Prepper Comms

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Came across this by accident and thought it was worth sharing. Maybe some of our resident hams will chime in.

Prepper Comms Series -- A PRIMER​

Apr 10, 2026
This video is a primer to the upcoming 'Prepper Comms Series' of videos, designed to describe the concentric rings of communications priorities, with examples.
You know grid-down communications is important, but just feel overwhelmed by all the information and choices, and it's all unfamiliar to you.
Then this series is for you and others in your family/group who are on the same journey.


21:11
 
Old school mail delivery system for when there is no power:

 

Prepper Comms VIdeo 3 Get My Comms Up HELP​

Apr 24, 2026
A grid-down event is one week away (let's say). What do you do?
JJS addresses one of the most common needs experienced in the prepper community. Someone walks up with a radio they bought last year (most often a Baofeng UV-5R) and they haven't touched it since.
Q: "What do I do with this?"
Q: "How do I know what frequencies to put in it?"
Q: "How do I program it?"
You'll learn the top three things you should be doing now to prepare for that grid-down event "next week."
You'll also learn what FREE software to get, what cables and other accessories you need, options that will help improve your signal and reach, and you'll learn where to get the frequencies in your area, and how to program those into your radio. It's easier than you might think!
Resources & links are below the vid on youtube.

Prepper Comms VIdeo 3 Get My Comms Up HELP
 
I hear this constantly...Greg Hunter and others, hawking satphones, etc.

WHY is this going to be so CRITICAL? Are we going to need to chitchat when TSFTF?

Family, yeah. Except in a true crisis, there is little you can do. Family far away, is going to have to stay there, until travel is possible/safe. If it ever-again is.

In another part of town...so, you get the spousal unit, or the offspring, on satphone. What, so you can hear each other DIE? You can't help them in that moment - you're hunkered down. They can't help you. They need to get to whatever hidey-hole you've planned - and yammering about it won't help.

A Mad Max EOTWAWKI truck going out to retrieve, in the midst of food riots or alien uprising (Somalia, not intergalactic)...silly. You advertise you have a tough truck with capabilities. Morons with 65 IQs want it.

Good luck with that, as they say.

What's needed is a pre-arranged PLAN. How to get to where everyone needs to be. How to communicate, after the batteries are dead and the solar panels stolen or destroyed by rock-throwers. Obviously a nine-year-old girl is not going to cross the city. Less obvious but as true, Mommy isn't going to drive an SUV across the area to the government skeul, there and back, either.

To the question at hand, runners, trusted intermediates, are the answer. Not so much the gee-whiz junk.
 
Peoples watch too much TV and they have this 'I'm gonna survive' mindset and have no idea what it's gonna be like when the shooting is over. I'm close enough to Seattle to know I ain't gonna survive a nuke war.
 
Bottom Feeder said:
Peoples watch too much TV and they have this 'I'm gonna survive' mindset and have no idea what it's gonna be like when the shooting is over. I'm close enough to Seattle to know I ain't gonna survive a nuke war.
Click to expand...
One thing we know from just about EVERY catastrophe, is that survival is 9/10ths chance.

People survive airline crashes in weird ways - like that flight attendant launched out of the Air Canada crash, strapped into her seat. Like one of the Marconi telegraphers on the Titanic - who stayed at his post until LONG after the last lifeboat left, but caught an upside-down collapsible life-raft as the top decks were going under.

You just never know.

Now, as to whether survival will be worth it or not...that's another issue.

And believe me, I think about that. Especially since in the last three years, movement has gotten so much harder. Back a decade ago, I could conceive of me doing a Euell Gibbons impersonation as a hunter-gatherer hermit-author. Now just to get up off the ground, if I'm there to pick something up, I have to have something to grab onto.

Ah, well. Life's a bitch, and then you die.
 
I saw an add on X for this. It's a "walkie talkie" set that uses cellular networks (so no good in a true TSHTF scenario) and uses network switching and encryption to ensure private communications:

Privacy Radio

EchoRadios
echoradios.com echoradios.com

Currently ~$100/device (unless you order 4 or more) and $20/year after the first year.
 
I am a licensed HAM with UHF/VHF and HF capabilities.

I can communicate around the world wirelessly with other HAMs on HF.

I can send emails wirelessly with Winlink to other HAMs with Winlink of their end.

Within our local county several of us HAMs can take and transit photographs wirelessly amongst ourselves and also to the county's EOC (emergency operations center).

Batteries to power my equipment for weeks can be recharged with the two solar panels.


20230811_145421 (1).jpg20251122_104736 (1).jpg
 
*As I've said before, I'm not a ham, I'm a shortwave listener with an interest in communications. Posting this as food for thought and entertainment.

Ham Radio Preparedness | The Mission Defines the Gear

Oct 22, 2026 ✪ Members first on October 19, 2026 Grid -Down Emergency Communication: Forward, Preface, Chapters 1-2
What ham radio gear do you actually need for emergency communications? Start with the mission: who needs to communicate, the range between stations, and the terrain between them. A radio can work perfectly while a group is together and still leave an operator unable to reach that group or base camp when separated.
After my previous video, some viewers questioned whether civilian ham radio has missions at all. I use a convoy communications scenario to answer that question. The group has VHF/UHF and Meshtastic for local communications and plans an HF NVIS link to base camp. When one vehicle falls behind and loses line of sight, the question becomes whether its operator brought the equipment needed to reach someone.
That is why the mission must come before the gear recommendation. The people we need to contact, the paths between stations, and the information we need to deliver determine our choices of radios, bands, antennas, modes, and software. A handheld described as the “perfect prepper radio” might be useful for one part of the trip without being enough for the whole task. Training and practice are how we discover those gaps before we depend on the station.
What mission are you preparing for, and what radios, antennas, and methods does it require? Let me know in the comments.

THE FIRST VIDEO
This discussion began with my ATV-based field station and how the mission defines the methods and tools: • Ham Radio | The Mission Defines the Method...


5:47
 
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