Communication Post-SHTF

a reply to: rickymouse

and don't forget the politicians begging for your vote!

a reply to: The Vagabond

I was thinking if I had to make a quick run to get some supply, which most everything would be going to hell and or gone. So this would be a very bad and hopefully avoidable scenario. So I could say to my family I'm on my way home, is everything clear at the nest. And they would say yes or no.

I wouldn't mind being able to contact my very spread out family, several hundred miles away in a couple directions.

Great idea with the Garden gnome's!

a reply to: iclimbtowers

Imho you're taking an enormous risk leaving your shelter in place in the initial stage of SHTF unless you're following an organized plan to efficiently bug out, and your chance of procuring necessities at that point is hit and miss at best- so much as a good power outage is the end of most commerce. Better tiki avoid that particular scenario by preparation.
But for initial contact with the fam when incoming, a cellphone prepped to operate as long as there are functioning towers or a functioning local area network is your answer, and visual sign/counter sign is your next best. It could be as simple as "ok I'm leaving at noon. Rotate the garden gnome 90 degrees per hour and if I come back and the gnome is not on time I'm entering the house as if I were walking into a hostage situation so hit the floor and cover your ears". You could of course get two radios for your fam, one of them portable, But then you're counting on your fam to zero the frequency before getting in trouble or you just compromise yourself on the way in.

a reply to: The Vagabond

Thank you Vagabond, I hope that if it came down to it, I would have the time to properly finish some prep's that are very necessary. Thus eliminating the need to leave at all, I appreciate the excellent point's you made, especially the one about telling them to be prepared for me to come in hot. Risky but I would do that for my family, I plan during night hours to hook up early alarm system's just inside the door's in case someone were to attempt to get in during the night.

However my house in the rear area has those large sliding door's with the durable hard plastic. So I am sure with enough effort it could be broken, I also have that door barred at night with a small metal beam. I keep some plywood in my garage just in case, however I would hate to seal off an exit and get stuck inside if we needed to get out the back in a hurry. My house has great protection from the upper level with great shooting angles around all sides of the house but one. There are also no window's for entry on that side of the house.

Sorry for the rant, it helps me to remember thing's I need to solve, thank you sir again for your input.

Get an MBITR radio, rugged, powerful, encrypted. They will be well worth the $300 each. For regular radio I have a norwegian army solar/crank that also has a usb charger, flashlight, strobe.

If you dont want to afford the MBITR, but I highly suggest you look into it, just simple walkie-talkies are perfect.


a reply to: The Vagabond
Thats a really good idea about the rotation.

Provided there is still a power source, and with solar on the roof that is possible: Distributed wirless local networks. Ok, say if I open up my wifi network to everyone, and those within proximity open theirs up, we could use that network to communicate. I mean smoke signals are great and all, but you cant send data over them.

Tho without a powersource I'm going to have to invent a special bong for sending data over smoked networks

a reply to: botay

I predict the SHTF will happen after the November elections. That is when all the presidential campaigning will start and our piece of life will be interrupted by political calls that cannot be blocked.

a reply to: iclimbtowers

One other thing to consider if you're thinking to fort up the home (doable in some areas, not so much in others) is making it look empty- no light visible from the outside, maybe even a non fortified majority of the structure that allows someone to take a brief glance through the entry and see a trashed place with nothing valuable.
Then there's fire prevention - if your home can be burned then there's an easy way to make you open up.

A few different avenues are part of our plan.

ON THE RANCH - 1) in set locations (especially sentry posts), the old WW1 style crank radios, 2) handheld FM radios, 3) HAM radio setup with large antenna.

ON PATROL, SCOUTING, VEHICLES etc. - 1) CB radios, 2) handheld FM radios, 3) handheld HAMs

ALARMS - battery powered units that relay to a monitoring panel in the house.

Of course, we'll try the cell phones first, during a SHTF event, but not really banking on those being usable. As for such backup comm methods, since we won't be using them other than in a SHTF scenario, pretty easy to keep them (and their batteries, etc. ) EMP-proofed until needed.

a reply to: The Vagabond

I had heard it was a good idea to make it look abandoned, which could have 2 side's people could attempt to take refuge there or they walk by, which would be better.

And I'm not sure how I would exactly fire proof my home, that would really suck, maybe I should buy some land and build a hobbit house.

a reply to: Gazrok

If my property was a bit bigger I would for sure, employ some of these tactics, However I would feel it sufficient if I had a radio in the house for each responsible adult, It would be awesome to have a couple look out positions in my yard, however they would stick out like a sore thumb, and would have to be accessed from the yard which would make them... a bit pointless if anyone saw me go in one, And I would only be able to cover one side of the house at a time. I could perhap's get a dog that may help as an extra early alert system, and a potential criminal deterrent.

I could potentially rig something up for alarm system's in the yard, however I doubt I will end up putting solar panel's at this location, If I move to a more remote location I would have small wind turbine's and solar, on the roof and probably on the ground!

I signed up for a year long amateur radio course in a couple of weeks.
I have no knowledge of electronics, so it appears daunting.
But I know that when SHTF, and history has shown it does that every so often, that ham radio will be an important tool of communication.
So I am adamant in overcoming my ignorance of electronics and physics so that I can learn what I know is a skill every survivalist must have.

I might see a day when my pager is replaced by a handheld radio.
Because how else can one call a doctor when telephone lines are down?

never understood who I was supposed to be communicating with post SHTF, better to keep my head down and live a basic lifestyle.

originally posted by: iclimbtowers
a reply to: The Vagabond

I had heard it was a good idea to make it look abandoned...

If you drive past my driveway, it looks JUST LIKE a road into a pasture. Once you get around the first bend, it's paved. But from the street, it's not obvious that it's a house down that way. Fedex, UPS and the mail guy are the only ones that know where the house is, except for my neighbors. The drive is a half mile long, and it's wind-y, you can't see down the thing. And it's woods all the way until you hit the yard.

As far as radio goes, depending on the event, you may or may NOT be able to use a radio for quite some time. A lot of SHTF events will screw up the ionosphere in their own particular way. Line of sight or ground wave might be the only options.

originally posted by: Rainbowresidue
a reply to: iclimbtowers
My suggestion would be to forget technology, and go back to the basics.

It's easy to forget but even an atl atl or simple bow drill for firestarting is technology, but you're right about getting back to basics. Native Americans and frontiersmen used various blazes (stacked rocks, marks on trees or far more subtle signs) for communication. Hand signals are another good tool for communicating silently with people within eyesight of each other - something vital for group travel.

Bird calls could be useful for clandestine communication if sounding natural.

Some modern tech may still function, walkie talkies for instance. Also, there was a thread a while back about using memory sticks left in various places to leave and receive messages. They were glued in to walls and such and only the people you wanted to know would have their locations.

for line of sight communications after dark, a laser pointer is excellent, sending morse code.

Mount it to a low-power telescope on a tripod. It will shine across a ravine and into someone's window 5 blocks away, with no one outside of the receiving room or sender's room even aware of it.

For anonymous send/universal receive, shine the light onto the water-tower or transformer substation in your neighborhood. A white church steeple can also be used. Again, you need to tape it to a telescope for accurate aiming. On the side of a water tower, a dim red circle can be hard to see from several blocks away.

You might think it only works on the sender's side of the water tower or other vertical object, but not so. Find a landmark with an aircraft beacon. With some of them, a distant laser striking the unlit beacon will disperse the laser-light and make the whole beacon glow, so that the luminescence can be seen from the other side of the beacon. You have to divide up your letters between the beacon's own sequence, but that just makes it take longer--still quicker and safer than running twenty blocks to deliver the same message.