Communication

This is something that many survivalists overlook. With the coming of the cell phone, many people tell me that they think that is all they need. They laugh at short wave, CB and other two way radios as old fashioned and out of date. One of the scenarios that I have talked about many times that would take down this country the quickest is for a scattered group of terrorists to take down a bunch of our communication towers at one time, leaving this country in bad shape. I also do not like the fact that my cell phone message goes to a tower, then possibly to another tower before it gets to the person I am talking to. This makes it easy to intercept and listen to the messages. Even a natural disaster such as an earthquake, tornado or hurricane can take down enough towers to make cell phone usage impossible. An earthquake that takes down a bridge while you and your mate or another part of a survival group is on one side while you are on the other can make communication necessary. If that earthquake also takes down all of the surrounding cell phone towers, your cell phone will not do you much good. So, what is a survivalist to do?

First of all, I am not against cell phones. My wife and I each have one with our own phone number. We use TracFones. This is one of the prepaid services. We use this service for two reasons. Number one, we are not heavy users of our cell phones using them for emergencies and when we are out of town or on the road. When I am on a trip for hunting, fishing or to check out survival sites, I call in each night. Other than that we may not use our cell phones for a month or more at a time. Number two, I find that I have coverage in many spots where other cell phone users cannot get a signal. I am not sure why this is except that I know that TracFone uses any tower in the vicinity. Everyone should have a cell phone in this day and age as one of their means of communication. We also still keep our land line as our main phone system.

Having said that about cell phones, like anything else survival, you need an alternative. I know that CB has gone the way of the Dodo bird except for long haul truckers to ratchet jaw while they are on the highway. Having said that, it is still an excellent way to keep in touch and I have a 40 channel base in my house with a "Big Stick" antenna. I also have a hand held unit and two mobile units. While I do not have my mobile units in any of my vehicles at the present, I have them fixed so that I can have them up and running in the either or both vehicles in about a half hour. I have magnetic base antennas for both of them. That way when not in use, no one needs know I have them. The CB's are what my wife and I will rely on for up to five mile communication if our cell phones should ever fail.

We also have a good set of two way radios, that are good out to about a mile. These are what we use to stay in touch with one another here on our rural property. We use them for when I am out cutting firewood or out in the woods looking for edible plants. We also use them for communication when I am out working in my shop. They have call button and several channels. They are Midland LXT310's. I also have a multi-channel five mile range radio that has the same channels as the radios that my daughter, son-in-law and grandkids use. We use it hunting but it can have many other uses. I have one more five channel hand held that I got when I was testing radios for a survival group. That was back when I was writing my monthly survival newsletter.

While I do not yet have a short wave transmitter, I do have a receiver. I hope to be able to get to a swap meet and pick up a cheap transmitter and then get a license. However, even now, with the receiver, I can get messages and relay them by other means.

We cannot forget the computer as a means of communication. However, like the cell phone, we already know that terrorists from other countries have hacked into our internet connections and can get all of the information. Having an encoding system on your machine will help a lot but codes can be broken. Also, taking out communications might include our computer network as well as cell phones.

This may sound like overkill and it probably is. The reason I have so many layers of communications is that being a survival adviser, I try things out and then I just wind up keeping them. Each survivalist needs to decide what they need. Just make sure you have at least one method of communication besides your computer and your cell phone.

Until next time SURVIVE, and check out my other blog at:

http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com