Another hot tip - even tho your cell tower may 'work' - be advised that the cell system may "backhaul" every thing to a switch out of town/out of state.

Worked a CLEC for many years,

 

Not being a smarty pants could have listened to your car radio while washing it..a.m. still has weather/news.

 

The beater car radio is busted. Our area only has a few stations, and they are all pre-recorded talk shows or music, no real time news breaks. And this was just an inconvenience, not something the emergency broadcast network would post.

But it was good practice to show a few weakensses we still have. And how much technology and connectivity has modified our lives, along with the craving to know what's going on. There is a need for real time news, in our modern world unless you live in a cave. We have a need to know to protect finances, even in the case of dangerous events.

This is a good example where Ham radio could be usefull in bypassing traditional info sources.

Also I found it interesting that with a lack of available info, people physically went to places where news might be forthcoming, the cell stores, cable office. In a real SHTF I'd expect similar action - people perhaps risking their lives to find out what's going on. Something to consider anyway.

 

You really shouldn't rely on TV or regular radios for any news. Weather radios and hand held radios are the best way to hear the news. And, like it was said, if you are expecting any kind of weather in your area know about it ahead of time and prepare for it then. Also, learning to look at the clouds and weather situations is a big help. All kinds of books, manuals and web sites out there to learn those things.

 

Scanners too, near real time information although you might not get the whole story or the outcome sometimes.

 

I intentionally bought a couple of ac and D cell powered (cells seem to never go bad) radios for this reason exactly. When I want information and there is no power for tv/cell towers there is always a government funded (like npr) radio station that will play.

 

I have one of these cheap antennas and I did NOT put it on the roof, it just sits on a box in my attic and works great. Your results may vary due to location but TV station weather usually never goes out.....as long as you have power for your TV you should be GTG.

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Starlink is awesome.
Tesla makes great cars.
Space X is going to Mars next year.

 

There has never been Ota tv where I live.we do have a local fm and am radio station. We only have streaming TV at the moment , is dish still a thing?

 

UserNameTaken, sounds like you had a good adventure going on over there. There have been some good responses on things that may help resolve some of the weaknesses you have identified. If you want my .02 looking into getting a HAM radio up and running might really help. The area I believe you live in there should be an abundance of 2 Meter repeaters. You can check Repeaterbook.com to see everything that is available to the public. It's a really good resource and you can also download the App on your phone. Many of the HAM networks open up an emergency communications center that gives out real time information. The benefit is you can get on and ask questions or give information. Many of these repeaters have the ability to operate in a linked mode. This allows information to be passed over great distances.

I also like the old TV antenna ideas. It made me realize that I have this capability in my RV and frequently use it. I don't get a lot of news from it but mostly some stations that show great old movies and the like. I would imagine in your area it would pick up a lot of channels including local news. Like many here I'm skeptical at best relying on the local news channels but it is information. Beyond all of that, a good old fashioned crank radio with a solar panel is another great way to go.

 

Yes, as I mentioned in the previous reply this would be a good reason to get a Ham license. I know there are repeaters here. I can't put like a tower up due to HOA rules, but our Baofengs could hit the repeaters - unless they were off due to power or say EMP attack.

We get about 6 TV stations out of Vegas. There were more OTA channels but I read the county stopped subsidising the translator system a couple years ago. Our old house we had an antenna and a switch for OTA or cable and got about a dozen. Mostly the news and I Love Lucy reruns.

We used to have a local cable TV channel and a news show, but the guy died (it was literally one guy who did the show) and the station closed about ten years ago. But again... cable. No cable no news. I think a local cable station would do well, but I guess the startup is too much, and not enough advertisers. When I had my firearm school we advertised on the radio, about $600 a month, plus I did occasional guest spots on the local talk channel, back when it was live, but to produce an ad and pay for air time on cable TV was like twenty grand. Ten years ago.

I don't know, maybe there's an exestential lesson here on the future of rural america?

 

I suspect we're going to get a test here pretty soon. Two nights ago, a tree fell across the road and snagged the phone and cable bundle. Tree is still there, at about a 45 degree angle. Been reported repeatedly, nobody has shown up to fix it. I figure sooner or later someone will hit the tree and bring down the service.

 

I think your point about being connected to handle problems rings true to me....
Not so much so i could move my investments around but things like pandemics, invasions, martial law and the riots starting in earnest.
So far my emergency's have been things like mt St Helens erupting 80 miles away and a fast moving forest fire 10 miles away.......both pretty noticeable .

The human factor is going to be the one I want to be apprised of ahead of time if possible... a bunch of hungry people raiding grocery stores does not bode well for preppers who have food...

When my wife worked in smaller towns in montana if the power went out the clinic was the only place with a auto on generator.....so the unprepared showed up there in their cars......

 

Thanks for the radio info. I REALLY need to learn a lot more and get a Ham tech license.

@67 CJ5 - that's a good idea on the TV. I used to have a 12v one when I had my liveaboard boats. They pop up in garage sales every do often.

Had this inconvenience lasted longer, or like had there been mushroom clouds on the horizon I'd have dug my battery radio or tuned the car in for any emergency broadcasts. I had a brief WTF moment where all the EMP novels flashed through my mind when both the cable AND cell systems went down at once. We've never had that happen.

Still not sure why our systems 150 mi away was affected, but it shows the vulnerabilities of the systems we rely on.

Las Vegas Valley picking up the pieces after powerful windstorm — PHOTOS

A Tuesday afternoon windstorm brought gusts up to 70 mph, damaging trees and power lines in the eastern valley. Crews are still working to restore power and clear blocked roadways.

www.reviewjournal.com

 

Thanks for the radio info. I REALLY need to learn a lot more and get a Ham tech license.

@67 CJ5 - that's a good idea on the TV. I used to have a 12v one when I had my liveaboard boats. They pop up in garage sales every do often.

Had this inconvenience lasted longer, or like had there been mushroom clouds on the horizon I'd have dug my battery radio or tuned the car in for any emergency broadcasts. I had a brief WTF moment where all the EMP novels flashed through my mind when both the cable AND cell systems went down at once. We've never had that happen.

Still not sure why our systems 150 mi away was affected, but it shows the vulnerabilities of the systems we rely on.

Las Vegas Valley picking up the pieces after powerful windstorm — PHOTOS

A Tuesday afternoon windstorm brought gusts up to 70 mph, damaging trees and power lines in the eastern valley. Crews are still working to restore power and clear blocked roadways.

www.reviewjournal.com

View attachment 613753

Our DSL, landlines, and cell phones went down during Hurricanes Idalia and Helene. Starlink never faltered. 6.5+ days on generator with Helene.

 

Getting that tech license only takes a little bit of study, some time to take the test, and a few bucks.

At the very least, get the tech level license, it'll open up quite a bit of capabilities.

Once you have that, get to know the local elmers, attend a few ham swaps, get on some directed nets to see what's active and what's not in your area. Easiest to start with is 2m in most places. Build a J-pole like every new ham does.

Anyway, the only radio I normally have running next to my desk is a trunking scanner to listen to the local emergency chatter. I'm rarely on the air any more, and my area doesn't have that much chatter to begin with. I've had a general ticket for a couple of decades now, used to be involved in ARES/RACES when I lived down south. Got out of that when I saw how corrupt the local groups were.

 

FWIW, AM radio still works like it used to in that you can dial in stations from several states away at night when there's less "clutter" in the air.

As a kid I would sometimes lay in bed with my clock radio up to my ear and carefully scan the dial finding stations from such far away places as Chicago, Nebraska, and sometimes Wyoming, Kansas, or even Texas, all from under the covers there in central Minnesota.

Maybe not the most reliable but you still might catch a little news blurb about the event from far away, if it's a big enough deal to talk about beyond locally.

Or if not, you could at least get the current market prices for things like pork bellies or soybeans, ya know, in case you wanted to see how folks were getting along outside your regional catastrophe zone.

 

Yeah, me too. As a kid I used to listen to late night AM. "KFI, broadcasting with 50,000 watts on 640 am, the clear channel station." You could hear it all over the west.

A magical time and age. Thanks for the memory.

 

 

Had a similar experience about 10 years ago of living in the info age and being disconnected. It surprised me how much withdrawal from phones and internet the family went through during a wide spread outage that lasted 2 weeks. It must be way worse to be disconnected today.

Some take-always for me then were: good neighbors come together; prep entertainment like games and puzzles; the importance of commo; and the most used prep was a radio.

 

Sardog and I are both trained weather spotters. He has been for over 39 years, I have been for 25. We are both HAM operators and can go down to the west end of our road and sit in the middle of the big cemetery, about a mile west of us, and see all around us for miles. Also have a tablet I use for looking at radar. He can/does also report straight to the national weather service about any major weather situations in our area.

But even with radar we still rely at looking at the clouds for a lot of our information. We also can and do open the basement of our church, about 2 miles east of us, for anyone in the area when the weather is looking too bad. We'd like to use it sometimes but we're the ones out in the weather telling everyone else it's getting bad. 😁

 

Humans are designed for precise communication. We can choke to death because of the placement of our vocal chords in our too narrow neck. We would rather face the possibility of death than not be able to communicate.

In the modern world we are addicted to talking pictures, podcasts, radio, etc... it takes about 72 hours without that addiction to get over the creepy feeling of not being informed. You still would like to be informed, but that itchy, creepy feeling of an addiction diminishes.

My boys decided we need one more "hunting camp" on the 98 acres that I bought in January, and I needed a break from people, so I built the barn/atv garage for the compound. No coverage out there at all. I was up on the roof, wishing I could know what was going on out in the make believe world of domestication quite a bit. Even if you're not 100% a part of that world, it's too nutty to not want to keep an eye on it.

I have some emergency radios, a couple scanners, and an antenna with an analog TV in the main house that gets 21 analog channels (mostly religious). I don't need my fix as much as most people, but here I am, after 3 days, checking in with that strange world out there.

It's part of being human. It's also a fatal flaw in any survival plan where people plan to turn their home into a hideout where they don't talk to others for months. First because if they are online daily I doubt they can go without communication for months, that's against human nature and the addiction. And second, because other people WILL be communicating with each other, and the hidden ones will become the outsiders. Humans do not deal well with outsiders, especially when stressed.

 

Good to have an internet-detox day, now and then!

 

Anyone remember Br Stair?

 

Also the days of real pirate radio stations, those were pretty entertaining listening.