How To Get A Ham Radio License For When SHTF

Very interesting topic! There are a lot of good thoughts churning here, and I think you are all correct to some degree. I received my ham license at 13 in 1953 and was very active through high school. But then with the military and other life’s activities, Ham Radio has been an on and off activity ever since.
Point is; I have given this topic a lot of thought and this is my conclusion. If your power failure is a local one, then Ham Radio is great at performing emergency communications, etc., until the power resumes some days later. But, in the case of an EMP, it’s a whole different ball game. This means we will have wide spread power loss, possibly the entire country, and overlapping into the border countries – for months to years! In that situation, I would probably never use my transmitter, just the receiver to listen. My goal would be to learn as much as I can about the rest of the country and world. I have nothing to gain by transmitting my location or conditions at the home base. There will not be any emergency services that can help. Except for your immediate neighbors, you and your family will be on your own. I guess if you wanted to join a Fema Camp you could use your transmitter to get directions – or maybe not.
I can imagine that communications could be very helpful for your local family group, maybe when one is out scouting or collecting fire wood, etc. But the range you would need would only be as far as one might walk in a day. For that purpose, the common FRS or GMRS hand held radios that one can buy in a blister pack at the sporting goods store should be good. They are cheap, rugged, easy to use, no license, and very low power. They are also at a high enough frequency that their range is mostly limited to line of sight, which will minimize the chances of giving away your location. Even then you will want to only use it for an emergency and then with minimum transmit time.
The concern here goes beyond some bad guys wanting to rape and pillage. The real bad guys would probably be coming from the country that launched the EMP – possibly China. In my opinion, as soon as they hit us with an EMP, they would be listening to all frequencies with their satellites to learn just how effective their attack was. If they find a lot of signals coming from some part of the country, they would know where to aim for a follow up shot. They would also know where to investigate when picking off survivors later on.
In conclusion, for this approach, one does not need a Ham ticket to communicate with his local people. But, having a Ham license would be a great asset to the group from knowing about electricity and electronics to serve the family group, or trade with neighbors for some service you may need.

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MtEmdog, Ide be happy to share what I’ve learned about fires. And I’ll do my best to keep it as short as I can. Ha –
I’ve done a number of writeups on the subject, but they are a bit long for here, and they contain pictures which I doubt this site will accept. So maybe a more efficient way to present this is with a visual picture in your mind’s eye of the dynamics that need to be dealt with, rather than just a lot of facts.
Suppose you have a drone looking down on your house to give you eyes in the sky. Looking over the trees, you can see a wildfire a few miles away, and the wind is blowing your way. Maybe the first thing you’ll see are sparks and hot ember reaching your property and landing on your roof, etc.. All the published stats indicate that 90% of the structure fires start from blowing embers – not flame contact. So, the first step is to harden your house from those embers.
Starting from the top – hopefully your roof has been kept clear of accumulated tree debris, because now is probably too late to do that. Good news is; if you have a class A Fire rated roof, as the vast majority now are, high probability is, it will protect your house, even if the tree debris catches fire. Problem is if the debris connects to a second story wood window or vent frame, etc.
If your roof is reasonably clean, the next thing you will see is the hot embers rolling down your metal or composition. roof into the rain gutters. When tree debris there lights up, fire can get up under the roofing material and work its way into the attic. So keep your gutters clean. I’ve mounted mine on over center hinges, so all I do is reach up with a hook and roll them over. Then I leave them upside down through the fire season. But, you’ll need to design a break in the down spout to make that work.
Next thing to consider is attic vents which are prone to ember entry. Vulcan makes fire and ember proof vents, but they are pricy. I have one in a vent that’s hard to get to. For the other 2, I have a custom cut piece of sheet metal from my local HVAC shop. One easily installs on the inside via my walk-in attic, and the other mounts over the outside via a step ladder and wing nuts on threaded studs already screwed into the vent frame. Even just a piece of plywood screwed in place should do fine for the event. Another way is to just stapple some of your wife’s heavy duty aluminum foil over it. Just make sure to not leave places for the embers to lodge in between the foil and the wood vent frame.
I’ve watched vides of controlled tests of blowing embers on full size wood structures. On the wood siding, they just bounce off and drop to the ground. Same as I’ve watched videos of people walking around in ember storms wearing shorts and tank tops with no serious problems as long as the sparks cannot find a place to lodge. So look over your dwelling to make sure there are no places an ember can enter, especially into the attic. Cover or plug any such opening. In an emergency, one could cover the hole with a piece of the aluminum tape from your hardware store. The aluminum is a great reflector of heat, so the glue will not likely release the tape. If in doubt, add stapples.
If you have flower beds next to the house, make sure they are clear of leaves and other debris, including wood chips often used to control weeds. Because, when hot embers bounce off the siding and fall down into a flower bed covered with combustibles, they will light it up. And then, even though it’s not a big fire, it can be enough to ignite the wood siding, or get under the lower edge, and work its way into the wall. I have concrete sidewalks or gravel around most of my house to make it a non-issue.
It is suggested that shrubs or bushes should not be grown next to your house. I watched a video of a large bush go up next to a house with stucco siding. It was a raging inferno for several minutes until the heat broke a high window above it. Then the fire had entry into the house and it took off. In my opinion, if the shrub next to your house is green, healthy, thinned out and trimmed up so that only dirt is showing underneath, it will probably be fine.
The mind set here is to keep anything combustible away from the house. Do not stack fire wood next to the house, or on the porch as I often see. Yes, it’s convenient, but also an invitation for embers to set up house keeping in any of those crevasses. Remove all dead grass and other tree debris at least a few feet away from your siding. Just imagine what it would look like if it was burning. If your house would be safe from the flames, you’re good. Ideally, all the dead vegetation would be removed from your entire yard, but this is a minimum.
Clean all the tree debris out from under your decks and from crawl spaces under the house. An alternative would be to temporarily cover your vents, or install ember proof ones. Of course, cleaning and vents would be the best. If you build a deck from wood, make the plank spacing greater than 3/16.” Studies have shown that 3/16” or less will trap embers and propagate a smoldering fire up the house. I built my deck before I knew about the 3/16” rule, but it is spaced ¾” away from the house, which means it’s free standing with a small fire break. Also, my top planks are made from the plastic composite material, which I believe is more fire resistant. Another surprise can happen from leaving a straw broom on your deck, leaning up against the house. The ember gets into the straw part, then ignites the wood handle and on up to the wood house. Also, don’t leave any overstuffed, or combustible furniture on the deck, or in the yard.
Imagine how long an overstuffed piece of furniture or pile of wood could burn in your yard compared to natural standing dry grass. Probably 100x longer. And all the while that’s happening, it’s throwing smoke and embers into the air to fall on something else.
Look around your yard and remove any dead vegetation or piles of combustible material out to at least 50 feet. For sure remove any dead trees even further out. However, it’s better to have live, healthy trees and shrubs than clear cutting everything. Most green healthy plants are fairly fire resistant, as long as there is no dead grass or tree debris under them. When that debris burns, the heat rises up through the foulage of the tree, quickly drying it out, and then the whole thing goes up. Healthy trees, etc., around your property will act as a shield from the radiated heat and greatly reduce the number of hot embers finding your house. Test have shown that clear cutting everything is not good.
Remove all the curtains and shades from inside your windows. They have been known to ignite through the glass from high levels of radiated heat. Also, if a fire should break the glass, the exposed curtains would add to the problem. Double paned glass is more fire resistant, triple paned is even better. Also, plastic window frames can melt, letting the glass fall out, giving the fire entry into the house.
Imagine your house being showered with wind, sparks, embers, and possibly high heat. Then imagine where that could cause a problem and what you could do to protect it.
Since this is getting so long, I should finish it later, probably Monday, as this weekend will be a busy one. Then we will get into the more interesting stuff. ? But, these basic things should be done anyway. I see it as just good housekeeping, and it costs very little in dollars.
Thanks for your interest.

Protecting structures from fires part II for MtEmdog
Before continuing, I should mention what you probably already know, and that is that every structure and fire event is different. So you’ll have to decide which of the various options fit your circumstances, and be ready to modify your plans if needed, as in any kind of war. And like war, there are no absolutes, so I talk in probabilities.
If your house was prepared as suggested in part 1 to keep any of the embers from embedding anyplace, and a wild fire found your house while you were away on vacation, the probability of your house being there when you return is close to 90%. But we can do better than that.
If you are at home, the next step is to decide whether you want to stay with your house or evacuate. If you chose not to evacuate, one must have their ducks lined up (house and grounds prepared) and be physically and mentally prepared to stay. Statistics score heavily in favor of staying with your house – both for the survival of your house and the owner. Of course, one needs to respect fire, but if you are one who is deathly afraid of fire, then maybe staying is not a good choice – take your 90% probability and go. But, before you go, connect your hoses and lay them out around your house. Fill buckets, etc., with water and leave them around your house, just in case someone needs some quick water to save your house. Shut down ventilation systems and close all your doors and windows. I have seen where an otherwise safe house was lost because the garage door was left open during an emotionally charged evacuation.
Pause here for a moment – if you decide to stay – one needs to have enough food and water to last at least several days or weeks without electricity because your area may be sealed off by the authorities for an extended period of time. And while they cannot force you to leave (at least in California), once you do leave, they will not let you back in. When staying to protect your house, one could be out in the smoke for several hours a day. And the accumulation of smoke in the lungs can be a serious health hazard. So I would suggest having a number of N95 masks with the exhaust port to make breathing easier, because it will be smoky, maybe days before and after the fire passes. When the smoke was heavy here last year, I put on an N95 mask, that is supposed to stop 95% of the smoke size particles, and went outside where I could just barely smell a trace of smoke. When I took it off, the smoke smell was very strong. So they do help a lot. I also bought an “iEvac” fire and smoke hood for just in case I need to be outside when the smoke gets really bad. It not only stops 100% of the smoke, but all the other hazardous gases in smoke, like carbon monoxide. They are only good for a onetime use (day, etc.) and cost about $200. Fire Escape Mask While the chemicals in the filter will eventually become exhausted, the mechanics of the filter will still stop smoke particles as long as one can pull air through it.
Un pause – If you have decided to stay, I would suggest you start watering down everything on your house and around your property.at the first threat of fire while you have water pressure. When other houses in the neighborhood catch fire, their water pipes will break, eventually draining the water pressure to zero. So, fill up all the buckets and other water containers you can find and leave them located around your house. Also, wet down your roof and rain gutters in case they have tree debris in them. Walk around your house looking for any signs of smoke to extinguish. Reports I have seen, say that while the owner was watching his own house, he had time to save 2 or 3 of his neighbor’s houses by putting out small fires. I bought a water backpack with a hand pump that carries 5 gallons for small fires beyond my hose reach. But, be careful – I’ve been told that if a fire agency catches you off your property, they can remove you from the sealed off area. Of course, if society has melted down, there won’t be any authorities to deal with. Just to be clear, one’s firefighting here is limited to small fires just getting started. This is not about fighting a fully involved house with a garden hose.
Using one’s common sense, if a large tree near by goes up, the radiated heat can be lethal for humans. But wood construction can survive up to 400 or so degrees of surface temperature for a brief time. In that case, just step behind, or inside, your house for a few minutes until the heat wave passes, then return to the area and look for any spot fires to extinguish. Some wildfire agencies use similar tactics. It’s interesting to note that when a wild fire is racing through an area, the main heat wave only exists in one spot for about 1-3 minutes. I’ve found numerous accountings and videos illustrating that. Of course, small spot fires remain in the fire’s wake, but they can be handled much easier. The bigger problem is when a structure goes up and continues to burn for an hour(?). If it happens to be close to your house, this can be a problem with respect to the radiated heat, which is another reason you might be motivated to protect your neighbor’s house, if possible.
Since I’m running out of time and space here, I should continue this later with a part III.

Protecting your house from wildfires, Part III 6-17-2022
If you were successful in performing all the suggestions in part I & II, then your house has close to 100% probability of surviving. But there is more that can be done!
One of those is to cover critical things, or areas of your structure, with a radiant barrier that reflects heat. I prefer the kind used in construction to cover the wall studs before adding the plaster board or siding. There are many variations. I used this one
A 4 foot wide roll x 250 feet long (1,000 sq ft) cost $109. It looks and acts like aluminum foil and is highly reflective on both sides, with a plastic reinforcer in the middle that makes it tear resistant. Excellent for stopping radiated heat. Similar products are fiberglass reinforced rather than plastic, but they cost close to 10 x as much. I’ve ran tests, one was with a piece of plywood covered with 2 inch wide strips of the radiant barrier foil. Then positioned it within inches of a roaring camp fire until the uncovered portion of the plywood began to char (~400 deg. F). The thermocouple behind the foil indicated 120 degrees F, and the wood behind the foil was still pristine when removed. While this foil is great at stopping radiant heat, it begins to deteriorate when subjected to direct flame. Also, I chose the foil with the tiny pin hole in it so that it could breathe and allow water trapped behind it to dry out. This could be used to cover anything that might see an excess of heat, like windows, siding, fences, propane tank, etc. The house next door to me has been abandoned for 35 years and is a terrible fire trap. So, I used the radiant barrier to cover the exposed side of my carport, and I cover their side of my wooden fence, in case that house goes up.

From all I’ve found, the best protection for your house is roof mounted sprinklers, assuming you have water. The intent is not to wet down your class A fire rated roof, even though it will do that. This is to get water into the surrounding trees and other vegetation. I mounted agricultural bronze rainbirds on 3 poles, 30 feet high equally spaced around my house. Each rainbird throws water to about a 70 foot radius in an overlapping pattern. The total water flow is about 15-18 gallons per minute, which calculates out to about 1 inch of rain in 24 hours. After running for about 15 minutes, it appears to be raining with water dripping off everything. The way it appears to work is that when the fire front moves toward your house, each tree that ignites creates a huge updraft of hot air and smoke. This pulls in air from the ground and sides of the fire engulfed tree. When it gets close to your rain forest, it begins to pull in moist rain laden air, which moves up through the tree, smothering the fire. So, while I tried to get the water as high up in the trees as possible, reaching much past the midpoint of the 100+ foot high trees is very difficult, and unnecessary.

I have an arial picture of a small cabin in the forest, with a rain bird running on the roof, after a fire had swept through. Cabin is surrounded by a ring of green trees, with an outer ring of dead trees that still had their unburned foulage. And beyond that, everything was black and gone. In this particular fire in British Columbia, their Forest Service went out ahead of the fire and installed temporary sprinklers on 80 cabins. The fire actually got to 60 of the cabins, and they all survived.

A possible issue with sprinklers is that eventually the town’s water supply will stop as other structures burn and open up their water pipes. To cover that, I bought a 1,650 gallon onion shaped self-supporting plastic tank, commonly used by fire departments to stage water. When a fire is threatening, like last year, I remove it from my fire equipment cart, unroll it in the driveway and start filling from the town’s water service. That takes about 15-20 minutes to set up, and about 45 minutes to fill. Initially, I run the sprinklers from the town water supply until the pressure starts to fade. Then I drive the sprinklers with my portable water pump, drawing water from the tank. The town’s water is then used to simultaneously add to the tank. When the pump starts out-running the water level in the tank, I can greatly stretch the remaining water by cycling the pump on & off as needed. I also have a hose bib Tee’ d into the pump output to use where the sprinklers don’t reach. Once it was set up last year, I left the tank full through the rest of the fire season. To keep growies from forming in the tank, I added Chlorine Dioxide tablets and covered it with a white tarp to reflect the summer sun to reduce the water temperature. According to what I read, the chlorine Dioxide keeps the water suitable for drinking, which could be useful in a SHTF situation. I also keep a roll of water proof tape in stock (like they advertise on TV) in case the tank should develop bullet holes.

I have read about hundreds of sprinkler protected structures, and maybe 1% were reported as lost. But then it was also noted that it was not known if those sprinklers were working properly, or working at all. Many of these were left running with an endless supply of water when the owners evacuated.

Seeing my setup, a curious neighbor asked if this was taking water needed by the fire department. My answer was; all the residents are restricted to a ¾“ line to the meter at the street. So what I am using is no different than anyone else using a garden hose. And – what is the fire department going to use my share of water for? To save another house? And why is that house more important than mine?

If you have a well to supply your water, great! But then you’ll need a backup generator for when the fire takes down the power lines.

If one could do all the things listed in these 3 parts, it’s hard to imagine how you could loose your house, especially if you have a swimming pool too. Once the SHTF, anything is possible. But, using whatever combination of all these things will greatly improve the survivability of your house.

One quick survival story. When a fire truck and crew were over taken by a wildfire in a rural neighborhood, their only escape was to abandon their truck and retreat to the inside of a house that they had already tagged as not survivable. Moments later their truck went up, which apparently shorted out some switch wiring, setting off the siren which they said sounded like their truck was screaming for help. Meanwhile the crew went through the house looking for anything liquid they could find including soft drinks, cleaners, etc. Then they were all over the house putting out spot fires on the wooden shake roof, vegetation, etc. Eventually the fire passed and rescue crews found them – and the unprotectable house was saved! So, saving your house on a small budget is not impossible.

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First of all I have an extra class ham license. I first got my ticket in 96. I am amazed by the paranoia here & to many people talking foolishness about things they know nothing about!

If you dont know what your talking about make it clear it is so, otherwise you make yourself look like a fool.

Someone on the air isn’t going to turn you in to the man, they just wont talk to you. And the ham community isn’t a lot of old snobs. Most are some of the best people you would like to meet but they are people too. Good & bad. Like I said they are people just like you, with all their faults.

If the marxist declare martial law & you are a ham, WTF now they are going to hunt you down now??? What kind of talk is that? Maybe dont say your going to take over the gov or something stupid.

Oh, you listened to a few conversations & now you say it is boring or what ever? WTF? It sounds like you know to much of what you dont know.

Yes it isnt for everyone. Many don’t care for the testing or aren’t smart enough anyway. If you choose to get licensed you will have access to parts of the whole radio spectrum. Repeaters are everywhere. With a handheld you can talk to someone many miles away.

If it aint for you fine. The downside is the other party needs to be licensed also. But I can let my sister talk to mom (who is licensed also) if I announce third party traffic. GMRS works & a license will cover your family. You can even get your own repeater or use someone elses.

My suggestion for an open band is to buy VHF marine radios. Unless you are next to water it is open & no one will know you are using it.

Also you can buy good ham radios that are able to have the frequencies opened so you can talk on other than ham frequencies. Just find a band that is not usually used, like VHF marine.

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