"Can you hear me now?" Communications:

[oger333]

you mite have cell phone it would have to have power up and running ? there's also cb's ham radios a few thoughts

[Tearstone]

If you were careful, repeater stations could be constructed, or even just driven to location at a Wind Farm. Way more power than you'll actually need there. Just hope you got people that can learn to maintain the windmills.

[azazel1024]

CB will work for about 5 miles around for vehicle mounted affairs or around 10 miles for base stations (they can have bigger antennas). GPRMS walkie talkies you might get 3 miles if you have clear LOS.

Military radios are much better. Not sure what the backpack mounted affairs get, but I think they get roughly 5-8 miles and some of the vehicle mounted ones have a range up around 20 miles.

With microwave communications it is strictly LOS, but if you had a fairly high mounted antenna, you could still communicate out to the horizon, potentially 10-15 miles away. If you used a UHF/FM transmitter it is slightly beyond the horizon communications, roughly 25-35 miles depending on the height of the tower. For a VHF AM transmitter the range can be much longer, but probably still talking within 60 miles.

Shortwave it can be the otherside of the planet if you have the right atmospheric conditions. Generally at least a few hundred miles.

Sat phones would be useless almost right away as the Earth based stations would likely be down in short order so the sats would have nothing to communicate with to transfer your call.

Cell phones could certainly still work if you have a way to power the towers and did a bit of rewiring to your own telecomm setup (which actually is not as involved as you'd think if you just want to setup a "local" cell network able to connect just a few cell phone users).

Shortwave radios aren't going to be that handy for people on scrounging expeditions. You need pretty big antennas. For "mobile" communications, unless you have some kind of repeater, you are looking at probably no more than about a 10 or at most 15 mile range to be able to talk back to base. Now if you have a lot of resources you could setup up multiple repeaters or less resource intensive (in some ways) is have an aerial relay. You could even build an unmanned com drone and fly it so it has LOS to both the mobile party and base to relay communications. The horizon line at 6ft up and flat ground might only be 4-6 miles, but at 300ft it is 15+ miles at 30,000ft it is well over 60 miles, and you'd be roughly doubling the actual com range since you'd just need to be in the middle of it.

So having a little lightweight, maybe 6ft wingspan drone that could trail out the proper sized antenna could probably act as a UHF relay flying at 2,000-3,000 feet extending out com range to maybe 30-40 miles for a group.

[Zamion138]

cell phones for a local grid not hard, cell for a national network even if the lines arent broken your call leaves your phone goes to the closet tower, the tower pushes your call to a regional "switch" the switch routes your call to the last known tower the terminating cell phone was seen on , by fiber , to that switch it then pushes it to a tower then to the phone. not gonna work well in the apocolypes,
Radio, ham, shortwave, cb....walkies yeah cell....not so much, and its a power hungery beast at the towers and switch not a good use of resources vs gain even for a local grid.

[Oberoth]

Sometimes old tech can be really useful if you have limited resources. If it's just small distances you could use a telegraph system with Morse code or another made up code. They are dead simple to make, you just need allot of wire/cable to connect the transceivers, or tap into existing lines. A spark transmitter is simple to make as well and is wireless. If you have good LOS you could use an Aldis lamp too. Heck, you could even use smoke signals. I can imagine a basic system being set up between small close haven's, even just for backup communications.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ignals.jpg

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/~pererat/r_0170.jpg

[Shawn Merrow]

CB will work for about 5 miles around for vehicle mounted affairs or around 10 miles for base stations (they can have bigger antennas).

Don't know how active it still is but there used to be a community of people who heavily moded CB radio. They would use special antenna and CB boosted into the hundreds of wats. I had a friend who could get up to 60 miles from up on a hill top. Of course that was not legal but that would be a moot point.

[azazel1024]

You would still need that hill top and the ability to juice it up that much. I suspect that wouldn't be a standard job. I've seen boosters in the few watt range for GPRMS and CB radios, but only in the few watt range. You could also do marine VHF radio, the downside is you still need a big old antenna, though I think for a receiving antenna it could be a lot smaller on the salvage crew's end. Downside is they won't have a way to talk back even if they can hear it from a couple of dozen miles out (of course on the water you'd have a range in the scores of miles, but on land your horizon distance is going to be much shorter unless up on a big hill or mountain).

[GrampaAllen]

The cell towers are not going anywhere and microwaves run on fairly low amounts of juice. With a little planning you could set up a nice little town to town net. Clearwire works on a similar system antennas to communicate with your handsets then microwave link over distance and antenna to handset on the other end.

[ZombieSlayer01]

has anyone thought about useing messager pidgeons or dogs? if power never was truely restored then that would be the way to go unless you want to deliver the message yourself.

[Zamion138]

i think morse code with light and sound and just about anything we make a come back pretty quick.
also modem over radio wave could be used if you know what signal to look for and had a decent set up

[Razzinold]

Ignoring game mechanics, I'd allow my PC's to use CB's mounted in their cars, and not really worry about range - to a point. I guess for me it's more of an iconic look than actual game mechanics. To me CB radios just screams Post Apocalyptic setting, along with muscle cars and shotguns, but that's just me

[ZorValachan]

has anyone thought about useing messager pidgeons or dogs? if power never was truely restored then that would be the way to go unless you want to deliver the message yourself.

For the pigeons, you would need to wait until you get a generation born at a location. Then take them to another location from which you wish to have the message. They would then fly 'home' when released. Then you got to lug them back for the second round.

[Razzinold]

has anyone thought about useing messager pidgeons or dogs? if power never was truely restored then that would be the way to go unless you want to deliver the message yourself.

For the pigeons, you would need to wait until you get a generation born at a location. Then take them to another location from which you wish to have the message. They would then fly 'home' when released. Then you got to lug them back for the second round.

Very true, and pigeons go missing so you would have to send multiple ones with the same message just to make sure the message reaches. My buddy's dad used to race pigeons and he would start out at his house and take them each Saturday further and further away before releasing. Who's ever came back in the shortest amount of hours won. He used to loose a couple pigeons every few races. Plus he had a coop built in his yard, have to feed them, take care of them and they could be noisy, might attract a lot of attention. Unless you had them on the roof of a large apartment/office building, kind of like how the castles of old would put them up in a high tower.