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The reason radio is robust against disaster is because it's peer-to-peer, not because it's analogue.

So, a like-to-like alternative is probably a encrypted local mesh network.




Trunked radio systems, as used by police, firefighters and EMS worldwide are not peer-to-peer. You transmit to the trunk, it relays to people in your selected group. All radios rely on a control signal from the trunk for determining where to send and when to listen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunked_radio_system


All our 'digital' signals are ultimately transmitted over some analog channel. "Digital" is an abstraction. There's no reason you can't encrypt a radio transmission without relying on intermediaries to relay it as in a mesh network.


You can do encryption without mesh - the digital radio standards all support it.




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