401Ks will take a hit, but if you leave the money in there and things go back to normal with the stock market you money will recover over enough time. It might not be as much as it would've been without the blip, but such is life. I think the answer to Crius question is that money won't even be there because those people won't be getting paid. If the restaurants shutdown those people will be out of work. They then won't need a webpage to order food from. They won't need to pay maintenance on their equipment or building. They won't need to pay for lawn maintenance. They won't be buying ad space. The ad company then won't be buying new computer hardware... All of the employees of those services will be affected and could be laid off. There are too many repercussions to list, but they go on and on. People without jobs don't buy cars, houses, clothes, medicines, or anything else. Then the banks start repoing houses and cars that they can't sell because they have no buyers. I could get bad, very bad if the economy crashes.