isn't any easy way to do it... which would make it near impossible.

I have a few points to make. i go to high school and i take a few computer classes and we HAVE to use digital portfolio. one of my friends logged in as an administrator and blocked every sight visited in the last 24 hours before hand. he got arrested but we were completely unable to get on the digiport web sight or any other web sight for a week. every web browser now seems to have the feature to block sights so how hard would it be for someone to make a virus that blocks every sight you have on your history without you being able to fix it?

also not every web sight would have to be blocked, only 15 id bet. shutting down 15 pages that way could cause enough people to get angry that the average person doesn't wont use it. then it would become something only used by the workers.

what web pages would have to be blocked tho, google, hotmail(email), socail networking,youtube all come to mind.