Passport to Preparedness
Keeping in Touch When Things Go Wrong
During the great upheavals of man and nature, local stations are “musts.” These provide evacuation and other instructions, and for this nearly any radio will do.
Yet, wartime or natural emergencies can result in local stations being inactive or limited to airing official news. This distorts our understanding of events and how to cope with them.
The Internet is a shaky substitute, even if your ISP is functioning and you have electricity. During periods of high demand, Internet news sites often have overloaded servers—and that’s just the beginning. They can also be blocked by authorities, and even replaced by counterfeit Websites.
News, No Matter What
There is only one broadcast medium proven to get through freely, pretty much no matter what: world band radio. It has been listened to and respected for decades by hundreds of millions on every continent, especially during crises. Like a hospital, the worse things get the more important it becomes.
World band goes direct from the station to your radio without gatekeepers or censorship. That’s because its far-reaching signals don’t rely on satellites or other human-controlled intermediaries. Instead, they bounce off invisible layers in the earth’s atmosphere that are no more subject to human control than the wind. This is why world band radios are outlawed in places like North Korea, and can be lifesavers in wartime.
Even if authorities attempt to disrupt a world band station, unless you live within the groundwave of a nearby jammer you stand a good chance of making out what it has to say. This isn’t wishful thinking. During the Cold War, Soviet bloc countries had thousands of jamming transmitters; yet, Western world band stations were widely heard. Indeed, many Eastern European freedom leaders, including Lech Walesa and Václav Havel, have credited world band broadcasts as being central to the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Best Bets
World band portables retail for anywhere from under $20 to over $400, but that’s deceptive. The “sweet spot” for most folks is between $60 and $160, where with careful selection you can get a radio that rates around three stars in PASSPORT REPORTS. Most of these and nearly all costlier models also receive single-sideband signals used by aeronautical and other shortwave communications, as well as the United States Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. They also have illuminated LCDs, important if you are listening in the dark.
World band portables are fully self-contained, so they don’t need an antenna or plug-in power. Most are compact—about the size of a paperback book—and are easy to carry around.
What to avoid? Cheap radios lacking digital frequency readout, without which a radio is hard to tune.
Avoid Unwelcome Surprises
You want to make sure your radio will work in a shelter. Go outdoors and tune in several foreign stations that are weak but intelligible, and jot down their frequencies. Then go right back to your planned shelter and see how well these frequencies come in. If reception is comparable, you’re all set. If not, put up a simple outdoor wire antenna and feed it into your shelter location. Too, keep PASSPORT handy so you’ll know the times and frequencies of the stations you want to hear.
