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there is one thing that a family can do to improve their communications capability it is to add radios to their family communications plan.

For a detailed look at adding radios to your family communications plan, please look at my book "Communications for Survival & Self-Reliance", available from Paladin Press.

YOUR FAMILY CIPHER

Private communication is often taken for granted during normal times, but during some type of disaster disruption of the infrastructure may compromise the privacy that we expect in our daily communications. While you will probably never see the government recommending that you establish a way to keep your family communications private, I believe it is an important consideration for family communications planning.

To ensure the ability to maintain some degree of privacy in our communications I suggest that you establish a family cipher. Your family cipher should be something that can be accomplished with a pencil and paper (no computer-based encryption), and should be simple enough to be used by all mature members of your family.

The purpose of the family cipher is not to provide a great deal of cryptologic security, rather the family cipher provides a degree of privacy for private messages within your immediate family messages that may have to be sent over a distinctly public and open communications system (especially in times of a widespread disaster).

Turning grilles, keyword, and matrix ciphers are all simple to use, while providing a reasonable degree of security for family communications. The type of cipher you choose depends on your family's interest and capability, but one can usually find something workable.

A FINAL WORD

Having a good plan today is better than having a perfect plan tomorrow. Gather your family together and start working on your family communications plan. Work out just how you would establish contact with your friends and loved ones if some disaster hit your home town tomorrow.

Not only will an established communication plan make your family safer, but it might just get everyone talking and listening to what each other has to say.

Learn more about this author, Michael Chesbro.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

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