A deeply (no pun intended) problematic physical security & connectivity planning scenario - specifically the lifespan of in-situ buried internetwork cabling (on, or near land) coupled with a paucity of outcome planning (in the Anthropocene Epoch...) is detailed by highly respected researcher - Paul Barford, Ph.D., a UW-Madison Professor of Computer Science resident at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Along with Carol Barford, Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison UW-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and Ramakrishnan Durairajan, Assistant Professor, CIS at the University of Oregon) have produced a study detailing failure risks (essentially a call to action, as the buried cable timeline has shriveled from a one hundred year life-span to somewhere less-than-fifty years) of buried internetworked cabling. Superb work. And, here's Rebecca Hersher's reporting for NPR on both the study, and the issues. Enjoy.

'"Most of the damage that's going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later," says Barford, an authority on the "physical internet" -- the buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. "That surprised us. The expectation was that we'd have 50 years to plan for it. We don't have 50 years."1 - Paul Barford, Ph.D. in an press-release published at EurekaAlert! (a service of AAAS).