Emergency radio guide: getting information when the network is down

Why radio beats your phone in an outage

Mobile masts have limited battery backup, and network capacity collapses when everyone calls at once. Even where the network survives, your handset battery does not last long if you use it for news.

Broadcast radio is the opposite: one transmitter with serious backup power reaching everyone, and a receiver that runs for days on a couple of AA cells. That asymmetry is why civil protection agencies across Europe still point to radio first.

• Battery radio with AA or AAA cells, plus spares
• FM and DAB coverage — FM degrades more gracefully
• Written list of national and regional station frequencies
• Hand-crank or solar model as the backup layer

Hand-crank, solar and realistic expectations

Crank radios are genuinely useful and routinely oversold. A minute of steady winding typically yields a few minutes of listening at low volume, and the phone-charging function delivers a trickle rather than a real charge.

Treat the crank as insurance for when batteries are gone, keep the radio on cells day to day, and check that the internal battery still holds charge — that is the part that quietly dies in storage.

The survival scenario: a household split across the city

The grid goes down at 16:00 on a weekday. One adult is at work, a child is at school, and calls will not connect. This is where a written plan replaces technology: where to meet, when to wait, who collects whom, and an out-of-area contact everyone tries to text.

Text messages often get through when calls fail, because they need only a brief window of capacity. Agree that everyone texts the same out-of-area contact and then follows the plan, rather than each person improvising.

• One agreed meeting point near home, one outside the area
• An out-of-area contact everyone texts with status
• Printed copies in each bag and wallet — not just in phones
• A fixed check-in time so nobody waits indefinitely