Every second, millions of emails, clicks, and searches happen via the world wide web with such fluidity that the internet seems almost omnipresent. As such, people often mistakenly assume that internet traffic happens by air — our mobile devices, after all, aren't wired to anything.

But satellites carry less than 1% of human interactions, and in some ways the truth is far more impressive than messages sent by tower signal.

The internet — arguably the most important resource in the modern world — is very tangible and fairly vulnerable. It exists in large part under our feet, by way of an intricate system of rope-thin underwater and underground cables hooked to giant data storage units so powerful, they're capable of recalling any piece of information at a moment's notice.

Here's what the infrastructure of the internet actually looks like today: