Supposing the event is indeed apocalyptic in scale that it would destroy the very foundation of civilization, then indeed on a short to medium term the more practical skills and knowledge sets will be way more valuable. However, from medium to long term onwards the scientists, the engineers, the historians and also the knowledge they have or have salvaged in some kind of material, eventually recoverable form will be of much greater importance for the restart of the civilization. Libraries, data banks of any kind will be of great importance, while relics, artpieces and historical sources of information of and about the "old world" will eventually come to hold great value for those who managed to protect such artefacts (just as we praise today artpieces of the past epochs). Unfortunately it may take some time until the focus switches from "immediate survival" to "planning for the future" and it will be important for those knowledge holders to be protected until their skills can be again used. How to protect the knowledge holders and knowledge containers ? That may be the the greatest challenge of all, and I myself don't know what kind of social entity could have the vision, the power and will to find,recover,keep, guard and evolve them until the world is able to use them again. The church ? The remnants of the state ? Other social of economic organization(s) ? We'd better not get in this situation at all,rebuilding stuff is not as easy as breaking it in the first place.

The same limitations apply to todays warfare as even modern artillery and ballistic weapons impose a certain time delay between the moment of firing and the moment the projectile hits the target. We ALREADY aim not at where the target IS but at a the estimated/computed point of intersection between the target's trajectory and the projectile's trajectory. This will even more so adapted and evolved for space combat, no matter if you apply this for short range combat with classic projectiles (explosive missiles or purely kinetic) or long range where you will have to take into account delays imposed by light speed. Also consider that most missiles are in a way or another intelligent and will adapt trajectory to follow the target, in this way a nuclear missile can be argued to have more hitting chances than a laser fired from far away. Challenges for future : If future ship design will not reduce/zero the ship's mass, then inertia may very well be a problem: it will limit it's maneuverability. It may also impose to actually maintain greater distance between the ships with hostilities happening from afar. We ALREADY use technology to attack and hit targets that are way out of visual range, current fighters can engage and hit an enemy fighter from many miles away. This will happen even more so for space fights. If future ships will have the ability to neutralize mass and annihilate inertia, then extreme maneuverability will become possible making the job of the attackers harder. BUT, for EITHER scenario the way to gain the advantage would most likely come from computational power (be it AI or not) : the ship having the better computer will be able to better anticipate the actions of the others in order to either have a better trajectory estimate or better alter its course (constantly) in order to be in another place than where the next enemy hit will "land". If i remember correctly this issue of computing power used to better predict enemy actions in order to adapt its own actions is already exploited in SF. I don't remember if I read it in a SF story or if it was part of a game's universe. Or both.

It's not the index that counts now, it's the users. Today "searching the internet" is synonymous with google and with "to google". Unlisting from google's index would mean absolutely nothing. Users (usually) do not use google to search for "Company X". Users usually search for products and services. Take away the first entries and users will click on the following results, eventually buying from the "underdogs". Unsubscribing from google's index would be suicidal from a sales point of view and only a moron or digital era impaired old dinosaur like murdoch could actually believe such a scenario would be good for business. Not to talk about the fact that 1000 sites is a grain of sand in the desert of google's index. And not to mention about the proposed sum being too little to bribe giants that could be significant. (1 mil is peanuts for ibm, hp or amazon, for example). These being said, this must be some april fools' joke or that guy is smoking some serious shit.