These days, it is easy to think you always have access to the Internet. But some wonder if — in spite of its ARPANET, nuclear-war-planning heritage — you can actually count on it to be there when things go pear-shaped. [The Tech Prepper], as you might imagine, is quite concerned with that last question, and is flogging Reticulum over high-frequency radio as a post-internet network in a video embedded below.
Reticulum is a cryptographic network stack, fully decentralized and amazing from a cyberpunk/hacker/survivalist perspective. Unfortunately for [The Tech Prepper], until the you-know-what hits the ventilation unit and the FCC and its counterparts in other countries are too busy to be concerned with such trifles, encrypted signals are banned on ham radio bands just about everywhere. That’s why his demo is using a dummy load on the Mercury HF modem instead of an antenna: the feds don’t care if the signal doesn’t leave the building. The video shows how to replicate the setup using his EmComm Tools suite on Ubuntu.
Perhaps more interesting is his vision of a Post-Internet network, be it in a disaster scenario, as he envisions, or simply because we get sick of what the internet has become. The idea of easily hooking an open-source radio modem to a PC running modem73, open-source SDR software, has a certain appeal. Reticulum isn’t your only option there: modem73 will let you run a BBS in the clear — that is, unencrypted and legal to transmit — and let’s face it, wasn’t life online more fun in BBS days?
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Reticulum network stack, but last time it was operating at considerably shorter ranges over LoRA.
I love the idea of prepping so much, in reality I am not sure. I should probably get into it. At least buy a couple of large sacks of rice and beans for the pantry, just in case.
The main issue with all the prepper flavoured comm systems is that no one else has them. I don’t see a world where anything other than FM transmitters will be useful in a SHTF situation since FM radios are the most common and widely available and power efficient. Most people don’t even own shortwave receivers so you can’t even take advantage of skywave.
Also a channel called “The Tech Prepper”? Right up my alley!
Indeed, though also have to ask the question when SHTF do you care much about long range communications – what you the prepper want is something easy to replicate that you can spread around to other folks close enough to be useful to you – no point me managing to contact a guy in Belgium when in a SHTF condition even that close to me in the UK they might as well be the dark side of the moon.
Maybe a few little handy bits for weather forecasting etc in longer range, but really if things get that bad anything over 100 miles is complete overkill, and you probably only really need 20 odd miles. As even if you have an old engine that can be maintained and run on woodgas etc you almost certainly have too much to do at home to spend days worth of your life travelling. So even if Jimmy has a great steam power hammer and boiler going for a few cans of beans… It is a great tool if you can get it working again, but you are probably more concerned with making sure your own plants are growing, building up a fuel supply for the cold winter etc.
To a yank, 100 years is a long long ago; to a Brit, 100 miles is far away– and they’re both wrong.
Seriously, 100 miles is a hard day on a bicycle on smooth roads. Hardly the moon.
If there are still usable roads, we aren’t yet in a situation this would matter.
At a minimum this requires no functioning government. No overall coordination and no enforcement to make that happen.
The roads won’t be smooth or lit, they will be clogged with all the people fleeing in a panic, abandoning the whole mess long before you get there.
Best case is biking in the woods by moonlight before people realize no one is coming to fix things, and worse case is after when the less prepared go out to unalive the people who so thoughtfully collected all those resources together in one spot for the taking.
no functioning government? what are you talking about exactly here? town, village, county(or parish or whatever it’s called in your part of the world) Where do you imagine people will “flee in panic”? That’s if there’s somewhere to go. Will people be fleeing towards cities, or away from them? Away from contagious illness? I mean, you’re giving us something like an AI picture of SHTF, with people running around like decapitated chickens. We might instead imagine severe weather disasters; problems with flooding, which look very different whether on the coast or inland, or wildfires… tbh SHTF is so vague that it’s nearly meaningless. At least fallout bunkers have some clear solutions to specific problems, but communication -it’s always good to have backup systems. Right now I’m near some gnarly wildfires and being able to call for medical help, maybe rescue, has some clear utility. If I have to pedal on a bike at some point, to escape fires, things will have gone very, very FUBAR.
As D says any conditions enough to make the prepper’s effort worth it and need to care at all about the radio means things are bad enough the roads are likely bad, quite possible blocked by heaps of junk cars that ran out of fuel etc.
Also 100 miles of cycling is fine, but what is the point in this situation? You can’t take much with you, or bring much back so why are you going?
If it ever achieves critical mass to actually compete with corporate telecoms or Elon, you can rest assured the FCC will come down hard on anyone operating this.
Critical mass to compete with the corporate telecoms?
On HF?
You might get 3Khz of bandwidth through that radio.
If you designed something to use the whole HF spectrum you would have 30MHz to work with.
Reference impl (which is basically the only one people use) is not open source / free software btw, check license. Restrictions against usage.
>the feds don’t care
FTFY. Just stay away from bands used for FM radio, air traffic and military. Underpaid and understaffed twink in the FCC ain’t going to chase some radio nerd no matter how many complaints are sent by senile greybeard getoffmylawns with sheds full of (once) expensive radio gear.
It’s the fox hunting Fudds and not the Feds that will create issues for you.
Since HaD has many commenters from the NA, I asked an LLM about the statistics:
“As of recent years, the total number of licensed amateurs in the U.S. is around 750,000–800,000, meaning roughly 37,500–80,000 hams under 30 (assuming 5–10% of the total)”
So there are estimated tens of thousands of young radio amateurs, not just the stereotypical “senile greybeard”.
Here’s some additional information about Japan, which has a long ham radio history, too.
“The Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL) has reported that younger operators (under 30) make up roughly 5–10% of the total licensees, similar to trends in North America. [..]
Estimated number under 30: ~60,000–120,000 (assuming 5–10% of 1.2 million).”
Numbers in Europe are in the thousands to ten thousands, it seems..
There are also new novice license classes that may help to attract new people to the ham hobby/service.
Only time will tell. Ham radio had been declared dead for decades, yet it’s still there.
“fox hunting Fudds”
And what is it do you think they can do????
P on your tire???
They sometimes get the FCC to take an interest once they have done the hard part of locating an offending transmitter.
spam attacks or whatever the equivalent is on two-way radio. You’re right it’s mainly a matter of inconvenience, but… “the Feds” won’t go searching for trouble but if they are bombarded by complaints from the “Fudds” they will eventually respond and they can issue hefty fines. I never got into the hobby myself; too many busybodies, know-it-alls who are less interested in teaching than trying to police their fiefdoms. I guess what they do is just take the fun right out of the hobby. I value my spare time, and don’t want to spend it discussing/debating with Fudds, or maybe they might be called FUDders.
RE: “…encrypted signals are banned…” then TX/RX simpler things with encrypted stuff embedded, like all the secret service all over the world been doing forever. Number The Bible verses and voila, endless supply of all kinds of words and numbers easily used and reused (as a side note, I suspect “official Bible” has been used for this exact purpose for centuries – why else one would need to have an exact reprint with verses meticulously numbered).
Nah. The chapters and verses are numbered so that you can read along with the preacher. He says “Book of John, chapter 3 verse 16” and everybody can find it, no matter what edition or printing of the bible they are using. If he says “Page 500, first paragraph,” everybody is going to find something different.
Not saying that is isn’t used as a code book, just that there’s another use for it.
The bibles can be quite different throughout the world.
That US bible is very strange for someone from Europe, for example.
The chapters and texts are different to what someone is used to.
What, pray tell, is a “US Bible”? Catholics in the USA have the same book as Catholics the world round, just in English. Among Protestants, last I checked the King James Version was the most popular translation.
In any case, for cryptography you need only have an agreed-upon printing. You can use the works of Chuck Tingle if both sides know the edition beforehand.
King James bible vs New International bible vs Luther bible etc.
There are several translations and interpretations..
Also, the wording is changed every few years to reflect current language of the people.
A bible issued a hundred years ago has different wording to one released just recently.
because of tradition and relative ease of publishing, there’s quit a few different translations originating in the US. Would it make you feel better if they are referred to as “Bibles in English” instead of US Bibles? Differences abound, for example in the “Ten Commandments”; Catholics and Lutherans have different ordering than other denominations. And I was surprised to learn in the Jewish tradition they aren’t phrased as commandments at all, more “sayings” or Statements. If something as fundamental as that can vary, you can imagine everything is up for grabs in “translations”. Remember, this is religion “Why else one would need to have an exact reprint” In Judaism getting it exactly right is of grave consequence, and they will throw out very expensive handmade, handwritten parchment, just because of a minor mistake. Likewise, some are going to take offense at using King James, although that’s as close to “official” as any English Bible gets I suppose.
I picked Bible because it is still one of the most printed books in the world. Could be Bhagavad-Gita, same difference. All one has to do is send the ISN number in the message header to specify which one to use, similarly how HTML/XML starts with the version.
I am not saying Bibles were printed for that purpose, I am saying it is obviously the simplest way of accomplishing the task without being noticed. In the US every hotel would have King James’ Bible, and while the intentions are mostly noble, sure enough, these been available and I am pretty ure were used since ever. (on a personal note, I prefer the translations that would be closer to the ancient aramaic or ancient greek kinds, maybe the 4th century vulgar latin one; King James’, if I remember right, is the 17 century one derived from what was believed the better sources, but I am not to go into politics and all, history of different versions and why/how they’d have certain things added/omitted, etc).
Reason being all these tasks have been done many times over by quite many people, and if/when things go decidedly a-la-1984-style (which they already are in some countries) there are solutions.
Having said all that, most of my personal communications are hardly classified. Obvious things I’d rather keep away from prying eyes, but the rest, which is more than 90%, is unlikely to suffer from being listened to in the open. As a matter of fact, those who were born and grew up in totalitarian societies from which they could not escape know EXACTLY what I am talking about. You simply do NOT share stuff that could be snooped on in the open.
btw, I personally know dialects that sound pretty much indecipherable, unless you were born and raised there and know the context. Internet actually gave that kinds of platforms/references extension of life unimaginable just two decades ago, and they seem to be flourishing. In this sense encryption what encryption, good luck figuring out what was just said supposed to be standing for, inverse esperanto, so to speak, while the words seem to be legit vocabulary ones, the final meaning may have nothing to do with the naive/vocabulary purpose of the words being said. Slang of a sorts, and I’ll stop short of lexical analysis.
Yah sure.
Assuming of course that “pear shape” that killed the internet also drastically reduced the population.
HF Spectrum is about 30 MHz wide. And really, propagation varies a LOT throughout that.
So sure, after the bombs drop or the meteor hits, when only a handful of people remain who fit the criteria of being alive, having their more urgent needs met (food, shelter, protection) and the technical know-how… this would be a great way for that handful to get in touch with one another.
But if this was actually made legal today… there would be too many users about six seconds later bringing the whole thing crashing to a halt.
I do think though.. a small band.. where people are ‘allowed to play’, something like Part15 but with greater range.. that would be very interesting. Users would have to find ways to deal with the interference they cause one another. Maybe some new tech would come from that.
dang, I finally got my meshnet node up and now this
no encryption BBS have one problem. I cant make account, login and password.
The problem with Reticulum (and this is commonly to a lot of DIY protocols) is that instead of providing a clean transport layer interface that any app can use, they integrate the app layer into the whole mess.
Do what you like on the radio link layer, but give me a standard app interface so I can develop the app I want.