How to communicate when the world goes silentSo how would you communicate with your family or get help if communications go down? So if you found yourself in the middle of a wide-scale disaster such as a hurricane or other catastrophe andyou had no government coming to help for a while, how would you communicate with your family or others? What if the power grid went down? You wont be able to rely on your cell phone. There are alternatives, however. Ill go over the basics of some emergencycommunication methods but if you want more detail, check out Personal Emergency Communications: Staying in Touch Post-Disaster: Technology, Gear and Planning. Short-term emergencies have shown the limitations of using cell phones to coordinate with each other. Even if the towers are operational, they cant handle the added traffic of millions of people trying to get a hold of loved ones or help. Ever had trouble calling your mother on the morning of Mothers Day? During many recent events, cell phone service wasnt an option for many for days. The system became seriously overloaded on 9/11 so calls wouldnt go through, 70% of the towers went down during Katrina and were down for days, and most areas havent been adequately improved across the US. These wont be isolated events. Dont think that because you live in a large metropolitan area that youre safer. A quick look at some of the things that went on during Hurricane Sandy in NY will show that the government has a lot to deal with in addition to just trying to get your cell phone service back up so even though that was a pretty short-term event, it caused a lot of problems. Here are just a few issues that would affect you being able to pull out your iPhone to call up people: Now dont get me wrong, for day-to-day emergencies, such as getting a flat tire, a cell phone usually works pretty well. Its just a crappy solution for big emergencies. Theyll be pretty useless if the national grid goes down due to a cyber attack, EMP or CME, which is actually a lot more likely than you might think. One cool idea thats coming out is the goTenna cell phone radio antenna system. Your cell phone connects to it via Bluetooth and an app, and the signal is sent and received through an encrypted radio signal. How awesome is that? It wont be able to reach to the other side of a city but you should be able to locate your family if theyre in the area and maybe even communicate with others if they have the system. So if you cant rely on cell phone service, what other options do you have? CB radio for emergency comms A lot of people grew up watching BJ and the Bear and they remember seeing all the truckers talking over the air with each other. CB radio is definitely more available during an emergency but they have a lot of limitations. For one, not a lot of people are on CB. You might be able to find someone in a truck but even thats harder to find. The problem isnt just the lack of people who use it, its the lack of people in your range that use it. One of the big reasons your range is very limited with CB vs other systems is that theyre limited to 5 watts input which is about 4 watt out. That may be just some vague notion but more power means more distance. At the frequencies that CB radios use, you can only expect to get between 1 and 10 miles or so, depending on the terrain.There could be a million people in the US with their CBs all on the same channel at the same time, but if theyre not within range, you wont be talking. You might think that you could just hack into your ham radio and pump out more power, but the FCC goes after people who do that(just a few examples). Obviously if SHTF, youre not gonna really care about that but remember that adding more power to transmit and receive farther doesnt do anything to help you hear the other guy with a normal CB transmitter. For a lot of emergency situations, satellite phones are pretty good. The first problem with them though is cost. Theyre mighty expensive. Not only do you have to shell out for the phone, you have to pay for service and minutes. If youre stranded somewhere though, it may be worth the cost. They dont always work though. I had one with me at all times when I was in Uganda, and it came in hella handy at times. They dont like jungles though due to the trees blocking the satellites and contrary to what every freaking movie shows, they dont work indoors or inside a ship like they kept showing inWorld War Z(which was a decent movie but movie mistakeslike that drive me crazy). The real problem is that its highly unlikely youd need it in a normal household so theyre ONLY good for emergencies and probably not worth the cost. Another big problem is that just like cell phones, they rely on the satellites to function so if the satellites stop working, then so do the satellite phones. Obviously. Solar storms and CMEs have taken out satellites in the past. They will do it again. For local communication, GMRS, FRS and MURS radios are pretty good. They dont require an FCC license for FRS and MURS, theyre cheap, and easy to use. Theyve pretty much replaced CB radios for a lot of families. As such, even though theyre an improvement, they have a lot of the same limitation on power and range. If you have a true GMRS radio, you may be able to tap into a repeater, which will expand your range to possibly hundreds of miles, but the repeater obviously has to be running, and you have to be within range of the repeater for your radio to hit it. GMRS radios are also allowed to operate at higher power than a lot of other radios. You also need a license to use GMRS frequencies. Basically, if youre considering one of these radio systems for emergency use, go with a true GMRS radio and get the license. So now that Ive gone through several options that you could choose, but obviously from the title I dont recommend, lets look at ham radio. Ham radio is the go-to communication system for pretty much every emergency response system and is what MARS (the Military Auxiliary Radio System) and ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) both use, as well as many search and rescue and other emergency groups. One of the nice things is that a lot of ham radios can reach the national weather system (NOAA) frequencies. That means that if you have a radio, you can find out whats going on in the area. If you have a radio scanner, you can listen to whats going on with emergencyfrequencies as well as any other that the scanner can reach, and you dont have to know which one theyre transmitting on. Thats why they call it a scanner. It goes in a loop up through whatever frequencies you tell it to and it stops if it hears someone transmitting. Here is a list of amateur radio emergency frequencies that you should keep in mind when both looking for radios and coming up with your emergency communications plan: 34.90: Used nationwide by the National Guard during emergencies. Here is a large list of different frequencies that you could use to put together a list of channels to follow during an emergency or other times. Ham radio operation requires a license, but as you can see in this article, theyre easy to get. This isnt quite as daunting as it seems, especially considering you dont need to learn Morse code anymore, but it still requires some studying. There are threemainlevels of licensing: Technician, General and Extra. The higher license you get, the more frequencies you can use. This is important. The lower license will get you started but you really need the higher licenses if you want to communicate around the world. So why is itimportant to get a license? In non-emergency life, you have to be concerned that the FCC will go after you if you transmit on a frequency that youre not allowed to operate. For you to be ready for a SHTF scenario, you need to have the equipment and practice with it in order to make sure youll be able to get through. Just like with FCC investigators and volunteers who track down offenders (you have to call out your FCC callsign every 10 minute on the air or youll probably get some unwanted attention), if you find yourself in martial law and dont want to be found, they can track you down pretty easily. So why does it matter about what frequencies? Just like with CB radios and the others, the frequency will affect how far you can transmit/receive a signal. This can be pretty complicated so its best to get a good book on antennas and propagation, and work with more experienced people to help you get going. There are a LOT of people around the world who use amateur radio. These people are typically in tune with dealing with emergencies or working with communicating with people in different scenarios. Because of the range ham radios can get, its a LOT easier to get a hold of someone during an emergency. These people are also extremely resourceful so even if they dont have a working radio (such as after an EMP pulse), they can make one. I currently have three ham radios. An inexpensive Baofeng UV-5R handheld that I keep on my Harley, a great Yaesu VX-6R waterproof handheld with an upgraded antenna that I keep in my bugout bag, and a portable Yaesu FT-857d radioi that I can run off a 12v battery. Im seriously considering upgrading to the Yaesu VX-8DR though because its pretty awesome. You might prefer the VX-8GR though. Heres a video that shows the difference and some of the cool features, btw: A big part of getting your signal out and hearing others is the antenna so if you get a handheld, Id suggest upgrading the antenna like I mentioned above. Keep in mind also that if you get a Baofeng that their antenna connections are different so youll need an adapter in some cases. There are a lot of repeaters around the world that can help you transmit long distances with just a little radio. Basically, a repeater will listen to the little radios in its immediate surroundings and then blast the signal out for hundreds, or thousands, of miles. Obviously the repeaters need to be functioning to do this but people who have repeaters are usually up on emergency communication and will have backup power systems. If they go down, they usually know how to fix it. There are even repeaters that use the internet so if you tap into a repeater and type in the address of a remote repeater in another country, what you say on your little radio will blast out to that point on the other side of the world. I talked to a guy in Australia on the first day I got my Yaesu handheld that way. Because ham radio people are crafty lot (and some places dont allow antennas), there is a whole sub-genre of ways to make antennas so they cant be detected (by sight, not by signal). Antennas can be made out of flagpoles, ladders, fences, railings, and a lot of other things in plain sight. They can also be hidden inside things or buried. There are several books such asLow Profile Amateur Radio: Operating a Ham Station from Almost Anywherethat can show you how to do these (which is a great book, by the way but good luck finding a copy of it). Here are a couple more: With the proper knowledge (which you can pretty much only get with practice), you can make a radio out of stuff you can find pretty much anywhere that will transmit on frequencies that you can reach other people. Not only is this useful to hide your antennas, it could seriously come in handy if you had to make an antenna in an emergency. Obviously, the more experience you have with radios, the easier itll be for you to do something like this. As Ive mentioned, amateur radio operators are not only creative and resourceful, theyre very in tune with handling emergency situations. There are several groups that use ham radio for dealing with disasters or for search and rescue. The two biggest areRadio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) andAmateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). If you want to get started learning about ham radio as an effective emergency communications system for you or your family, check out the Prepared Ham Forum. My buddy AD owns the site, and its great for learning and asking questions. Lots of helpful people on there to help out. With the right equipment and some practice, you can easily get around the world. And, you dont have to actually buy a radio to do it. Thats one of the greatest things about learning and using ham radio. You can literally make a working radio out of scrap. There will always be scrap. You will always be able to make a radio. In addition to the plethora of ham radio equipment and information available, a good basis of theory can get you talking to people even if all electricity and electronics are taken out.Here are some examples of what you can do with a little knowledge: A foxhole radio was used by GIs during WWII and beyond. The cool thing is that it doesnt require a power source and is made from simple parts like a pencil and razor blade. Its only a receiver, though. Crystal Radios There are many, many, many ways to make a radio out of household items. Way too many to list them here. Suffice it to say that with all the wires and old electronics laying around, making a simple radio receiver is pretty simple. Just like the foxhole radio, these pretty much only receive. They can also be made to use power from the signal itself so they dont all need anything else to power them. Fear not dudes and dudettes, you can still make a transmitter out of stuff you can find in a lot of homes or junkyards: The spark-gap transmitter Spark-gap transmitters are pretty simple to make. The good thing is that they transmit over a HUGE frequency range so pretty much anyone nearby is gonna hear it. The bad things are that theyre illegal (for the same reason) and can zap the heck out of you if youre not careful. You also have to learn Morse code or create your own in order to have anyone have any idea what youre trying to say. If you dont have a ham radio license yet (or actually, even if you do), you should look at getting an emergency shortwave radio so you can listen into weather bulletins etc. The Safe-T-Proof radio is a great little one to have because you can charge it with a hand crank or the solar panel, it has a flashlight and a cell phone charger outlet on it too. It wont have the range of a ham radio with a good antenna, but it could be really useful in an emergency, and you dont have to worry about running out of power. So, there are many different ways to communicate during a disaster situation or if society collapses but for the most flexible and effective way, you should seriously look into getting your ham radio license and start playing with it. Its a great hobby and one that could be the difference between finding your family in an emergency or losing them. Either way, make sure whatever you do that you come up with an emergency communications plan beforehand. Graywolf is a military veteran who has deployed to combat theaters in Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan and has almost three decades of military and military contracting experience. His goal is to help preppers and others understand how to intelligently protect their family and their way of life. You can find more information at Graywolfsurvival.com, where this article first appeared. 