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GMRS: The General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS)
is a licensed land-mobile FM UHF radio service in the
United States available for short-distance two-way
communication. It is intended for use by an adult
individual who possesses a valid GMRS license, as well
as his or her immediate family members... They are more
expensive than the walkie talkies typically found in
discount electronics stores, but are higher quality.
Family Radio Service:
The Family Radio
Service (FRS) is an improved walkie talkie radio system
authorized in the United States since 1996. This
personal radio service uses channelized frequencies in
the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. It does not suffer
the interference effects found on citizens' band (CB) at
27 MHz, or the 49 MHz band also used by cordless phones,
toys, and baby monitors.
Microbroadcasting: Microbroadcasting is the
process of broadcasting a message to a relatively small
audience. This is not to be confused with low-power
broadcasting. In radio terms, it is the use of low-power
transmitters to broadcast a radio signal over the space
of a neighborhood or small town. Similarly to pirate
radio, microbroadcasters generally operate without a
license from the local regulation body, but sacrifice
range in favor of using legal power limits.
Set up a phone tree: According to the
American Association of University Women, a phone
tree is "a prearranged, pyramid-shaped system for
activating a group of people by telephone" that can
"spread a brief message quickly and efficiently to a
large number of people." Dig out that contact list you
printed out and follow the steps on the
AAUW website to spread the message down your pyramid
of contacts.
Enable Twitter via SMS: Though the thought of
unleashing the Twitter fire hose in your text message
inbox may seem horrifying, it would be better than not
being able to connect to the outside world at all. The
Twitter website has full instructions on
how to redirect tweets to your phone.
Call to Tweet: A small team of engineers from
Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company Google acquired
recently, made this idea a reality. It’s already live
and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on
one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +16504194196 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
or +390662207294
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +390662207294 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
or +97316199855
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting +97316199855 end_of_the_skype_highlighting)
and the service will instantly tweet the message using
the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required.
People can listen to the messages by dialing the same
phone numbers or going to the Twitter account,
speak2tweet.
Alex Jones and infowars.com have a telephone number
for people to listen to his radio show by phone, in case
the internet goes down, or if you don't have internet.
The phone in listen line is
512-646-5000
begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 512-646-5000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
If you need to quickly send and receive documents
with lengthy or complex instructions, phone
conversations may result in misunderstandings, and
delivering the doc by foot would take forever. Brush the
dust off that bulky old machine, establish a connection
by phone first with the recipient to make sure his
machine is hooked up, then fax away.
You may not need a fax machine to send or receive
faxes if your computer has a dial-up fax application.
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the virtual world
that we forget about resources available in the real
world. Physical bulletin boards have been used for
centuries to disseminate information and don't require
electricity to function. If you are fortunate enough to
be getting information from some other source why not
share it with your friends and neighbors with your own
bulletin board? Cork, magnetic and marker bulletin
boards are as close as your nearest dime store and can
be mounted just about anywhere. And if push comes to
shove you can easily make your own with scrap wood lying
around the house.
While it might be relatively easy for a government to
cut connections by leveraging the major ISPs, there are
some places they wouldn't get to so readily, like
privately-owned networks and independent ISPs.
In densely populated areas, especially in central
business districts and city suburbs there are multiple
home WiFi networks overlapping each other, some secure,
some not. If there is no internet, open up your WiFi by
removing password protection: If enough people do this
it's feasible to create a totally private WiFi service
outside government control covering the CBD, and you can
use applications that run Bonjour (iChat on Mac for
example) to communicate with others on the open network
and send and receive documents. **needs more
clarification
If you are a private ISP, it's your time to shine.
Consider allowing open access to your Wi-Fi routers to
facilitate communication of people around you until the
grid is back online.
According to an article in the BBC about
old tech's role in the Egyptian protests, "Dial-up
modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians
to get back online. Long lists of international numbers
that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt
thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and
others."
Dial-up can be slow. Often, there is a lightweight
mobile version of a site that you can load from your
desktop browser quickly despite the limitations of
dial-up. Examples:
mobile.twitter.com,
m.facebook.com,
m.gmail.com.
Most wireless routers, PCs, laptops, and even some
ultramobile devices like cellphones have the ability to
become part of an "ad hoc" network, where different
"nodes" (all of the devices on the network) share the
responsibility of transmitting data with one another.
These networks can become quite large, and are often
very easy to set up. If used properly by a tech-savvy
person, such networks can be used to host temporary
websites and chat rooms. There are many internet
tutorials on the internet for ad hoc networking, so feel
free to google some.
Apple computers tend to have very accessible ad hoc
functionality built in, including a pre-installed chat
client (iChat) that will automatically set up an ad hoc
"Rendezvous" chatroom among anybody on the network,
without the need for an external service like AIM or
Skype. Ad hoc network-hosting functionality is built in
to the Wi-Fi menu.
Windows computers have several third-party ad hoc
chat applications available (such as Trillian) and
setting up an ad hoc Wi-Fi network is almost as simple
as on a Mac.
Linux operating systems, of course, have plenty of
third-party apps available, and most distros have ad hoc
network-creation support built in.
Using popular wireless access point devices like a
Linksys WRT54G, you can create a huge wireless bridged
network -- effectively creating a Local Area Network
(LAN), or a private Internet that can be utilized by all
users within range using a Wi-Fi enabled device.
You can also link multiple devices together
wirelessly, extending the range of your network. Most
access points will cover a 100 meter area and if your
wireless device is built to support the 802.11n wireless
standard, you will get almost a 500 meter coverage area
for each access point.
To build a wireless bridge, check out
the dd-wrt wiki, and learn how to configure Linksys
WRT54G as a wireless client using this
Anandtech thread.
A used DS family device can be purchased
inexpensively. In addition to wi-fi, the DS supports its
own wireless protocols. Using Pictochat, it is possible
to chat with nearby DS users without having any DS
games. Unfortunately, the range is quite short.
Some games, such as the fourth generation Pokemon
games, support mail items. Thus you can send your
message under the guise of just playing a game. Mail
items can be sent through the Internet if you can get on
the net and you and your partner(s) have each other's
friend codes.
The original DS and the DS Lite do support the Opera
web browser, but finding the game card and memory pack
may be very difficult. Starting with the DSi, Opera is
downloadable.
You can have very, very slow internet if you
have something similiar to an Iridium phone, which would
allow you to do dial up at 2400 baud, which at least
gives you e-mail. This will also work when your
government has shut down GSM and telephone access, and
will work pretty much anywhere on the planet. If you're
in the right place, get yourself KA-SAT access (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA-SAT)
which is satellite broadband and will not be routed
through any internet exchange that certain local
governments may monitor or block (unless that government
is part of EU or er ... Uncle Sam.
Back to the '90s: There do exist shortwave
packet-radio modems. These are also excruciatingly slow,
but may get your e-mail out. Like ham radio above it
requires a ham radio license because they operate on ham
radio frequencies.
Have an air horn or other loud instrument handy. It
may just come down to being able to alert people in your
local geographic area, who would otherwise be unaware of
an emergency. You may also want to learn a bit about
Morse code and have a cheat sheet available.
The online activist group known as Anonymous has
posted a crowd-sourced document titled
"20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments'
Internet Block" that includes specific connectivity
details like ham radio frequencies and ip addresses for
social networking sites.
This page was last modified 21:21, 3 February 2011
by
nottellingnoway. Based on work by
intrepid,
sancho,
kaitlyn,
dmon,
haval_mkf,
haruspex,
jsha,
bug,
howto_admin,
ralfred,
edcoyne,
fruttaman,
wwbsp,
mymatecoxy and
darkmagentarose.
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Communicate_if_Your_Government_Shuts_Off_Your_Internet
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