It's not offsite backups that would have saved them, it's offline backups.
You can have all the data centers you want, but if they're all connected, then one ransomware attack can (and did) nuke them all.
If you have just one system that's unplugged with a copy of all the data, then your data will be fine. It's just time at that point, which could still be very very bad, but the data still exists.
Depends on what you mean by "all required minerals, vitamins, etc."
If you are including all proteins, fats, and calories, then nothing happens. (assuming you didn't miss anything at all)
If you exclude any required "etc" then your body will try to keep you in homeostasis for as long as possible, depleting any reserve unit it can't anymore.
If you're short calories, then your body will process fats and muscle and you will get leaner until it can't manage.
If you're short protein, then your body will process muscle and you'll lose strength until it can't manage.
If you're short calcium, then your body will process bone until you break something.
Probably, without a very careful regiment, with blood work and doctor's supervision, you'll end up with a deficiency of some kind and could cause permanent damage.
Should we wait until encryption is completely broken before we start this research? Or should we start to study it now to figure out how to keep our privacy and security intact ahead of the threat?
TL;DW - he needs reference screen grabs to make his screen accurate props, but lately in browser DRM has been making it harder and harder to take screenshots (specifically using a Mac on Amazon streaming service). So if he gets frustrated enough, he'll just torrent a HQ copy and use that instead.
DRM is making it annoying for everyone, and you never own anything if you don't have an unrestricted local copy.
I find this interesting because I use Mozilla VPN, which is just rebranded Mullvad, and qBittorrent works just fine on it.
Very telling that big sites are only promoting VPN services that heavily advertise... i.e. - give commissions on signups.
The list of providers they "tested" aren't even that complete, they didn't even bother to pretend to check out ones that won't give a kickback for promotion.
They don't give specific recommendations, but the EFF has a good list of things to look for in a provider. https://ssd.eff.org/module/choosing-vpn-thats-right-you
Sure, but those are two different things. Offsite is good to protect against natural disasters (or attacks, or...), offline is good to protect against digital disasters (ransomware, admin mistakes, etc.)
Tape libraries are a way to store offline backups, but they don't have to be offline and aren't the only way to run a backup solution. They are a way to store data in bulk for cheap. They are also a way to help protect against technological changes (if all your backups are on 5 1/4" floppy discs and you can't find any 5 1/4" floppy drives, then your backups are no good).
Some people like to use a 3-2-1 solution (3 copies, 2 different technologies, 1 offsite), but that doesn't specifically mention anything about offline, which is critical for these types of situations, and the exact solution has many different correct answers.