Ever wonder how many radios you’re carrying right now? Probably not, but you have several in your pocket right now. Your smartphone alone is a powerhouse of connectivity, from calls to payments. But in a world brimming with invisible waves, here’s why an old-school radio still deserves a spot in your tech arsenal.
So you may not realize that you rely on radios all the time - your phone alone has at least four. A radio for calling cell towers, one for wifi, another for Bluetooth, and another for GPS. Oh and one more for NFC to use payment services, so add one more and make it five.
You use radios to open garage doors and your smart devices - literally everywhere around you is filled with little devices transmitting electromagnetic waves and you are likely unaware just how prolific they are. So if radios are everywhere, why would you need one more?
Well, let's start with a use case and compare it to something you are probably already familiar with: Guns.
If you are a gun owner, you are probably not an owner of a just one gun - but several guns. Each with its own use. You probably started out with a handgun you wanted to use for personal protection, but could also carry on your person in public. You might have added a rifle for home defense because they are easier to use and more accurate. Then, you might have picked up a shotgun or rifle for hunting, depending on what game you were after.
And, of course, you probably have a few firearms that are just for fun, but if your spouse asked you why you needed "this" gun, you probably had a very specific reason why you needed that gun.
Radios are the same - different radios are needed for different use cases. You might have a few cheap handheld radios to hand out to your friends and family in case of emergency, another one to make long-distance contacts over hundreds of miles, another one for encrypted communication with a small team of friends you larp with.
Different radios also transmit in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. We'll cover exactly what that means in a later thread but to put it simply: different parts of the spectrum have different attributes that affect range, information that can be carried, and more.
And they might also fall under different licensing requirements, which, if you didn't catch our Twitter thread on that already, you should. https://x.com/ConResponse/status/1778982551698210843
So you now need to buy not just one device but several - but do you really need all these radios?
Well, yeah - Redundancy is never a bad thing to have. There are tons of natural disasters where you having a radio could save lives. Hell, cell towers today don't even need a disaster to go down, just look at what happened with AT&T a few weeks ago.
And if all the dystopian events that have happened nationally since the pandemic are any indicator, having a way to communicate where you own the network, no ISP, no cell provider, no man-in-the-middle is a great way to ensure that you are prepared for whatever comes next.
Lastly, learning skills like this, while difficult, build resiliency. When you prove to yourself you can figure out a problem, that builds a mindset that is evermore increasingly rare. Grit is something in short supply these days. It's valuable to cultivate that in yourself.
And - just one more point. If all those reasons weren't enough to convince you that you need to get into radios, maybe the fact that the "man" doesn't want you to have them is. No really, THEY don't want you to have radios. https://networkcontagion.us/reports/network-enabled-anarchy/
So now that you definitely want one, or three, actually make that five... Check out our selection on our site. We're working every day to add more offerings, so keep your eyes peeled, we might be able to scratch that new itch.
https://constellationresponse.com/collections/comms
