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Using a Wireless Network for Personal Emergencies?
An anonymous reader asks: "A friend asked me this today and as I began to think about an answer I realized it made for a perfect Ask Slashdot question. His question was: 'Now that our illustrious Attorney General has gone as far as to suggest that families put in place an emergency communications system between themselves, I'm shopping for the right solution. I think RIM because it allows me to enter text and to rely on the pager network rather than the cell network. But the last that I looked, it was still impossible to do without my own server. Enlightened Ones: what suggestions might you have that would allow us to each have something in our pockets and is most likely to be fault tolerant to a messy event?' Having had the experience of using my Crackberry in NYC on 9/11 as the only stable means of contact, I too wonder whether this is the next big thing? So I turn the question over to you at Slashdot -- If you were in need of a hand-held, wireless data device and wanted to use a data network which was likely to survive, what would you use? Which arcane pager or emergency information networks were designed for survival? What if you wanted it to easily work with POP email? How about for reasonable data rates?" Assuming we are not quote to the point of a truly fault-tolerant network, what would need to happen for it to become reality? Which provider is close to putting something like this together?
Why would I try to overpopulate yet another medium to tell mom and dad I'm OK while there are emergency sevices that might have used the bandwidth to communicate something more meaningful? I mean: If I'm OK, I will be OK, so I might as well tell mom & dad tomorrow. If I'm not OK, or if I get killed before tomorrow, it might take a while longer for this news to reach them, but it won't change the fact that I'm not OK. OK?!? Either way it is less likely I will communicate something useful than it is for emergency services.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death -- G.W. Bush
There have been lots of suggestions so far but, only a few offer good solutions. It all depends on what type of emergency you are planning for.
Are you planning on a bomb threat or even a 9/11 type disaster and just want to send emails to stay current with the news while you are removed from the actual disaster? Or, do you fear a missle strike or nuclear event and need to find your spouse/children immediately?
Depending on the scale of the event and your proximity to the event, you may be satisfied with email on a Blackberry. But, the pager network may not be available due to massive load or even destruction. Also, do you really want to send an email and possibly wait for a reply in the heat of a serious emergency, or due you want a direct connection, immediately.
No single solution really fits the bill but some are better than others for different circumstances. The best solution will be independent of local or regional infrastructure like pager and cell networks or even grid power systems. Your Blackberry is at serious risk on the network side in a large scale catastrophy. The same is true of cell phones and any type of internet access.
The best solutions are going to be the likes of satellite phones but, both parties will need to be outside. A short range solution, if your family usually stays close together, would be GMRS walkie-talkies which have ranges up to 5 miles but, don't bet on much more than 3 miles. For greater distances the use of HAM or licensed VHF radios would be required.
It all depends on the type of disaster and what your circumstances are but, I for one would not have to wait or rely on email for an emergency.
Personally I don't think it is the job of individuals to find a way to communicate post-tragedy
I really loathe all the people who live in NYC, do *not* work in the WTC, and then called home or got called to "make sure they were okay". Which makes things hell for the people who *do* need the lines to coordinate emergency work or who need emergency medical assistance.
Perhaps people are just less aware of it outside of CA -- after a major earthquake, *everyone* knows that the stupidest, most irresponsible thing you can do is to call all your relatives and tell 'em that you're all right. People *need* to call in for medical assistance, to report major problems (a bridge starting to collapse, etc). Chatting with your family when you aren't hurt is a big no-no.
USians sometimes frusterate me. No experience with disaster, most of us, except for maybe "stress" or "emotional damage", and so a total fucking inability to act responsibly in a real emergency.
May we never see th
HAM Radio is the only reliable alternative. As we know from 9/11 the phone circuits and the Internet were overwhelmed immediately. Land lines and Cell phones along with pagers and devices like Nextel/Blackberry will be just about useless until the traffic dies down.
HAM Radio however would work no matter what. Well, short of an EMP from a nuclear warhead detonation. Then most electronics will be toast including all the fancy computers in one's car. Some cars won't start without the computer. Of course you'll have bigger problems in the event of a nuclear attack than trying to contact your family members. Also if you are close enough for the EMP to destroy your electronics then you are probably not long for this world anyway.
HAM radio has been used to communicate in times of crisis since it's earliest days. Go get a study guide, join a club and take the exam.
You can get portable HAM radio's ranging in size from table top base stations to something the size of a CB radio to a handheld unit. Range is limited by the car and portable units due to the antenna.
Computer data can and does get transmitted over HAM channels but it's slower than normal.
A HAM operator has the responsibility of bridging communication gaps when a crisis occurs. You have no business using a HAM in a time of crisis if you don't help others to relay communications.
This also begs to question some of the information coming out to protect ones self and family in the event of an attack. So far most of it is really stupid. i.e. Duct Tape and sheet plastic will do absolutely dick for chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. Just about as useful as duck and cover in the 50's.
The only real way to survive a full out attack is to have a high quality bomb shelter buried rather deep in the earth. Isolated air and water systems with full filtration. Stockpile of food and supplies.
But IMHO you are only delaying the inevitable. Sure say we are nuked or say you are in NY and the reactor just outside of NYC is bombed. There would be numbers like 5-10 million dead and more over the next several years from radiation poisoning and cancer. Evacuation of NYC won't happen.
I would rather be killed in an initial attack of that magnitude than go on living. i.e. slowly dying...
Sure some would survive but you have to consider quality of life. Your only chance is to be away from the affected attack areas. BOKYAG - Bend Over Kiss You Ass Goodbye.
In the event of chemical of biological attack, the odds are much better than an actual nuclear detonation. Note a dirty bomb is not a nuclear detonation it's a conventional explosion with the after effect of spreading radiological particles. This poisons people with radiation. So it's much more like a chemical attack. Those at ground zero will surely die. Those in the path of the poison cloud will die. Those not in the path of the destruction will survive.
Some reliable friends or relatives that are usually home. Pick two in the local calling area and two way outside of the local area. Call them whenever or however you can and use them to pass messages. You have to agree ahead of time on the people though and carry their phone numbers. Keep the calls short.
A couple of safe places to meet if you can't get home. Somewhere a mile or two away in case of things like a brush fire, gas leak, road closure, train wreck, etc. Somewhere near work, near school, etc. in case of travel problems. Find out and carry the phone numbers of these places if you can. Try to avoid places that could be looting targets.
Your neighbor's phone numbers (home and cellular). You can call them to check on your house or anyone there.
Some co-workers cell numbers. Your family can call them if you forget your cell or it dies.
Typical modern euro-arrogance. "you still live in a 80's world..."
Now if he/she/it only thought about it for a moment- GSM or CDMA or W-CDMA or anything else - they're all dependent on centralized servers, switches, cell sites and controllers.
As others have noted, 9/11 overloaded ALL our cell systems on all technologies, including the GSM system in NYC (at the time, Voicestream, now T-Mobile and also now Cingular & AT&T as well), not just the "80's" style cellular. BTW, "80's" cellular in both US and Europe was analog FM, so get off your high horse. Anybody with a cellphone in NYC today is on a signal that is either CDMA-based (Sprint or Verizon), TDMA air-interface with GSM protocols (T-Mobile, AT&T, Cingular), or TDMA air-interface with N.American IS-136 protocols (AT&T's older network).
Original poster's comment about using a pager network is because the pager networks are optimized for text message delivery with "guaranteed" delivery.
SMS via the cell networks (which BTW we DO have here) works pretty well, but is not guaranteed immediate delivery, which is why many businesses still require or encourage text pagers or blackberries rather than SMS.
SMS over the cell networks *was* a major factor in restoring communication on 9/11. A number of news articles reported that people discovered that their SMS texts got through even though the voice channels were too congested or signal too weak due to lost cell sites to make voice calls.
However, an emergency communication system should NOT be dependent on some other part of the infrastructure being up and operational. Whether that be beloved-by-Europe-GSM, US/Asian CDMA standards, Europe's new WDCDMA (based on US-developed CDMA tech), TDMA, or the pager networks, or Nextel-style iDEN.
Thus the poster who suggested getting an amateur radio license is spot-on. If your emergency preparations include always maintaining charged batteries for your handheld transceivers (HT) and or mobile stations (e.g. car battery power), you can establish communications. There are regular practice sessions, traffic networks for message passing, and events like the ARRL's "Field Day" for practicing this. Of course, all family members would need a ham license but it's something anyone vaguely intelligent can get. People often use "repeaters" which are volunteer and group-owned re-transmitters. So that's "infrastructure" of a sort, but it's distributed, not controlled by the government or corporations, and thus somebody's repeater is still up even if the one on the top of the skyscraper is down. Plus there are common non-repeater ("simplex") calling frequencies like 146.52 MHz and agreed-upon sections of the bands for direct simplex.
Another option would be the licenseless FRS radios so often seen at ski areas. Limited range, but workable as you get back uptown towards home, perhaps. And maybe the higher-power GMRS radios that share some frequencies with FRS but have much more range. They need to be licensed but there are no operator test requirements.
Of course perhaps in Europe, GSM magically works even when your city is bombed, power and fiber lines are destroyed, and the main telco switching center is disabled.