Posted: 9/10/2007 7:13:33 PM EDT
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Everybody knows that communication is an essential part of survival. Most of us would call our loved ones if something was going down, SHTF-wise or other. What you might not have considered is the value of using text (TXT) messaging on your cell phone as an alternative, or at least an initial, form of communication should an emergency arise. Consider: 1. Even with today's high-volume service providers, mobile phone service can and does get congested from time to time. Think about Mother's day. 2. Text messages can help circumvent this problem. By some process I don't understand, the smaller-sized texts can 'attach' themselves to existing cell phone calls (i.e., the people who are making you unable to make calls) and reach their destination even when regular phone service is clogged. 3. Text messages can be read over and over again, and essential information is right there in black and white, while words over a call can get garbled or misremembered. 4. Text messages can be sent and received in a relatively low-key way. They also give you more of your attention to devote to situational awareness. Perhaps most importantly in this category, texts can be received and read at work, in meetings, in class, etc., usually without anyone noticing or being distracted. So you or your people can be contacted much earlier if the SHTF than waiting to check a voicemail. 5. Text messages can be "canned," that is to say, most modern cell phones have an option where you can pre-program your text function with any word, phrase or sentence you like. ("Whacha doin?" and "Ur the best!" are two of the pre-loaded ones on my phone.) This can save tons of time in a situation where time could be of the essence. I suggest coming up with a few easily understandable 'canned' messages and programming them onto your phone. Ask your teenager for help if you are unable to figure out how to do this. Go over them with your SO, family, friends or group and encourage everyone to program the same ones into their phones. That way you can quickly and unambiguously establish contact before you're able to text out a longer message or make a voice call. Here are a few I came up with. Feel free to use or reject at your convenience: Wait for me (= I will come get you) Protect yourself (= watch out for danger, arm yourself if possible) Get packed (= we are leaving as soon as I get home) Stay indoors ( self-explanatory) Help (= come get me) Get out of town now (= some cataclysmic, immediate threat) Get food and water ( self-explanatory) Get home ASAP ( self-explanatory) Hope this helps. Have a safe & happy 9/11. |
I always hated texting, and never understood why someone would want to waste their time punching keys when you could call and say what you need to say in half the time, but recently I started using it very frequently and the above quoted statement is correct. I bought a new phone a few months ago with a QWERTY keyboard because of this. |
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I know of a couple of reasons why people should know how to text message. 1. 2 years ago a friends daughter was in a single engine plane that crashed in the mountains of North Arkansas. She had over 20 broken bones the pilot was in shock and worthless in the situation and there was no celluar service in that remote area. She was however able to get a text message to her mother. The text was the first info of the crash the FAA didn't know about the crash till the girls mother called and reported it. 8 hours after the crash the sherriffs dept was able to rescue her. 2. After Hurricane Katrina virtually all phone communication in Louisaina were down. What little sevice that was intact was overloaded. My parents live in Northwest Louisiana 300 miles from New Orleans and for the first few days text messages were the only communication we had. They were slow but they got through. The text message sometimes is the only way to communicate. |
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While SMS does require network access, it can be very handy. Its nice to have when you need to reach someone who is located or traveling through a dodgey coverage area. I remember watching coverage of a sucide bomber attack in Israel on BBC and in the background you could see a guy in a litter wounded, sending an SMS while they patched him up. SMS has a limit of about 120 characters, including spaces. Always have a backup though, even if its a landline, satphone, ham radio, or CB radio. |
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when the bridge collapsed in MN my wife and her mother were very worried about my brother in law. All lines were down. I tried it mostly to see if its true that it works when all else was down. It took about an hour and a half but got a short message stating he was ok and to tell his mom and dad. Phone lines didn't come back up for probably another 3-4 hours. It's not great but it sure beat smoke signals! |
Good post |
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TXT can also auto-send at the first network availability. This has helped when I'm driving through crappy cell service and I want to send some information - I load it into a text message and hit send... it autosends as soon as it can get enough signal. Bam, message through, no need to be constantly monitoring the signal bars and waiting while ringing, hoping the call doesn't drop. Can you hear me now? |
From my understanding (although I am not an expert) it's because text messages are sent using the same bandwidth the cell phone uses to check in with the towers, and is not the same bandwidth as making a call. A cell phone checks in with a tower once every 30 seconds, unless it is actively making a call, then it's twice a second. So if your cell phone has a signal, it has communicated with a tower somewhere in the last 30 seconds, and that's the same way that text messages go. I could be wrong, but that's what I was told..... |
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seaplane... this topic was kinda covered in the story "as yet unnamed survival fiction" over in the guides and fiction section... a great idea, the folks i plan to keep around and i, had the notion of alerting eachother via text if possible in event of a get the fuck out, then rondevoux situation. but having a single, simple, and unmistakable phrase, preprogramed into your phones quicktext feature is more efficent... it makes a lot of sense... |
 I can't help but wonder...why did your phone predict your gf would ask you about cock??? 
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| Another idea using text messaging is to have pre-planned rally points to meet with family and friends following a SHTF event. You can send a broadcast TM (i.e., same message to multiple recipients, like email) so it is easy to tell the family where to meet. You could call these something simple like "Location 1" and someone reading the message would not know where that was, other than members of your team that should know the location. |
This doesn't work out too well for you in a job interview, I hear....... 
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Learn morse. It's older, and better. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhsSgcsTMd4 |
That is pretty much how it is SMS text messages are transmitted using the "Control Channel", which is a (virtual) channel that the cell phone system uses for phones to check in to a new cell site, and for voice calls on the "traffic channels" to be set up. Usually, one control channel can handle four to six traffic channels, because a real-time two-way high data rate connection (which is what a cell phone voice call is) takes up much more bandwidth, i.e. space on the frequency spectrum, than data traffic like SMS and the administrative data packets that are transmitted on the control channel. This also means that even when all traffic channels are busy with voice traffic, the control channel usually still has capacity available (see this report for details). So sending an SMS will likely still work when the phone displays the "busy" message or you can't get through. Also, an SMS takes about five seconds of time to send, compared to the typical two-minute "quick call". That also means only a fraction of the battery power gets used up. Yay SMS! Note: the above is for plain-jane text messages (SMS). If your phone does "multimedia mail" like sending pictures or sounds or other "attachments", that is transmitted using the traffic channels, and therefore will not go through when the circuits are "busy". |
How? Both ways pls EastcARstle - great info! |
you have the concept right regarding separate voice bearer and control streams, however... the primary reason that txt'ing sort-of-works when all else doesn't is because the SMS text messages are dealt with in a "store-and-forward" manner. since there is no realtime requirement for txt'ing, like there is with voice traffic, a short storage delay incurred at one end or the other, or even in the middle, has little to no impact on the service. your phone holds the message until the network can accept it, and the next node does the same, and so on. during normal traffic patterns, inter-subscriber SMS messaging happens so fast that there is the illusion of realtime performance -- but as the control channels become more congested with call setup, teardown, and handoff messages, and/or SMS txt'ing traffic is increased, throughput of individual SMS messages will be reduced. conceptually, txt'ing is not really that different compared to how email gets delivered over the internet. ar-jedi |
You can send a text to an e-mail. Just save the e-mail as a contact (IE [email protected] instead of 480-555-8362) Then you can use all kind of websites like this one or many others to send text from your computer to a cell. |
Thanks for the additional info  Amazing how you always learn something new on ARFCOM (sometimes it's stuff that you'd rather not learn, though *cough* EDITED BY REQUEST - it's for the children  *cough*)Another bit of SMS trivia: many cellphone providers offer "text-to-landline" service, for an extra quarter or so per message. You can send a SMS to a landline phone, and when the recipient picks up the phone, a computer voice reads the message text. For my provider, you have to activate which landline numbers this service works for, which takes a couple of back-and-forth SMS, so it's better to set that up e.g. for your home phone number and your out-of-state contact before a disaster hits. ETA: sorry, ar-jedi, I guess I was so traumatized by that story that I have to keep talking about it to keep myself from going insaaaaaaaane 
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Overlooked an important one. Get gasoline ASAP |