When the Internet’s Critical Nerve Snapped — A ‘True Nightmare’ for Millions across the Globe

When I woke up this afternoon from my nap in India, I sensed something was wrong even before I picked up my phone. My Twitter feed refused to refresh—had my account been suspended? The Wi-Fi internet was perfectly stable; Gmail opened without hesitation and Google Search responded instantly. Yet, to my shock, even ChatGPT had fallen eerily silent. That unnerving stillness was only the first tremor. Within hours, the full picture snapped into view: a cascading digital catastrophe was unfolding across the globe. On 17 November 2025, Cloudflare—long regarded as the invisible yet infallible backbone of the modern internet—was hit by a catastrophic system-wide outage, dragging major platforms into darkness and exposing a stark, journalistic truth that can no longer be ignored: the world’s digit