The First 72 Hours: How Would You Communicate During a Widespread Outage?

Here's a scenario to get everyone thinking.


It's Friday evening, around 7 PM. The power goes out across your area. Initially, you assume it's a routine outage, but you quickly discover that cellular service is unavailable, internet connections are down, and you have no reliable way to determine how widespread the situation is.

As the hours pass, it becomes clear this isn't a short-term disruption. By the following morning, commercial communications are still unavailable, and there's no indication of when they'll be restored.


Now the question: How prepared are you to communicate for the next 72 hours?


I'm curious how everyone here would handle this situation.


1. First 24 hours: What's your first step? Who are you trying to contact, and what communications methods are you using?


2. Hours 24–48: Your local repeaters may begin losing backup power. How would your communications plan change if you had to rely entirely on simplex or other infrastructure-independent methods?


3. Hours 48–72: How would you keep your communications equipment powered? Do you have backup batteries, solar, generators, or another method?


4. Communications plan: Do you have designated frequencies, scheduled check-in times, and backup methods established with family, friends, or your preparedness group?


5. Testing: Have you actually tested your communications plan under simulated grid-down conditions, or is it something you've only planned on paper?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people using ham radio, GMRS, Meshtastic / MeshCore, or a combination of different systems.


One thing I've learned from working with emergency communications is that having radios and having a functional communications plan are two very different things.


There's no single right answer here. Everyone has different equipment, budgets, geography, and needs.


So, if the grid went down tonight and stayed down for 72 hours, what would your communications setup look like, and how confident are you that it would work?