communicating after the panic

ScumLord

I'd say it's safe to assume that within a week of the panic services like electricity and communications will be patchy at best. I think major installations like these would be protected enough to survive however we can't rely on that and it's likely that the lack of nationwide maintenance will bring about the collapse of the national grid.

The members of this forum will be spread across the country and isolated with no way to tell friend from foe and no traditional ways of communicating. Land lines, the internet and mobiles will become useless so a backup is necessary.

A quick and easy source of communication will be abandoned emergency vehicles. Unfortunately these may be right in the heart of zombie territory being that they will be responding to the first instances of the panic. Trucks would be another vehicle that would have CB radios on board however their big and clumsy.

Any other bright ideas for communication?
We also need a call sign, any ideas?

See one thing I never fully understood is how all communications and the like woud be gone seemingly straight after the initial panic. I reckon it'll all be fine for a few months, by which time we'll have properly set up and armed ourselves.

If I am right, then sites like Twitter (as much as I hate to admit it) would be vital in those first few weeks. They will enable people to keep updated with any developments.

A service like Google Maps will be the most useful weapon we could probably have; outlining infected areas, safehouses, weapon caches (which should be established in the first few days)

However, if I am wrong, then keeping in contact nationally would be extremely hard. I can see it hard enough keeping contact within an individual city. Maybe through semaphore or smoke signals?

SmileyPaul

ScumLord wrote: »

I'd say it's safe to assume that within a week of the panic services like electricity and communications will be patchy at best. I think major installations like these would be protected enough to survive however we can't rely on that and it's likely that the lack of nationwide maintenance will bring about the collapse of the national grid.

The members of this forum will be spread across the country and isolated with no way to tell friend from foe and no traditional ways of communicating. Land lines, the internet and mobiles will become useless so a backup is necessary.

A quick and easy source of communication will be abandoned emergency vehicles. Unfortunately these may be right in the heart of zombie territory being that they will be responding to the first instances of the panic. Trucks would be another vehicle that would have CB radios on board however their big and clumsy.

Any other bright ideas for communication?
We also need a call sign, any ideas?

I think we should take a page out of urban dead and use spray cans for short distance,
long distance wise all we have to do is get into the garda store room and clear it out before the gards do :P

Micky Dolenz

Battery powered radios, long freq, maybe like the army use. Should be pretty handy to pick em up and spare batteries.A week or two after Z day, we all should have a power source availible eg Gennies.

boneyarsebogman, I have to disagree, all it takes is for a few power stations to be unmaned and we are screwed, the commuication network is intact but no power to access it.

ScumLord

Deleted User wrote: »

See one thing I never fully understood is how all communications and the like woud be gone seemingly straight after the initial panic. I reckon it'll all be fine for a few months, by which time we'll have properly set up and armed ourselves.

Something as large as the nation grid requires constant management. I think your right to a certain extent though. Powerstations and the like are heavily guarded and would be easy enough to lock down but when the next shift of workers fail to show up and the fuel that powers the stations fail to arrive they won't be able to run at full capacity. You also have the problem of workers either laying down tools or making mistakes as they work non stop to keep everything working.

The only completely automated power station in the world (according to that life after humans documentary) is the hover dam in Nevada USA. I can give you a link to the US version of life after humans but it didn't look as good, PM me because it's not a link I can post here. It was shocking how quickly everything we've built would fall apart without humans to maintain it. Apparently London would be under water once the pumps that keep the city dry fail.

SmileyPaul

ScumLord wrote: »

Something as large as the nation grid requires constant management. I think your right to a certain extent though. Powerstations and the like are heavily guarded and would be easy enough to lock down but when the next shift of workers fail to show up and the fuel that powers the stations fail to arrive they won't be able to run at full capacity. You also have the problem of workers either laying down tools or making mistakes as they work non stop to keep everything working.

The only completely automated power station in the world (according to that life after humans documentary) is the hover dam in Nevada USA. I can give you a link to the US version of life after humans but it didn't look as good, PM me because it's not a link I can post here. It was shocking how quickly everything we've built would fall apart without humans to maintain it. Apparently London would be under water once the pumps that keep the city dry fail.

this place is goin to ****s as soon as the power goes, I'm actually considering taking horse riding lessons so that if/when this becomes a sickeningly long term fiasco I'll still have some mode of transport

Kromdar

ScumLord wrote: »

A quick and easy source of communication will be abandoned emergency vehicles. Unfortunately these may be right in the heart of zombie territory being that they will be responding to the first instances of the panic. Trucks would be another vehicle that would have CB radios on board however their big and clumsy.

Any other bright ideas for communication?
We also need a call sign, any ideas?

emergency vehicles use national repeaters [radio mast relays] that unfortunately run on electricity. i'm not sure if the relays have backup power supplies, but i'm sure whoever is meant to flip the switch to backup power won't be hanging around [unless they're a z]

here's one of the repeaters that voluntary organizations use for radio broadcast.

i know of several radio hubs in dublin, but they're all private and hence need electricity. i found this, a mobile command truck [on the right] which has a generator and a pump-up antenna for radio broadcasting. could be used in the short term.

also a thought, seeing as how the Gardai are soon to be switching over to a digital radio network, a lot of their regular radio equipment will be in storage or sold off. could be worth keeping an eye on where they move the equipment to...

ScumLord

Would the Garda radios still work in short range though? I never expected them to have national coverage only a few miles at best.

SmileyPaul

ScumLord wrote: »

Would the Garda radios still work in short range though? I never expected them to have national coverage only a few miles at best.

I have a feeling its a couple of miles but you can set it to be picked up by different masts around the country, or at least thats what Im led to believe,
my red cross unit have 4 radios I'd say I could get them when Z day arrives

ScumLord

Your lucky, there's only one cop car in this town and the bastards are never around. I'm going to steal it tonight just to be on the safe side. :pac:

A few miles would be enough though. Initially they'll be useful for reccies into other towns for fuel and food. When it gets to the stage of communicating with other towns I think high jacking those airwave broadband yolks would be ideal.

Brunteaphile

Lads this is simple:

Pigeons, trained racing pigeons can be used for long distances, if they move from one safe house to another. Sure it could take about a week to get a message from Dublin to Galway, but at least the message would get there.
As for electricity, I think the best thing would be makeshift generators, that either run on Kinetic energy or powered via turbine connected to a bicycle. This would be the only way to keep internet/radio/phone communications going, even if patchy.

SmileyPaul

Brunteaphile wrote: »

Lads this is simple:

Pigeons, trained racing pigeons can be used for long distances, if they move from one safe house to another. Sure it could take about a week to get a message from Dublin to Galway, but at least the message would get there.
As for electricity, I think the best thing would be makeshift generators, that either run on Kinetic energy or powered via turbine connected to a bicycle. This would be the only way to keep internet/radio/phone communications going, even if patchy.

pigeons are hard to train and they only go one way, we'd need pigeons trained from our safe houses before Z day

Kromdar

kinda odd thought, if anyone spots a dead soldier on z day [however unlikely] as well as grabbin his rifle, grab the radio. that way we can keep tabs on military operations and help [or avoid] as needed.

Brunteaphile

Kromdar wrote: »

kinda odd thought, if anyone spots a dead soldier on z day [however unlikely] as well as grabbin his rifle, grab the radio. that way we can keep tabs on military operations and help [or avoid] as needed.

Good thought, although to the best of my knowledge these radios work by bouncing signals from other radio towers which will be down within a week due to no one working at the stations and no power coming in.

SmileyPaul

Brunteaphile wrote: »

Good thought, although to the best of my knowledge these radios work by bouncing signals from other radio towers which will be down within a week due to no one working at the stations and no power coming in.

the military'll last longer than a week buddy :P

davej

SmileyPaul wrote: »

pigeons are hard to train and they only go one way, we'd need pigeons trained from our safe houses before Z day

Is there any risk that the pigeons themselves could become zombie pigeons or at least spread the contagion ?

Also if the zombies eventually "evolve" to become a bit smarter, they might cop on to follow pigeons to find human settlements. Just something to consider..

davej

Setheme

Satelite Phone would work.

ScumLord

I don't know about that, you need to control the satellite from the ground. I'd say those buildings are super secure so satellites will probably still be there.


We all need to realize our technology and machines still need us to look after them as much as we need them to look after us. Machines are still a long way off being able to survive on their own.

Whats even worse in this day and age of disposablilty where all technology is built with inbuilt flaws so it breaks down and needs replacing (to serve the expansion of the monetary system) after the panic we could see allot of high end technology that's useless and have no way of replacing it.

Kromdar

ScumLord wrote: »

I don't know about that, you need to control the satellite from the ground. I'd say those buildings are super secure so satellites will probably still be there.


We all need to realize our technology and machines still need us to look after them as much as we need them to look after us. Machines are still a long way off being able to survive on their own.

Whats even worse in this day and age of disposablilty where all technology is built with inbuilt flaws so it breaks down and needs replacing (to serve the expansion of the monetary system) after the panic we could see allot of high end technology that's useless and have no way of replacing it.

such that low-end tech like simple radios or even those lamp-morse-code things they had on ships are probably the best way to go about it.

worth a look into old-style military field radios, the big ones that they carried in a big backpack.

ScumLord

Kromdar wrote: »

such that low-end tech like simple radios or even those lamp-morse-code things they had on ships are probably the best way to go about it.

worth a look into old-style military field radios, the big ones that they carried in a big backpack.

If you look at modern radio equipment it hasn't gotten all that much more compact. You can get good rugged equipment but it's specialized and expensive. I'd look out for equipment made for building sites, their very underpowered by consumer standards but you could hop them off the head of a zombie without losing track of your game of solitaire.

Red Panda

The problem with people planing on using the internet is that "the internet" is not one single thing you connect to.

Google have some pretty secure area and I'm sure they will still be around, but most social networking sites will probably go down quick, I'd imagine it would be something like this: http://baens-universe.com/articles/When_Sysadmins_Ruled_the_Earth. If Google don't have specifically designed zombie-proof centers for just this scenario, I shall be thoroughly disapointed.

Mobile phones would be out at 1st too. The entire mobile phone network is designed around the fact that every mobile is not activly making a call or sending messages at once. If you have ever tried phoning or texting around times like new years, you will see. Once the initiall clog has gon down, they might be usable for a while, at least untill the datacentres and masts fail.

UHF and VHF radios are the best method for short-mid distance communication, as will small wifi networks providing the right equipment and power is available. A good directional antenne can stretch a few km with direct line of sight, the record being 279 k, but that was with highly speciallised and illigal equipment.

Long distance, satillates will continue do do thier own thing up in space,but without regular shuttle trips to provide matinace and orbit correction, they will eventually crash into the atmosphere or become useless.

Mahatma coat

Dunno about home, but a lot of the telephone exchanges in the outback are solar powered and require little maintenance, so they would still work for some time, me I will be at my farm in the outback, we have Running water, Generators Satelite communications and Biodiesel to make our own fuel, it wouldnt be that difficult to start Nitrate production for gunpowder and ANFO. We have a valley so We already have a small repeater station for walkie talkies in place, not unreasonable to get 10 miles line of sight, also not uncommon to be out of range of it less than 50 feet away if obscured.

Anyone wishin to join us after Z day better bring

weapons & Ammo
Barbed Wire
Food and Bedding

Some Hot chicks

FX Meister

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Horgant

Would be interesting to have to go back to basics. But as someone said earlier morse code machines might be our best bet.

Glico Man

to let everyone that's not a zombie know you aren't we could light candles or something cos there visible to the naked eye for up to five miles or something like that.

and the best way to keep in contact without relying on the national grid or morse code would be to use C.B radio.

there would be plenty of trucks around to rob them from and all you would need is a car battery. again, loads to choose from.

Mahatma coat

most trucks dont use CB Radio, they have a propreitry UHF system with complicated repeater stations and fairly limited range if they use 'radio' otherwise its mostly done with GSM nowadays, well from my experience anyway.