Hurricane Michael. New is not always better.

[SavannahMann]

One of the issues for recovery is communications. It is hard to get help if you can’t tell anyone where you need the help, or what you need. Enter modern communications. Computers have made communications easy for us in our daily lives. Radios in police, fire, and ambulances all run through towers similar to cell towers. The computers manage the flow, as everyone is on the same frequency and the discriminators make sure you don’t hear what you are not supposed to. This is also good for security since no one can easily decrypt the computer coding even if they come across the right frequency. Now, as the people in Florida are learning, there is a downside to these marvels. They don’t work without the towers.

Storm left wide swath of Florida a communications dead zone

Old fashioned radios worked so long as they had power. They transmitted miles depending on terrain. Those little FMRS radios from Walmart and other retailers can reach up to twenty miles. So can CB radios. SSB systems can reach well past fifty miles. HF radios can talk clear around the globe. But nobody has those anymore. Everyone depends on their cell phones and the ease and reliability of cellular service.

Florida is one example how older is better. Older systems work when the computers are down. Imagine if the survivors had just commonly available radios. A dozen miles with a cheap walkie talkie. Fifty miles with a SSB capable CB radio. Hey we have fifty people here and we are running short of water and food. We have a diabetic who is in medical distress. All the messages you could get out and the coordinations that could be managed. All waiting on cell towers right now.

Old school is the best school after all. But the simple and old fashioned answer won’t be considered. No we will pour millions of dollars into a blimp that can relay cell signals. Or some other stupid boondoggle favorite from a campaign contributor.

 

[tigerred59]

We had a really bad ice storm a decade ago in my home town, power lines, everything dead....the only thing that worked...my landline phone. And I had a small black and white battery powered tv that was used to get info. We're gonna rule the day, we let go of old fashion communication in lieu of todays tech...shit a fuckin snow flake makes cable go out.

 

[SavannahMann]

We had a really bad ice storm a decade ago in my home town, power lines, everything dead....the only thing that worked...my landline phone. And I had a small black and white battery powered tv that was used to get info. We're gonna rule the day, we let go of old fashion communication in lieu of todays tech...shit a fuckin snow flake makes cable go out.

The days when we could do things without computers are rapidly fading into the past. Map reading, a skill learned as a boy, and had the graduate course in the Army, is practically a mystic art these days. Sure the kids can work a GPS, but finding themselves on a map using landmark references, unlikely. Orienting the map to the North so they can see their route and terrain? Very unlikely. Using a compass and figuring out the right course to walk? Forget it. They will walk in circles completely lost until they die. Forget tracking by stars, or using the Sun’s movement to get you an East West line. They’ll just die before long probably a few hundred yards from a road ignorant of it’s existance beyond the trees that block their vision.

We used machines to do what we as people could not. Then we used machines to make better machines. Now, we’re letting the computers run the machines, and we’re losing skills that we once had.

Take anything, flying for one example. The Air France flight that crash and killed everyone in the middle of the Atlantic. A simple problem, and the pilots screwed it up. Why? They were worried about why the Computer stopped working and flying the plane. The Pilots had thousands of hours, but that was all time sitting and watching the computer fly the plane, it wasn’t hands on the controls and getting the feel of the plane to the instinctive point. All they could do, was fly the computer. When the computer lost the airspeed input it needed to fly the plane, it waved it’s hands in surrender, and handed the plane to the pilots, who flew the plane into the sea vertically.

Cars are the same thing. We used to have experienced mechanics who used their ears, fingers, and experience to diagnose a problem and fix it. Now, we have electronic technicians who know how to replace a part, and perhaps why the part works, but they can’t do anything unless the computer tells them what is wrong. They can’t listen and hear, or fix it without the computer say so.

My van started to run really rough. It was missing and really screwing up. I nursed it to the dealer, suspecting it was a computer chip failing on m twelve year old van. The technician plugged it into the computer, and saw that the cylinders were not firing properly from the computer history. So he changed the wires, plugs, and all that sort of thing. I got the van back, started home, and had to U-Turn and head back. It was still doing the same damn thing. This time they found a mechanic, who listened, and decided it was a bad computer chip, and it was replaced. The car runs fine, and has new plugs, wires, and all that, plus the labor for work that didn’t fix the problem.

New is not always better. Sometimes it is a lot worse, and erodes vital skills we are starting to miss.