Well, the "internet" isn't like a land line/electricity. It goes down pretty consistently where I have lived for the last 10 years (Sunnyvale CA, San Mateo CA, Redwood City CA) - on both DSL and Cable (SBC, AT&T, Comcast) - sometimes for 2 to 3 days at a time. Indeed, the frequency with which Comcast's DNS server stops responding to me has me switching to 8.8.8.8 on a bi-montly basis (and screwing up all the CDNs at the same time).
Shutting down this rogue DNS server will have little to no serious consequence on people's lives - it's not like the "internet" is a reliable service. People who do need reliability, have things like SONET with dual-entrance, multiple providers, and multiple data centers located in separate disaster zones with aggressive power redundancy facilities.
FYI, Comcast's new generation of DNS servers appear to be much more reliable. They support IPv6, DNSSec, and don't have ads. Also, they're anycast (like Google), so the IPs are the same everywhere:
None the things you mention in your second paragraph will help you if what fails is DNS lookup.
Depending on who you are, what you do and where you live, internet access may well be as vital to you as a land line. In fact, I'm not sure I'd notice if my landline stopped working.
Shutting down this rogue DNS server will have little to no serious consequence on people's lives - it's not like the "internet" is a reliable service. People who do need reliability, have things like SONET with dual-entrance, multiple providers, and multiple data centers located in separate disaster zones with aggressive power redundancy facilities.