> I see a lot of anecdotes of special distaster cases when HAM was the magical solution, but I don't remember normal communications infrastructure not being ava

> I see a lot of anecdotes of special distaster cases when HAM was the magical solution, but I don't remember normal communications infrastructure not being available for the last 30 years. Perhaps this is more of a thing in sparsely populated countries? I'm in North America somewhere densely populated that you could reasonably expect a massive earthquake to hit. Nobody realistically expects that this will be an issue any time soon. It hasn't been in the past 30 years, and hopefully won't be for the next 30. The government here _does_ prepare for it because it would be irresponsible not to. It's at the same level as maintaining a stockpile of medical supplies to prepare for a one-in-a-hundred year pandemic. Looks silly until it doesn't and tens or hundreds of thousands of people die following a disaster due to a lack of preparedness. And in this case, "preparing" is basically letting a bunch of volunteers provide these services largely for free. I volunteer with an organization that is integrated into the disaster response planning at multiple levels of government and with the local police. The group spends a lot of time building out and maintaining backup communication infrastructure throughout the area as an integrated part of the emergency response plans. Not just with amateur radio, but with satellite phones, the police radio systems, some of the regional backup radio systems the government maintains, some of the city departments' independent radio systems, etc. We're tied into it all. There's another group here that maintains a microwave link from within the city to 250 miles outside of it that provides communication outside of the potentially impacted area. Our systems are the _only_ point to point communication systems left in the city as far as I know. Every city radio relies on a repeater or system of repeaters. The police radios are all cells with a physical back haul between sites. We have systems tied in at most main city services, community centers, the regional staging areas, etc and plans for how to get the appropriate information where it needs to go and people trained to do so if it ever needs to be turned on. The tie-ins with the other radio systems at points throughout the city allow us to act as a backup route if for some reason part becomes segmented and direct communication isn't possible. No matter how bad the physical damage, our system will be working as long as there are people still alive. Some people volunteer at a soup kitchen or animal shelter. Myself and a couple hundred others use our technical skills volunteering to maintain a resilient communication backbone for the community. And I mean... it's fun?