ARPANET was originally designed to survive nuclear war.

Many believe that ARPANET, the precursor to the internet, was created to withstand a nuclear attack. In reality, its primary purpose was to enable the sharing of expensive computing resources among research institutions and to facilitate communication. While the network's robustness and ability to handle failures were important, its original driving force was not specifically to survive a nuclear attack; this is a common misconception and a later observed benefit.