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I've heard that internet was designed to withstand war, possibly even nuclear war, and at least parts of its development started as a military operation during the Cold War.

Here's some statistics of real world internet usage: In developed countries the percentages were significantly higher, starting from 5-10% in 1995 and growing linearly to over 30% in 2000. I estimate that Poland is closed to the world average above.

In Twilight 2k4e, warring begins in 1996 in Eastern Europe, starts escalating in 1997 and turns to nuclear WW3 in 1998. This slows down the development of internet, possibly halting it. But as long as there are enough working routers and unblocked, uncut connections, internet could be used to communicate and relay messages and news around the world.

I'm pretty sure my players (in a future game) will be trying to access any communication systems, including internet. Could, for example, internet be used to send messages from Europe to US and what would it take? How would you or how have you handled internet in your games?

Pretty much what Fenhorn said. Also, hardened computers, i. e. those able to withstand the effects of a nuclear war, were limited to very few security apparatuses within the two large alliances. All other electronics would likely have ceased to work, including almost all recent car and truck models as well as consumer electronics.

There were still quite a few distributed Bulletin Boards and distributed non-internet networks in the mid to late 90s. The fact that they were more distributed and relied instead on asynchronous updates would make them a bit more robust in any post-WWIII. I could see things like FidoNet, UseNet, or BBSs in general surviving more-or-less intact... provided power and phone lines exist (which is pretty big if).

Good points. It's probably safe to assume that internet is hard/impossible to access in Poland.

Bulletin boards are very vulnerable to damages of the central computer itself. The board needs to run on a single computer and if that is damaged, destroyed or just offline, the bulletin board is gone, too.

Bulletin boards are very vulnerable to damages of the central computer itself. The board needs to run on a single computer and if that is damaged, destroyed or just offline, the bulletin board is gone, too.

True, a BBS is basically a single computer (or bank of computers) that can be called via a modem over standard copper lines. As such, they're vulnerable to numerous points (e.g. host PC, copper lines, telephone central office, and power lines to name a few). Heck, if the BBS only has single line/modem then you'd be prevented from using it if someone else were already dialed in. I still recall dreaded busy signals while trying to get into my favorite BBSs back in the day.

That said, they're easier to bring up and down than the infrastructure required for an internet, so a bit less fragile... but yeah, any telecom based networking is going to be pretty brittle after WWIII.

You're absolutely right about bringing up (and down) bulletin board systems via local telephone services. The wonderful thing about BBS technology is that any localized faction, i. e. a military force in cantonment, local government or a group of villages in a county, could establish a central office where newly installed telephone wires terminate. Once connection numbers are distributed it would be easy to configure a bulletin board system for that local telephone service and computerized communication is good to go.

This would make for a great MacGuffin in a campaign: the party establishing a BBS for their own community, a community asking the party's assistance in establishing one or the BBS of an opposing faction becoming a threat - the enemy uses it to coordinate in a more efficient way then the party can do by its own means - or a neutral BBS being used to distribute sensible information, e. g. the party tries to hunt down information or confine it and a BBS could be stored to proliferate said information.