Canned Food, Guns and a Ham Radio
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
That’s the headline from today’s Wall Street Journal online article about an especially bearish outlook for the US economy from strategists at Societe Generale who are lowering their recommended weighting for equities to 30% and boosting their weighting for bonds to 50%, saying “we are on the cusp of an equity meltdown that will slash and shred portfolios like Freddie Krueger.”
My question is — what will a ham radio add to the survivalists cache of supplies?
I’ve enjoyed many late night conversations with fellow hams while we exchanged plans for a solar charging system that would keep us on the air in the event of some catastrophic event that would plunge society into a Mad Max flashback.
But the more I thought about it, the less value I saw in planning for that contingency.
I just imagine myself isolated in my underground bunker waiting for the radioactive fallout levels to mitigate while most of the country smolders. Meanwhile, I fire up my trusty K2 with the solar charged battery pack in order to make contact with the outside world. But as luck would have it, the bands are blanketed with the constant droning sounds of “CQ Contest - CQ Contest - Contest!”
And like a fool, I jump into the fray.
Heck — there’s probably a multiplier for battery powered CW…
73 de Jeff
