“Holy SHTF, Batman! It’s pandemonium – TEOTWAWKI – human cockroaches roaming the streets raiding homes– call our homies for backup!”
“Cripe – I can’t, no cell phone reception!”
“Use the cordless phone, go land line, dude.”
“Can’t, the power is out.”
“Cripe! We’re all gonna die!”
*************************************
I know YOU don’t want to find yourself in THIS situation when the shit goes down. Well, rest assured like a good neighbor, Ranger Man is here (sung to State Farm Insurance theme).
If you want to secure another level of communication security, you NEED to buy a corded telephone. Why? Because they are NOT powered by the electric company. Let me say that again. They are NOT powered by the electric company. Dig?
Unlike hoity toity all-the-features-in-the-world wireless phones that plug into an electrical outlet in addition to a phone jack, corded phones run off DC electrical juice only, provided by the phone line itself. They don’t need AC juice to function.
I know what you’re thinking – “Well if the power is out, it usually means a pole is down, there goes the phone lines, too.” Well, that is possible, but not necessarily so. When a pole goes down the electric wires are grounded out, but telephone wires (sheathed in plastic) are not, so service remains (so long as the wires was not split in half). Switchboards may lose power, but they’re cranked up with all kinds of backup generator action. In a long-term SHTF situation a corded phone won’t help much, but it could provide critical communication in the early stages of TEOTWAWKI.
“Cell phone makes much more sense,” you say. Yeah, they’re portable and operate when the power is out, but it’s not a fail safe method. Cell phone reception can go out completely in a disaster or be spotty at best.
A corded phone also better protects your privacy when providing credit card information or other information over the telephone (like rendezvous points and food storage locations). Conversations over a cordless phone can be intercepted by using anything from an eaves-dropping device to a basic baby monitor. A corded phone will help reduce the risk of identity fraud.
Every survival house should have at least one corded phone, preferably in the master bedroom or the basement. Got bunker? Put one there, too. Now I wouldn’t be advocating for such measures if a corded phone cost hundreds of dollars – but they don’t! Amazon sells a basic AT&T corded phone for under $10 bucks!
- Ranger Man
BTW: Maybe you already have an old rotary phone hanging around. Those are cool and operate grid-down just as any other corded phone, but it’s important to note that they lack push button tones. What that means is if you need to “press 1 for the ambulance, press 2 for the police or press 3 for the National Guard”, you’re out of luck.
Of course, rotary phones have other uses that touch tone phones don’t. You can use them for modern art (as seen in the Museum of Communications).
No related posts.
Attention - if you like SHTFblog, please subscribe by RSS or email.
{ 8 comments }
I had a land line up until a couple of years ago. At $40 a month or however much it cost I just couldn’t justify it, anymore. I always had a corded phone in the house for the reasons that you mention (still have it actually) but it got too expensive for something that we literally never ever used. Can’t you still call 911 even if you don’t have phone service?
One small problem with your plan. For years the phone company used banks of batteries located at the switchers to keep the phone line on when the power goes out. The phone company has been slowly getting rid of these battery banks due to cost. So what you will need to do is ask someone at the local level of the phone company if they still have a battery backup system, backup gen, or grid only. If there is not backup battery banks or gen then it is pointless on the land line in the beginning. Now with that said a land line phone would be good after the fact if the local community gets back on it feet and places a gen or some other power supply at the switcher site so they will at least have local phone service.
We keep a couple corded phones stored in a shielded container in the closet, they come in handy during ice storms.
I like to store the ones that have the buttons on the handset, you can make a nice lineman’s handset out of them if needed.
I totally agree with you, Ranger Man. Cell phones, IMO, are sketchy at best. My husband has to have one on at all times for his work. I can’t count the number of times the office had to call our home number to get ahold of him because his cell didn’t work. I have had to use my corded phone numerous times due to power outages after severe and winter storms.
I still wonder why I must press 1 for English, thought this was America…
I have several corded phones in our home, along with the cells. One thing I’ve done is to place a small LED flashlight with every corded phone. Why? Because phones don’t move, and if you have a flashlight by the phone, you know where to find one in the dark! Beats stumbling down the stairs and looking through a junk drawer during an emergency for a working flashlight.
A lot of the phone companies are going digital and the home land line is not actually a land line, but a digital cable with a cable box that operates the phone and internet. If the electricity goes out, the cable box goes out too and so does the phone and internet, though some have a battery backup. Turn off your power at the fuse box (and disconnect the battery if there is one) and see if your phone still works, then you’ll know for sure.
Everything’s going digital these days. Within a few years (how few? Who knows.) there won’t be anything such as analog in this country. Then when the balloon goes up, we’ll really be in a comm. mess. but at least we’ll still have our preps. Two ways to help get around all of this are:
-get a hold of all of the analog electronics manuals you can (used book stores and yard sales are a good starting point), not to mention any paper based manuals for anything: cars, woodworking, first-aid, you name it.
-don’t set up a SHTF stronghold for just you and yours, but consider going in with a group of VERY TRUSTED people. half a dozen families each with a broad range of knowledge, as well as some specializations such as “x”-smithing (gun, black, tin), gardening, agriculture (plant an animal), food preservation, cooking, first aid (first responder or EMT training would be better), carpentry, masonry, etc. You all get the point.
Granted this all sounds a bit like a hippy commune, but it works much better than that (this would be filled with people who would actually do work).