Short-term disruptions ranging from 10 to 30 minutes are generally inconsequential to users due to the network's ability to resume normal operations quickly without noticeable impact. However, long-term partitions lasting from a day to a week could compel users to seek alternative methods for communicating block and transaction information outside of the internet.

In scenarios where a significant portion of mining power, such as 20%, is isolated within a partition, miners affected by this separation may cease their activities upon realizing their efforts would not yield rewards once connectivity is restored. This is because any blocks mined within the partition would be disregarded in favor of the blockchain's longer chain, adhering to the protocol's rule that favors the chain with more cumulative proof of work. Consequently, transactions confirmed by miners within the partition are likely to be invalidated, leading to a loss of trust in these confirmations among users caught in the same partition.

The situation complicates further if a partition were to split the network's mining power evenly, creating two equally competitive chains. While such an exact division is improbable, it raises questions about the resolution of conflicts between competing chains and the potential for automatic merges. Currently, some Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) based blockchains possess mechanisms that can automatically merge divergent chains and resolve conflicts like double spending. Integrating similar functionality into Bitcoin would represent a monumental consensus change, marking a significant departure from its current operating principles.