Are you preparing for the collapse of society?
- Thread starter Mook
- Start date
I've got my own opinions here, but let me say that my opinion is you need to address a few aspects of the issue. I think having a longer term strategy is a good thing at times but even say 3 months will get you where you need to go in a lot of cases.
If you wanted to do the absolute worse case scenario, Communism induced famines typically seem to be about 2 years so add 50% to that and make it 3. Such famines would likely lead to your ass being gulag'd for having food and not giving it up for "the people" though.
To me there's a few aspects to consider:
1-Food. This is likely a combination of stashing food (that 90 days) and growing in a longer engagement. This also means vitamins and keeping dietary stuff in mind. My wife had gasteric bypass, she'd be so fucked in such a situation. I have a shelf of food, I keep it stacked in chronological order so I know what to use up first. I'm planning on donating to the homeless shelter if I can't eat what I have before it expires. Win-win IMO. It's not a fuck ton but man it's better than being high and dry.
2-water From what I understand a gallon a person a day is what you should be shooting for. I'd include pets as much as I'm not a dog person they'd be really useful for security. That means 6 55 gallon drums would easily be good to go for a family of 4. Add some super sock-it pool shock to your arsenal to purify water and some commercial products and you're not in bad shape.
3-Shelter As much as we all talk about getting land, virtually any land that's cheap will have some flaw that will make it a pain in the dick in one way or another to live on or be super expensive. Too little water, too much water, cold as fuck in the winter etc. Underground is a nice idea overall if you can, it maintains temp a fuck of a lot better. Insulation seems like a high value investment to me as well in such a case, cut your heating energy down as much as possible and all that. Convection based cooling would be a major blessing as well I suspect. Look at what people did in older houses and what natives did before there was AC and good good heat.
4-Energy. I'll loop this in as a group, there's a lot going on here. Gassification is an interesting long term option if one wants to have a vehicle to drive around. Apparently a million or so Sweeds rand their cars off wood in WW-II. Any sort of energy would be valuable. Before I was moving I was stashing used motor oil. You can get it for free or damn nearly so and the environmental implications aside it's a super cheap way to have energy on tap. You just need a way to capitalize on it. I want to make a Babbington Burner just never got around to it. A few packs of bic lighters are cheap AF and a good thing to stash.
Also a thought or two on generators: Propane doesn't ever go bad, you can have decades old propane and it works fine. Diesel has a better shelf life than gasoline. Gasoline is good if you rotate it regularly to get past that 90 day hump. If you're just trying to run a fridge, you could do "bursts" say 3-4 times a day to keep the temp down provided you keep people the fuck out. I'd say monitoring your fridge would be a good thing to add, e.g. have a thermometer with an alarm. When it gets above X temp, kick on the genny and go. If you can find one for a decent price the camper fridge is a good choice too although they tend to be space limited and the rate they can cool down is also very limited.
5-security. As mentioned, the annoyances of dogs (barking at everything for instance) become an asset when dealing with bad situations. Barking could be a deterrent and at least would be a warning for you. Don't forget em in your prepping, a few months of dog food is relatively compact. Buy a gun, hell buy a few. I'm of the opinion you really want a shotgun, rifle and pistol. The shotgun can be budget pump like a Maverick88, I have two Ithaca 37s and paid under 300 bucks each. Have a real fucking stock or at least a folder, none of this pistol grip bullshit. You're not breeching doors ffs. A long barrel is also likely a better choice. Besides the obvious SD rounds, bird shot would be a good deal for game getting. In terms of the rifle, I'd want 5.56 or 7.62X39 with scope, MAX power 3-9 and probably a 2-7. You'd be able to shoot a deer fairly close up or a person at 500 yards, odds are you'd be able to stumble on ammo and so on. I'd have a few kinds of ammo, probably some 69 or 77gr for stuff like deer and then 55, 62 or 64gr bulk ammo for other entanglements. Handgun wise there's a lot of options here, I'd give 2-3 real consideration. A 22lr pistol is one ,this would let one bag small game or possibly poach deer with the right setup. The second is a 9mm handgun just because the ammo is ubiquitous these days. Lastly, I'd give a .357 magnum revolver the nod. The reason why is you can get loads that work on bear and deer if needed or you can have loads that are lighter and useful for smaller game. That's a big benefit over 9mm IMO. A suppressor would be awesome to have if it's legal where you are at the time even if just for the 22lr. If you're baller AF some thing like some sort of thermal scope or NV would be great to have. Far as I can tell though the decent stuff is big coin, so GL with that. Maybe we'll get some Afghani imports in a few years.
6-Transportation. Man portable is the order of the day here, cars are great and all but I'd be thinking at the end of 3 months you'd be lugging shit around manually. A bike isn't a bad idea either.
7-Exercise/fitness. Best not to be a fatass when this shit kicks off. Reality is most of us aren't marathon runners but the ability to be able to go a mile or five carrying a 30-40lb backpack will put you ahead of a lot of people in America probably. As was said in the movie Zombieland, "Cardio." Don't forget that when the caffeine supply runs out the first week or two of peoples' existences will be hell and that something like 10+% of the population has an alcoholism problem. There's a significant amount of people that could do crazy shit and/or die just drying out.
8-Comms. I want to give this one its own post probably. It may go in the ham radio thread, it's deeply evolving as I go along.
9-Locations It's great to have a second place but don't forget that means you need shit in both the place you're at in case you get stuck and the place you're going to. You have to maintain all of that so it's good to have but it definitely comes at a cost. It's important to have a way to determine the value of staying where you are vs moving somewhere else.
If you wanted to do the absolute worse case scenario, Communism induced famines typically seem to be about 2 years so add 50% to that and make it 3. Such famines would likely lead to your ass being gulag'd for having food and not giving it up for "the people" though.
To me there's a few aspects to consider:
1-Food. This is likely a combination of stashing food (that 90 days) and growing in a longer engagement. This also means vitamins and keeping dietary stuff in mind. My wife had gasteric bypass, she'd be so fucked in such a situation. I have a shelf of food, I keep it stacked in chronological order so I know what to use up first. I'm planning on donating to the homeless shelter if I can't eat what I have before it expires. Win-win IMO. It's not a fuck ton but man it's better than being high and dry.
2-water From what I understand a gallon a person a day is what you should be shooting for. I'd include pets as much as I'm not a dog person they'd be really useful for security. That means 6 55 gallon drums would easily be good to go for a family of 4. Add some super sock-it pool shock to your arsenal to purify water and some commercial products and you're not in bad shape.
3-Shelter As much as we all talk about getting land, virtually any land that's cheap will have some flaw that will make it a pain in the dick in one way or another to live on or be super expensive. Too little water, too much water, cold as fuck in the winter etc. Underground is a nice idea overall if you can, it maintains temp a fuck of a lot better. Insulation seems like a high value investment to me as well in such a case, cut your heating energy down as much as possible and all that. Convection based cooling would be a major blessing as well I suspect. Look at what people did in older houses and what natives did before there was AC and good good heat.
4-Energy. I'll loop this in as a group, there's a lot going on here. Gassification is an interesting long term option if one wants to have a vehicle to drive around. Apparently a million or so Sweeds rand their cars off wood in WW-II. Any sort of energy would be valuable. Before I was moving I was stashing used motor oil. You can get it for free or damn nearly so and the environmental implications aside it's a super cheap way to have energy on tap. You just need a way to capitalize on it. I want to make a Babbington Burner just never got around to it. A few packs of bic lighters are cheap AF and a good thing to stash.
Also a thought or two on generators: Propane doesn't ever go bad, you can have decades old propane and it works fine. Diesel has a better shelf life than gasoline. Gasoline is good if you rotate it regularly to get past that 90 day hump. If you're just trying to run a fridge, you could do "bursts" say 3-4 times a day to keep the temp down provided you keep people the fuck out. I'd say monitoring your fridge would be a good thing to add, e.g. have a thermometer with an alarm. When it gets above X temp, kick on the genny and go. If you can find one for a decent price the camper fridge is a good choice too although they tend to be space limited and the rate they can cool down is also very limited.
5-security. As mentioned, the annoyances of dogs (barking at everything for instance) become an asset when dealing with bad situations. Barking could be a deterrent and at least would be a warning for you. Don't forget em in your prepping, a few months of dog food is relatively compact. Buy a gun, hell buy a few. I'm of the opinion you really want a shotgun, rifle and pistol. The shotgun can be budget pump like a Maverick88, I have two Ithaca 37s and paid under 300 bucks each. Have a real fucking stock or at least a folder, none of this pistol grip bullshit. You're not breeching doors ffs. A long barrel is also likely a better choice. Besides the obvious SD rounds, bird shot would be a good deal for game getting. In terms of the rifle, I'd want 5.56 or 7.62X39 with scope, MAX power 3-9 and probably a 2-7. You'd be able to shoot a deer fairly close up or a person at 500 yards, odds are you'd be able to stumble on ammo and so on. I'd have a few kinds of ammo, probably some 69 or 77gr for stuff like deer and then 55, 62 or 64gr bulk ammo for other entanglements. Handgun wise there's a lot of options here, I'd give 2-3 real consideration. A 22lr pistol is one ,this would let one bag small game or possibly poach deer with the right setup. The second is a 9mm handgun just because the ammo is ubiquitous these days. Lastly, I'd give a .357 magnum revolver the nod. The reason why is you can get loads that work on bear and deer if needed or you can have loads that are lighter and useful for smaller game. That's a big benefit over 9mm IMO. A suppressor would be awesome to have if it's legal where you are at the time even if just for the 22lr. If you're baller AF some thing like some sort of thermal scope or NV would be great to have. Far as I can tell though the decent stuff is big coin, so GL with that. Maybe we'll get some Afghani imports in a few years.
6-Transportation. Man portable is the order of the day here, cars are great and all but I'd be thinking at the end of 3 months you'd be lugging shit around manually. A bike isn't a bad idea either.
7-Exercise/fitness. Best not to be a fatass when this shit kicks off. Reality is most of us aren't marathon runners but the ability to be able to go a mile or five carrying a 30-40lb backpack will put you ahead of a lot of people in America probably. As was said in the movie Zombieland, "Cardio." Don't forget that when the caffeine supply runs out the first week or two of peoples' existences will be hell and that something like 10+% of the population has an alcoholism problem. There's a significant amount of people that could do crazy shit and/or die just drying out.
8-Comms. I want to give this one its own post probably. It may go in the ham radio thread, it's deeply evolving as I go along.
9-Locations It's great to have a second place but don't forget that means you need shit in both the place you're at in case you get stuck and the place you're going to. You have to maintain all of that so it's good to have but it definitely comes at a cost. It's important to have a way to determine the value of staying where you are vs moving somewhere else.
Oh adding to security, have mags for your shit. Ammo in boxes doesn't do you a lick of fucking good if you're needing to crank rounds out till the barrel's glowing. I like the idea of 10 mags per gun personally but more the merrier. Even if you download to 3/4 capacity keep ammo in em. You don't want to be the jackass trying to load mags while the city burns around em. Also, I don't think it a bad idea to have enough stuff to arm up 4-6 people with matching caliber gear. If you can have the people you associate with standardize on calibers, e.g. 5.56/9mm/22lr/12ga or similar. Gonna be a bitch to share ammo when you've got 224 Valkarie, 308 win, 243 win, 5.56, 6.5 Grendel and 416 Rigby between your party of 6.
This is actually an important piece that a lot of people probably miss. Some form of philosophy should probably be a part of peoples' tool kits. This could be something like the Stoics or it could be something more religious in nature like The Bible.
I keep saying I want a rifle in 6.5CM but I think in this type scenario you would be much better off with .308, I would think it would be easier to stumble across... Is .308 not as prevalent as I think it is, or are you just saying try to stick to a few main calibers and be good with that?
People are surprisingly resourceful when pushed. Watching the show Revolution made me laugh my ass off because they treated metallic cartridges like they were some rare ass thing. Truth is that it's civil war era pre-electricity technology overall. The only thing that makes it a pain in the ass now is that the government controls access to base chemicals so much you can't even look at say nitric acid funny without the EPA or DEA flipping their shit.
There’s a lot of animals out there and I have the means to put them on my table I think I’d be fine for a while, I’m good on guns and ammo, I could probably arm the whole block including women and children my block is lake on 3 sides so only one way to come in other than by boat if I got a couple neighbors together it would be easy to defend the whole street off the one narrow entrance
7.62X51/.308 will always have an advantage as long as it's a primary military/NATO caliber just like 5.56 and 9mm. People will gravitate towards them. Orders of economy and all that.
I would be conscious of what I got and if it could be adaptable in the longer term if I was out of one location. As an example, a .308 barrel for an LR-308 isn't horridly expensive. I need one myself, my LR308 platform gun is .243. That'd give me a viable backup to scavenge ammo if I need it and if I wasn't concerned about using my glass on it I could just build another upper for not too much more.
Lucky Gunner used to do lists of their ammo sales by volume now and again. It's a good reference IMO, I'd think most of them to be a good choice. With the market for ammo the way it is right now (utter shit show) it doesn't really matter, but during gluts chances are you're gonna stack a lot more .308 than 6.5 Creed just because of price. Although I have other calibers set up, I could have 3 5.56 ARs within an hour if needed. Goal is a half dozen really.
It's also part of the social aspect of it. Find out what your buddies shoot and be sure you have one of those. Supposedly the Mujahideen would group their people based on what calibers they carried because their equipment was anything and everything they could get their hands on. You're talking anything from Webly Revolvers and Martini Rifles to M-16 variants and AK-74s. Out of all the stuff you have I'd think you're covered and probably the last person to worry about it.
BTW, as a side note to people wondering if they should the gun market isn't terrible right now. Mags are actually currently not badly priced either so it's not a bad time to buy those. Go light on the ammo till it gluts again. Buy a box or two a month and you'll have a decent amount before you realize it.
Issue with that is weight. You ain't grabbing your safe. You're grabbing a gun, MAYBE two, and whatever mags are immediately accessible that fit in your one hand and out you go. I've got a couple triple-double bandoliers, grab handle out, ready to go. Also, no one is going to give a fuck if you're rocking 77gr SMK mixed in with RIP hollowpoints in a 2:1 stagger so you can pop pmags against guys with Lvl4 armor. If it ain't M855/M80, it's a waste of money and time. This ain't Escape from Tarkov.
The place everyone is going to fail horribly (and painfully) at is food/water. Unless you've got an entire room or garage accessible, you're MAYBE going to have a day or two worth of food/water at most. Again, I know everyone here drops $700 per week on anything and everything prep related but that's 0.1% of the population if that. Even if you only have a week saved, that's enough to ration and stretch it out to figure out wtf is going on.
I've always said bikes will become platinum unobtainium currency in a SHTF situation. Low noise, "easily" repairable, and can get you long distances quickly with minimal energy spent.
And that's another entirely separate topic: what you do throughout the day and how much energy you expend doing it. More work = more energy = more food required to fuel you = you're fucked if you don't have renewable source of food whether it's trapping, farming/gardening, etc.
I love this topic so much.
Comms. Where to begin?
The heavier ammo ain't for people, it's for game. The point is that you're gonna buy more M855 and the likes than you are some $$$ ammo and perhaps even practice with it now and again. I'm also assuming you're setting up a base of operations or are keeping it as an option. Perhaps even arming a couple neighbors up, I think that they'd want more than 2 mags each. Personally I wouldn't wanna carry say 400 rounds for any distance, but if the need arose you'd do it. Chances are most people with any sort of heavy body armor 1-Don't have enough cardio to carry that shit any distance or 2-are located in a somewhat fixed area you just want to avoid. 3-Are otherwise fortified besides their body armor (see point 2.)
I can grab 200+ rounds without too much adeiu, at a minimum I'd have 6 mags+1 in the gun because of my belting. That brings up an important point as well, have holsters, ammo puches etc. for your shit. You don't wanna be fumbling trying to get a mag out of one of those reusable jewel bags or shoot yourself in the ass Mexican Carrying a pistol.
Agreed on the food/water. 1-2 days of food is easy, I'd even say perhaps 1-2 weeks depending on how often you shop and how much you stock up. Just like ammo, spending an extra 10-30 bucks when you hit Aldi or walmart isn't a bad deal tbh, it adds up.
Stocking water is a lot less likely for most, far too taken granted that you're gonna take it from the tap. a pair of 55 gallon drums full of water puts you way ahead of most even for a family of 3 with a couple dogs and isn't horridly pricey although as you said, relatively space intensive. Hell a thing of pool shock and some knowledge can go a long way, I'm not saying you're going to be drinking Fiji or anything but it's probably better than getting the shits. Even an apartment dweller have a few packs stashed away. Having a house the capability of having 300 gallons of water isn't bad for me (I'd just stick it in our Cistern at this place ironically) but for someone in a city or with a 900 square foot house it'd probably suck. That may even be when you look into burying some kind of tanks in the yard instead, a half dozen poly barrels you could dig up if neeeded don't take up a great deal of space...
https://theprovidentprepper.org/disinfecting-water-using-calcium-hypochlorite/
The heavier ammo ain't for people, it's for game. The point is that you're gonna buy more M855 and the likes than you are some $$$ ammo and perhaps even practice with it now and again. I'm also assuming you're setting up a base of operations or are keeping it as an option. Perhaps even arming a couple neighbors up, I think that they'd want more than 2 mags each. Personally I wouldn't wanna carry say 400 rounds for any distance, but if the need arose you'd do it. Chances are most people with any sort of heavy body armor 1-Don't have enough cardio to carry that shit any distance or 2-are located in a somewhat fixed area you just want to avoid. 3-Are otherwise fortified besides their body armor (see point 2.)
I can grab 200+ rounds without too much adeiu, at a minimum I'd have 6 mags+1 in the gun because of my belting. That brings up an important point as well, have holsters, ammo puches etc. for your shit. You don't wanna be fumbling trying to get a mag out of one of those reusable jewel bags or shoot yourself in the ass Mexican Carrying a pistol.
Agreed on the food/water. 1-2 days of food is easy, I'd even say perhaps 1-2 weeks depending on how often you shop and how much you stock up. Just like ammo, spending an extra 10-30 bucks when you hit Aldi or walmart isn't a bad deal tbh, it adds up.
Stocking water is a lot less likely for most, far too taken granted that you're gonna take it from the tap. a pair of 55 gallon drums full of water puts you way ahead of most even for a family of 3 with a couple dogs and isn't horridly pricey although as you said, relatively space intensive. Hell a thing of pool shock and some knowledge can go a long way, I'm not saying you're going to be drinking Fiji or anything but it's probably better than getting the shits. Even an apartment dweller have a few packs stashed away. Having a house the capability of having 300 gallons of water isn't bad for me (I'd just stick it in our Cistern at this place ironically) but for someone in a city or with a 900 square foot house it'd probably suck. That may even be when you look into burying some kind of tanks in the yard instead, a half dozen poly barrels you could dig up if neeeded don't take up a great deal of space...
https://theprovidentprepper.org/disinfecting-water-using-calcium-hypochlorite/
Comms. I wanted to throw this into a separate section for a lot of reasons. I have several thoughts on that and in reality there's a ton to be had here. There's a few things, the first is if there's still some form of the constabulatory that you can hear what they're saying, if there isn't you can talk to one another. Cell phones, Internet all that stuff probably won't mean shit and if they do the time they will mean shit is likely not super long. I had a genny when we lost power last year but Comcast wouldn't connect to shit until the power was back on. I don't know about initially but I will say that it was less than 24 hours when I hooked the genny up and tried to get Internet and it didn't work.
1-There's a few subcategories to work with here, short medium and longer distance.
Short:
-This is pretty simple and honestly pretty economical. Point to point communication, largely line of sight.
-At the lowest (shit) end of this is an FRS radio. Range is terrible, fixed antenna etc. Possibly better than nothing. Likely best to avoid like the plague, the real benefit is most run off standard AAA/AA batteries
-For a couple dollars extra you can get BF888S radios from Amazon. Maybe cheaper than locally bought FRS radios. It's frowned on to do it but they'll run on FRS frequencies, have 3W output instead of 1/4 watt output and can run in ham, GMRS/FRS and some commercial/emergency space as well. DONT DO STUPID SHIT WITH THESE. I'm not endorsing their use if you're not a licensed Amateur Radio Operator in normal circumstances. In an emergency it's 100% legal for anyone to use one if needed even if rule of law is in place. I've got a bunch of these, not saying they'd survive you riding around in an MRAP after you came out of the water from diving but they're not horrid durability wise. Obviously it only goes up from there. You'll need a programming cable that's about 20 bucks. NBD. Before I had em packed up I had a bunch of em just chilling on chargers and would grab one or two as needed. 2-3 miles on road trips hasn't been unusual for em.
CBs also likely fall into the short range category with 5W. There are ways to work around this as well most CBs come with hand held power. They're also a LOT more sensitive to propagation typically because of the sunspot cycle.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECWE4WC/?tag=tcg21-20
Medium:
There's a few things here. First off is repeaters. If you're lucky enough to have a base of operations repeaters really give your hand held legs. Depending on how high up your repeater antenna is you could have it where you could go 50+ miles on a talkie like the Alto Pass repeater in Southern IL. How it works is that you transmit to the repeater on one frequency, the repeater then outputs what you sent to it (voice typically) via a different frequency at once.
CBs with amps probably fall into this territory or perhaps even 5W with good antennnas. These repeaters typically operate on frequencies from about 50 mhz to 440 mhz (within ham bands) as well as for LE, fire and EMS. Some commercial entities also use these as well as GMRS. If you're on the same band the filters to have a repeater can be quite large. Some radios support what's called cross band repeat that lets you use a UHF radio to transmit on VHF with high power. You have to have a radio that supports the feature though. That'd be a "dual (or tri)" band radio that supports it.
In the VHF/UHF space mobiles are what I'd constantly think about. I can get 30-50 miles to a repeater typically with a 50W mobile and a good antenna. Not bad, but still susceptible to things like hills. They also require considerably more battery than a hand held does, but capability vs weight comes into play. Having one at somewhere that's a base of operations to interact with handhelds isn't a bad deal at all.
Long:
This is where stuff gets interesting technically. In general IMO you're talking 30 mhz or lower typically although if you have a good VHF/UHF setup with a good antenna and some power you can get hundreds of miles. The science of radio gets a lot deeper at this point and you get into what frequency to use when, what propagation is like and a bunch of other variables. Hams operate just above the AM radio frequencies to about 50 mhz (although I'd say 30 is probably more realistic for survival type stuff typically and even that's going to be very condition dependent.)
If it were me I'd be looking at having capability on 3.5mhz, 7mhz and 14 mhz and 28 mhz. There's a few in between that are nice to have but those are biggies. From what I've read the militia people in Michigan like AM because people with regular short wave can listen as well. SSB tends to be more efficient and morse code is yet more efficient. Most of the later digital modes like PSK, JT8 etc. are designed to work reliably in extremely poor conditions although they require different (READ:EXTERNAL) computational power typically. Potential communication ranges are thousands of miles depending on frequency and condition. In general the higher frequencies are better during the day and higher sunspot cycles while the lower frequencies are better at night. 20M (14mhz) is generally considered to be the dividing line between the two and is a good place to check day or night. Depending on the radio it may be possible to modify one of those HF radios for CBs which is an added bonus for sure in a survival situation.
2-Antennas and feed lines are always a good place to refine.
A shitty antenna will kill a radio's performance. It doesn't matter the frequency. Put up the best antenna you can for the radio using the best feed line you can. There's a lot of subjective opinions here but good doesn't have to equal expensive either. Be conscious of things like grounding and all that as they're part of the antenna system.
Some antennas are more directional than others. In general the more directional the antenna is the more power goes in that particular direction. What's good is that more power doesn't tend to go in OTHER directions. That could be good to avoid unwanted attention.
3-Batteries, power otherwise
It's probably a good idea to understand that using the least amount of power possible to make a contact is good especially in emergency situations. There is a "field day" for ham radio operators, I'd encourage anyone looking into emergency/survival comms to look at one because the point is to go out with a setup that isn't just in your house and operate a radio. You'll see a lot of people who do alternative power, batteries only etc and you'll get to see how their setups work (and don't in some cases.)
Obviously a method to charge batteries is a good idea. I saw someone mentioned surplus solar panels, I think I'll have to look into that. With a decent battery and a 100W radio that'd be a nice setup for a base station or perhaps even a car/truck/RV. With 250W you could probably even run an ultrabook and charge your phone as needed. Have a system in place to charge your stuff and keep your batteries from being dead, leaking or just plain fubr when you need em.
4-Privacy
Understand if you say it on the air that typically means anyone can listen. There are some exceptions to this (Police officers have encrypted radios in some areas for instance. Some do not.) It's something I'd weigh the benefit of radios vs not honestly. There's likely times for them and times not for them.
1-There's a few subcategories to work with here, short medium and longer distance.
Short:
-This is pretty simple and honestly pretty economical. Point to point communication, largely line of sight.
-At the lowest (shit) end of this is an FRS radio. Range is terrible, fixed antenna etc. Possibly better than nothing. Likely best to avoid like the plague, the real benefit is most run off standard AAA/AA batteries
-For a couple dollars extra you can get BF888S radios from Amazon. Maybe cheaper than locally bought FRS radios. It's frowned on to do it but they'll run on FRS frequencies, have 3W output instead of 1/4 watt output and can run in ham, GMRS/FRS and some commercial/emergency space as well. DONT DO STUPID SHIT WITH THESE. I'm not endorsing their use if you're not a licensed Amateur Radio Operator in normal circumstances. In an emergency it's 100% legal for anyone to use one if needed even if rule of law is in place. I've got a bunch of these, not saying they'd survive you riding around in an MRAP after you came out of the water from diving but they're not horrid durability wise. Obviously it only goes up from there. You'll need a programming cable that's about 20 bucks. NBD. Before I had em packed up I had a bunch of em just chilling on chargers and would grab one or two as needed. 2-3 miles on road trips hasn't been unusual for em.
CBs also likely fall into the short range category with 5W. There are ways to work around this as well most CBs come with hand held power. They're also a LOT more sensitive to propagation typically because of the sunspot cycle.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ECWE4WC/?tag=tcg21-20
Medium:
There's a few things here. First off is repeaters. If you're lucky enough to have a base of operations repeaters really give your hand held legs. Depending on how high up your repeater antenna is you could have it where you could go 50+ miles on a talkie like the Alto Pass repeater in Southern IL. How it works is that you transmit to the repeater on one frequency, the repeater then outputs what you sent to it (voice typically) via a different frequency at once.
CBs with amps probably fall into this territory or perhaps even 5W with good antennnas. These repeaters typically operate on frequencies from about 50 mhz to 440 mhz (within ham bands) as well as for LE, fire and EMS. Some commercial entities also use these as well as GMRS. If you're on the same band the filters to have a repeater can be quite large. Some radios support what's called cross band repeat that lets you use a UHF radio to transmit on VHF with high power. You have to have a radio that supports the feature though. That'd be a "dual (or tri)" band radio that supports it.
In the VHF/UHF space mobiles are what I'd constantly think about. I can get 30-50 miles to a repeater typically with a 50W mobile and a good antenna. Not bad, but still susceptible to things like hills. They also require considerably more battery than a hand held does, but capability vs weight comes into play. Having one at somewhere that's a base of operations to interact with handhelds isn't a bad deal at all.
Long:
This is where stuff gets interesting technically. In general IMO you're talking 30 mhz or lower typically although if you have a good VHF/UHF setup with a good antenna and some power you can get hundreds of miles. The science of radio gets a lot deeper at this point and you get into what frequency to use when, what propagation is like and a bunch of other variables. Hams operate just above the AM radio frequencies to about 50 mhz (although I'd say 30 is probably more realistic for survival type stuff typically and even that's going to be very condition dependent.)
If it were me I'd be looking at having capability on 3.5mhz, 7mhz and 14 mhz and 28 mhz. There's a few in between that are nice to have but those are biggies. From what I've read the militia people in Michigan like AM because people with regular short wave can listen as well. SSB tends to be more efficient and morse code is yet more efficient. Most of the later digital modes like PSK, JT8 etc. are designed to work reliably in extremely poor conditions although they require different (READ:EXTERNAL) computational power typically. Potential communication ranges are thousands of miles depending on frequency and condition. In general the higher frequencies are better during the day and higher sunspot cycles while the lower frequencies are better at night. 20M (14mhz) is generally considered to be the dividing line between the two and is a good place to check day or night. Depending on the radio it may be possible to modify one of those HF radios for CBs which is an added bonus for sure in a survival situation.
2-Antennas and feed lines are always a good place to refine.
A shitty antenna will kill a radio's performance. It doesn't matter the frequency. Put up the best antenna you can for the radio using the best feed line you can. There's a lot of subjective opinions here but good doesn't have to equal expensive either. Be conscious of things like grounding and all that as they're part of the antenna system.
Some antennas are more directional than others. In general the more directional the antenna is the more power goes in that particular direction. What's good is that more power doesn't tend to go in OTHER directions. That could be good to avoid unwanted attention.
3-Batteries, power otherwise
It's probably a good idea to understand that using the least amount of power possible to make a contact is good especially in emergency situations. There is a "field day" for ham radio operators, I'd encourage anyone looking into emergency/survival comms to look at one because the point is to go out with a setup that isn't just in your house and operate a radio. You'll see a lot of people who do alternative power, batteries only etc and you'll get to see how their setups work (and don't in some cases.)
Obviously a method to charge batteries is a good idea. I saw someone mentioned surplus solar panels, I think I'll have to look into that. With a decent battery and a 100W radio that'd be a nice setup for a base station or perhaps even a car/truck/RV. With 250W you could probably even run an ultrabook and charge your phone as needed. Have a system in place to charge your stuff and keep your batteries from being dead, leaking or just plain fubr when you need em.
4-Privacy
Understand if you say it on the air that typically means anyone can listen. There are some exceptions to this (Police officers have encrypted radios in some areas for instance. Some do not.) It's something I'd weigh the benefit of radios vs not honestly. There's likely times for them and times not for them.
In terms of execution I've got an HF project I'm working on (will try to get it a bit farther along when I get moved.) The end goal is a station that includes a dipole runnable at 80m to 10m, a tuner, 40 foot of feed line and an 80-10m radio that will hopefully produce somewhere between 10-20 watts out. I'm not altogether sure what this will weigh but the goal is likely 5-7lbs without a charger. The items in it will be:
-A ubitx radio, this does 80-10m (3.5-28mhz) Weight will probably be 3ish lbs with a case. That part is yet TBD.
-a dipole antenna, I have some 18ga speaker wire I think I really like to try this with. Should be adequate for 100+ watts. 100 foot is 5.35oz and I think I'll need under 70 so that puts me at roughly 3.75 oz. The antenna will use the GB Xtreme terminals that have the glue inside when you heat shrink them. From the reviews I've read the terminal crimped and sealed is as strong as the wire. I'll divide up into 3 segments for 20, 40 and 80m that will let me fully extend as space allows. I'm going to use these to couple it to some paracord or similar. Light enough weight, multi purpose. These little polycarbonate keyring lockers fit into the terminals and will let me use the paracord to tie it up. Besides that I'm going to use wing nuts or thumb screws to link the eye terminals together as needed to lengthen the antenna. They seem sufficiently strong to handle this job, however I'll probably come up with some sort of alternate.
-Feed line is likely to be 40 feet of the same wire with ladder links between it that I 3D print. Not sure on the print designs yet but I'm going to make something I think.Need to figure that out, goals are light weight and easy to reel in.
-Reel will likewise be a custom print, I want to put my ATU100 in the center
-Spare batteries, likely going to try old laptop cells may end up going to RC car packs.
-The mast will be a spare 24 foot crapie pole, I'll probably have some stakes and guys as well. I have aluminum tent stakes I'm liking the looks of and will probably combine those with more paracord.
-A ubitx radio, this does 80-10m (3.5-28mhz) Weight will probably be 3ish lbs with a case. That part is yet TBD.
-a dipole antenna, I have some 18ga speaker wire I think I really like to try this with. Should be adequate for 100+ watts. 100 foot is 5.35oz and I think I'll need under 70 so that puts me at roughly 3.75 oz. The antenna will use the GB Xtreme terminals that have the glue inside when you heat shrink them. From the reviews I've read the terminal crimped and sealed is as strong as the wire. I'll divide up into 3 segments for 20, 40 and 80m that will let me fully extend as space allows. I'm going to use these to couple it to some paracord or similar. Light enough weight, multi purpose. These little polycarbonate keyring lockers fit into the terminals and will let me use the paracord to tie it up. Besides that I'm going to use wing nuts or thumb screws to link the eye terminals together as needed to lengthen the antenna. They seem sufficiently strong to handle this job, however I'll probably come up with some sort of alternate.
-Feed line is likely to be 40 feet of the same wire with ladder links between it that I 3D print. Not sure on the print designs yet but I'm going to make something I think.Need to figure that out, goals are light weight and easy to reel in.
-Reel will likewise be a custom print, I want to put my ATU100 in the center
-Spare batteries, likely going to try old laptop cells may end up going to RC car packs.
-The mast will be a spare 24 foot crapie pole, I'll probably have some stakes and guys as well. I have aluminum tent stakes I'm liking the looks of and will probably combine those with more paracord.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1439483181...FCUATRpA1fVBLw%3D%3D|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:2334524
Saw this on YT and the guy took it apart. It's basically a gear train driving a motor to serve as a generator with a regulator. I'm wondering if I have a junker cordless drill or similar device somewhere I could toy with this a bit. Thinking about it I may have a MIG feed system I could try....
Saw this on YT and the guy took it apart. It's basically a gear train driving a motor to serve as a generator with a regulator. I'm wondering if I have a junker cordless drill or similar device somewhere I could toy with this a bit. Thinking about it I may have a MIG feed system I could try....
Carter and Brett will be the only tcger’s left standing.
I miss our four hour plus deep dives on this topic lol.
Having all the “toys” are cool, and can’t be dismissed. I’ve spent most of my “prep” money on knowledge. Books and guides. Mechanical repair, first aid, species identification, etc. Also putting things into practice before you “need” to. Raising livestock, tending a garden, etc.
Next thing I want to try is raising tilapia in barrels, they’re like the broiler chickens of the sea. Problem is I hate fish but would figure out how to like them if it was my only protein source lol.
Yup. I’ve tended to stay away from it just because I like the idea of being mobile if needed. It’s not hard to bring a cooler of live fish or six hens and a roo somewhere with me if relocating is necessary. Bringing a hydro/aquaponic system with me might be a stretch.
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