In a hypothetical scenario where the internet is lost, the biggest peril to humanity would likely be financial in nature. According to The Economic Times, e-commerce was worth a staggering $22.1 trillion globally in 2016. Per How Stuff Works, the loss of businesses that depend on the internet would create an influx of newly unemployed professionals, the destruction of various businesses (both slowly and painfully and almost instantaneously), and a devastating recession.

According to How Stuff Works, the United States has been investigating the potential of smart grids that communicate with each other via the internet. The loss of the internet in a world that relies on such technology would plunge the country into turmoil, with protracted outages threatening peoples’ very lives. From private homes and cities to whole countries, this would be catastrophic on every scale.

The loss of any internet at all would also threaten global stability by hampering the functioning of government and law enforcement. Most frighteningly of all, it would force us to resort to archaic methods of communication like snail mail. We might even have to use pneumatic tubes, which were a quick and convenient way of transporting physical items around offices before email took over the world, Wired reports. In the late 1890s, this system carried mail between some of the post offices of New York City, and Paris’ own system was in use until 1984!

There you have it: without the internet, as Cracked notes, our world would be overrun with elaborate tube systems.