

It’s definitely a cool option for complete off-grid comms. There is the option to use MQTT as well for messaging, but that requires internet to work. I’m planning for no internet, so that’s what I ‘train’ with. You can make it so you are on the ‘open’ channel for anyone to jump into, directly contact individual nodes, and/or make ‘channels’ that only other people with the same encryption key can access for group chats. No subscriptions or anything else, plus there are a ton of different hardware types available, antennas, and other options. And overall, fairly inexpensive to get started.
The only real ‘difficult’ part is if you live near a mountain range. Without other nodes from other people around the peaks or setting up repeater nodes yourself, getting past mountain ranges isn’t going to happen.
My plans. Plans for everything, and plans for those plans if they fail, and tertiary plans. I love plans. SOPs (standard operating procedures). I’d rather have a solid plan for everything reasonable (and some unreasonable) than all the gear in the world with no plan. Plans documented, memorized, printed and digitized. I had a very logistics-heavy role in the military, and as a civilian with a family in this day and age of so much uncertainty, I’m honestly more focused on them than I was when I was serving.