its monday you wake up and go to check your email.. then the unthinkable happens.. a 404 error.. in desperation you ping or go to novell.com to see a 404 error there aswell. you try your blackberry..still no connection. hell on earth has arrived the internet is shutdown!
well today we have a failsafe.. 7 individuals have the power to "restart" all dns servers with a swipe of a keycard they are:

Paul Kane (Great Britain)

Dan Kaminsky (United States)

Jiankang Yao (China)

Moussa Guebre (Burkina Faso)

Bevil Wooding (Trinidad and Tobago)

Ondrej Sury (Czech Republic)

Norm Ritchie (Canada)

i think personnally they just were afraid of having to resort to typewriters ;p

full story here: http://www.fudzilla.com/home/news/latest/seven-people-have-the-power-to-restart-the-web