AbstractWe show how to construct a $$(1+\varepsilon )$$
(
1
+
ε
)
-spanner over a set $${P}$$
P
of n points in $${\mathbb {R}}^d$$
R
d
that is resilient to a catastrophic failure of nodes. Specifically, for prescribed parameters $${\vartheta },\varepsilon \in (0,1)$$
ϑ
,
ε
∈
(
0
,
1
)
, the computed spanner $${G}$$
G
has $$\begin{aligned} {{\mathcal {O}}}\bigl (\varepsilon ^{-O(d)} {\vartheta }^{-6} n(\log \log n)^6 \log n \bigr ) \end{aligned}$$
O
(
ε
-
O
(
d
)
ϑ
-
6
n
(
log
log
n
)
6
log
n
)
edges. Furthermore, for anyk, and any deleted set $${{B}}\subseteq {P}$$
B
⊆
P
of k points, the residual graph $${G}\setminus {{B}}$$
G
\
B
is a $$(1+\varepsilon )$$
(
1
+
ε
)
-spanner for all the points of $${P}$$
P
except for $$(1+{\vartheta })k$$
(
1
+
ϑ
)
k
of them. No previous constructions, beyond the trivial clique with $${{\mathcal {O}}}(n^2)$$
O
(
n
2
)
edges, were known with this resilience property (i.e., only a tiny additional fraction of vertices, $$\vartheta |B|$$
ϑ
|
B
|
, lose their distance preserving connectivity). Our construction works by first solving the exact problem in one dimension, and then showing a surprisingly simple and elegant construction in higher dimensions, that uses the one-dimensional construction in a black-box fashion.