Prep Comms - Weather Radios plus PEP and IPAWS

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

In this episode of Prep Comms, Caleb (K4CDN)  finishes up his thoughts on AM/FM Transistor Radios. He also touches on some info from FEMA regarding the PEP and IPAWS radio systems. From there the conversation moves to the all-important Weather Radio and why you must have one in your home! It's Caleb's thought that you should place near equal importance on a Weather Radio as you do a Smoke Detector for your families protection! The Prep Comms Podcast is brought to you by Hub City Mercantile the brick and mortar British Berkefeld Dealer owned and operated by Caleb & Carla Nelson in Spartanburg SC. Show Links and Mentions: AM/FM/WX Radio Video: FEMA and PEP Radio Stations Video: Geerling Engineering - AM Radio discussion NWS: S.A.M.E and IPAWS *PDF PEP Radio Stations: *PDF List of All Stations IR Article: PEP Station Example My Recommended Weather Radios More from Amazon  

Welcome back into the PrepComs podcast. I'm Caleb Nelson, K4CDN. Thank you so much for joining me here. Hey, I'm coming to you from Echo Mic 94 Bravo Sierra. No, that's not BS. That's actually the grid square location from where I'm at, where just the other day we actually witnessed, we did with our own eyes, for the very first time in my life, the Northern Lights in the Deep South here in South Carolina. And wow, what a pretty spectacular showing we could even see down here. I know that many of you up in the North and the Midwest were able to see far more than we were. But it was one of the most interesting things, I guess, in the sky that I've ever seen. Save maybe the solar eclipse a couple of years back.

But either way, it was pretty phenomenal. My kids were all into it. And we got some great pictures. Our phones, funny enough, could see much better than we could, especially in night vision. But, hey, I digress. Thank you for coming by and checking us out here at PrepCom's podcast. Yeah, there was a lot of hand-wringing and panic, if you will, within the 48 to 72 hours leading up to this big solar impact. And you can't discount

that because these sorts of impacts, these sorts of storms, these levels haven't been seen in decades. And if you've been around for any length of time, you know that over the last couple of decades, things have really changed. We've already talked about that even in our very first episode here, how dependent we are on things that weren't in existence years ago, especially for the consumer. So here we are back with the show. And before I go any further, I want to touch back just a moment to AM and FM radio, the transistor radios, and how important that is, in my opinion, for you to have on hand in case of a solar flare up or something or an EMP or whatever sort of disaster you may

be thinking about, a tornado, hurricane. These devices will get the information to you. And I want to play a little clip here real quick. I know a lot of you are going to be like, oh yeah, we know he's the man because he's playing FEMA clips. No, there's a great video. It's about a minute and 30 seconds. I'm not going to play the whole thing, but I'm going to play the audio for you. I'll link it in the show notes, but this is a video from FEMA where they're talking about their PEP radio stations or what they're also known as the primary entry point radio stations that they utilize for national emergencies. All right. So I'm going to play this for you. I'm going to come back and

talk about it in just a moment. So sit right there. Be right back. So we're at our primary three-point station here in Will County. This facility serves as a gateway for the president and to the broadcasting community to communicate national level information to the American public during times of public peril or any other type of national emergency. One of the strengths of this particular facility is that it covers millions of people through a single broadcast. This facility was constructed to run independently of commercial infrastructure so it's entirely survivable under the most extreme conditions.

It is intended to survive when other forms of communication have been decimated through either cyber or kinetic attacks. It is equipped with broadcasting equipment as well as generators and fuel systems to allow it to operate independently of commercial infrastructure. It is a critical communications lifeline during the most extreme or severe types of events. And you can reasonably be assured that during times of emergency the broadcasters are going to be on the air putting out information, critical

information, to people about threats to public safety and they can certainly serve as a beacon of light when their local populations need to be reassured that their local as well as their state federal government are there to meet their needs. Okay, there it is from the horse's mouth. That is from FEMA. That's their website. I'm sorry, their YouTube channel. From four years ago, the video only has 5,000 views. We'll probably bump that with this episode, but here's the thing. They have these radio stations that belong to a radio broadcaster, okay? And it's built separately from the current broadcasting facility. It's a whole different

tower, a whole different studio. The large majority of them are built in, I don't want to say containers, but they're containerized, if you will, where they can withstand EMP, they can withstand a nearby or somewhat nearby nuclear attack, they can withstand high winds such as a tornado, they're hurricane proof, etc. And they're built to be the first line of communications for the American population. Matter of fact, they state that up to 90% of the populace can receive information from one of these stations that they've built out there. And if you got to dig a little bit to find this stuff out, you know, because the government's spending your money and they don't really want to know what you don't know what they're spending on. But they've built about 77 to 80 of these

different stations all over the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. And they're built to withstand everything that could be thrown at them. And they have inside them the means and the capabilities to sustain at least two individuals for about 60 days unattended. That means they've made preparations for two people for 60 days to sustain life inside this pod and also provided power and the ability to, you heard the man say, allow the president to talk to you as well as make announcements about everything else. So they're called primary entry point stations, PEP. And this goes back to where we had the Conrad system, and then we went to emergency broadcasting system. And now we're at the EAS, which is the emergency alert system. This is kind of like the next step, if you will. And this is,

this all started when FEMA got together with broadcasters. I'm sure there was, uh, that was a fun conversation to hear. And they came up with what was called the iPause system. And that is the integrated public alert and warning system. And that's what you hear like when they do their presidential addresses testing, or if you have a storm in your area and it makes the weird sounds and beeps and buzzes. It usually freaks you out when you hear it. And then the sirens start and all those things, right? So this is something that they tried, they didn't try, they actually accomplished to build throughout the U.S. And they built it by funding broadcasters to create these pods, these PEP stations to be able to

get information to you in the case of an emergency. And that's why I wanted to talk about it and remind you just going back to the previous episode, how important having a radio, just a plain Jane AM FM radio that can operate more than likely. I would suggest do that on a double A batteries, the hand cranks, whatever. I'm not a big fan by any stretch of the imagination, but if that's what you got, that's what you got. I'm not going to hate it. But their goal was to communicate with the entire populace. They believe they can nail it down to no less than 90% and address everyone in case of an emergency. So just wanted to kind of throw that in there as well. The AM FM radios are very, very important.

I keep saying I feel like there's a horse here and I've got a baseball bat, but I don't do that. So I'm just being sarcastic. You need an AM FM radio. You don't have to buy it from me. I would suggest you get something small, something go in the pocket, maybe something a little rugged, something runs on AA batteries. Something's very, very simple. Something very simple that will operate. Just in addition, I'm going to throw another video in the show notes. It's a father-son

and they're both engineers. One works for a radio station. I think it's KMOX, which is one of the larger radio stations in the country. And they go through some of this. It's a little too long to just throw in here into the actual episode, but I want to encourage you to please watch this. They start the conversation about the discussion of should we have AM radios in our cars and why manufacturers don't want to, but why FEMA is pushing so hard to keep AM radios in vehicles and how important it is. And if you go back and you understand what we just talked about, IPALs and EAS, the FEMA PEP radio stations,

now you see you've got two fighting entities within our government. One, that's the automobile lobby that doesn't want to have to figure out the shielding for EVs. And you have the other who's like people's lives may depend on this, especially in rural areas. So it's a great video. It'll be in the show notes. Shout out to those guys, a father, son.

They start the conversation about car radios, AM radio and cars, but then they begin talking about the realities of AM radio and its importance in an emergency situation. And since this is PrepComs, we talk about communication solutions for emergency situations. Go check out the video at the bottom of the show notes here in your player. All right. We're going to take a break.

We're going to come back in just a second, and we're going to talk about weather radios right here on PrepComs. Hub City Mercantile is a real-life brick-and-mortar store located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It's also the official sponsor of this program, PrepComs. And additionally, it's also an authorized dealer and representative for the Dalton and British Birkfeld water filter systems. My wife and I have been in business for well over 25 years, and we've recently added the Dalton and British Burkefield water filter systems to our store. So if you have some water filter system needs, if you need some replacement parts, some replacement filters, maybe you don't even have a water filter solution right now, make sure you visit hubcitymercantile.com hubcitymercantile.com all right back on the prep comms podcast caleb here with you and hey just remember to check the

show notes for some video links i really want you guys to take that in again we're not operating here in fear we're just trying to build a mindset of preparedness in regards to communications and make the best decisions that we can. Speaking of one of the best decisions that you could make, that is, well, I'm not going to go with my faith in this regard, but I will tell you one of the best decisions you can make for your household following installing smoke detectors in your house and not the ones that beep every five minutes because uh although that's a nice feature it's actually telling you that your battery's dying and if you don't replace it you could be the one dying by not following you know

protocol to check your batteries when you change your time your clocks right uh i won't go there but uh so smoke detectors we know i was a fireman for years, still involved in the fire service. They are incredibly important. And I'm going to say that in your household, notwithstanding self-protection, extra food, things like that, water, water filter systems, one of the most important things you could do to complement or accent your preparedness is to have a weather radio. Now, we just talked a few minutes ago about the PEP stations and injecting information into AM and FM radio stations in time of an emergency. is your weather radio will also turn into a government transmitter or receiver to take in whatever Uncle Sam is wanting to share with you at that time. Currently, in a non-emergency situation, if you will, here how we're living today, these weather radios actually can receive

transmitted information from your local weather service, And that's a government entity, but they monitor the weather and they keep up with what's going on if you have no idea what this thing is. And in case of an emergency, the weather alert can go off in your house and make you aware that there's an impending storm or whatnot. And then you can protect yourself and your family. Also, if you're just sitting around on a gorgeous day and wonder what the rest of the week's going to look like in regards to the weather and you don't have your cell phone handy

or maybe you haven't paid your bill this month, you could turn on your weather radio and get a week's worth of forecast right there for free. It's transmitting all day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In most places, now it's computer animated or computer generated. It's a voice that you've probably heard before, and it's just reading out loud whatever's been typed into it. I'm old enough to remember that back in the

day, they had someone actually record it every hour or so, and then it would play on a tape in a loop, and that was how it was forever. But why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, where I live, let me just start here. In Spartanburg County in South Carolina, we have had tornadoes in a very recent past. We've had some really destructive tornadoes in the past. I know just a couple of weeks ago when this was recorded, we had some major weather throughout the Midlands or the mid part of the U.S., if you will. And if you go back and you watch some of these videos of the storm damage or the tornadoes going through towns, you'll hear these civil defense alarms going and whatnot. Well, in Spartanburg County,

our leadership here has decided that keeping up with those sirens is too expensive. It's not worth doing anymore. People don't care because they have a cell phone in their pocket, et cetera. So they've just let them completely go into disarray to the point that our fire department has an alarm. And now what you have to know about where we live, it's very, very rural. And that means that a lot of the times, well, just until recently when we got Starlink, we didn't even really have the internet here. And we had one telephone provider, cell phone provider that actually worked on our property. Everyone else was just like Statue of Liberty trying to make it work if they were down here.

So depending on just cell phones to alert people to warnings and whatnot, in my mind is very short-sighted. I do not like it. I've vented through every channel I can through my county, and they're still not interested. No one wants to take responsibility in my county to maintain these sirens for whatever reason. But one of the things we can do, even skip the cell phone for just a moment, is to have a weather radio. And these things are $35 a piece. You can find them all over. Of course, I'll have a link in the show note. I've had them in my store for years. Midland makes one. It's white. You can buy it at Walmart for $35. And I really believe you should have one of these in your house. I'm serious when I say it's as important right below as important as a smoke detector, because this thing can wake you

up in the middle of the night. Let's just say a massive storm happens. It knocks the cell phone towers out of power due to lightning strikes in your area. Now what the county has said, they're going to alert you through doesn't work because there's no service and you have no idea that there's a tornado bearing down on your house. Well you would have an idea if you had a weather radio, especially one that has the same type of programming and the same S-A-M-E. They utilize this. You've heard it before. You've heard the beeps and the bops and the squelches and the squeaks and all these different sounds when there's a weather alert going out. And inside of that, if you're not familiar, ham radio guys know this already. But in every bit of that, it's just like a fax machine.

It's full of information. Every one of those beeps and squeaks has a meaning. It's doing something. It's triggering. It's receiving. It's firing off something inside the receiver that's taking it in to create the message to come out of it. And through the same programming that was adopted back in the day, you can program your own radio, your weather radio, to receive alerts that are for your area geographically and not have to wake up when at some other part, you know, 35 miles

away in the county, they're having a really severe storm, but the stars are shining at your house. So the technology's changed. It used to be that when a county got an alert, the whole county got an alert. Now you're able, when you purchase these weather radios, to program those to be specific to your geographical area. And people, oh, I can't do that. It's so simple. There's instructions everywhere on the net.

Even the written instructions make it so easy. It's really hard to fail in programming your weather radio. Now, this all began back in the 80s, like 1988, which was a great year, by the way. They kind of decided that we're going to start creating these radios that had the same type of reception and i need to say that same means specific area message encoding and what what that is is when you buy your radio you look up on the little paper where you live and there's a code and you go all the way to your county and whatnot or where what part of your county you live in and you enter that code into your radio and by doing

so it's always listening for the particular tones from the weather service that go out when your area needs to be alerted and i i can't tell you in in my mind just how important that is especially for someone who who may live out kind of in the rural areas or maybe you're even in a densely populated area and there's just so much going on so much noise and whatnot around you you may miss something and you know life and limb is very important so I would encourage you to take the time to get the radio. Uh, there's a couple of different ones. The, like I said earlier, the little Midland is white with the blue display. It's super popular, probably the number one radio sold in the country. I also like their next up model that looks more like a clock radio that you would put beside your

bed and your bedroom. It has an AM FM tuner. So you could even listen to the regular radio stations. It's got an alarm clock built in. We've got all this in the show notes. But the thing is, if you put it in your bedroom, it's going to scare the you know what out of you when it goes off at three o'clock in the morning. Because even in its lowest setting, it's loud. And I get it. That's what it's supposed to do,

right? Just like our smoke detectors are supposed to just to shake us from the depths of sleep. The weather radio is supposed to do the same. Now as a very, very light sleeper, I've found that if you take the weather radio and put it at the other end, or maybe even the middle of the house, it's loud enough to get me up and I can get up and make myself aware and determine if I need to do anything with the family. Do I need to turn the radios on? Do I need to check the radar or whatnot? But I'll tell you, I'll be very straight. If you have one of these in your bedroom and it goes off in the middle of the night, you will wake up and you may as well go ahead and get a cup of coffee. Now, don't let that deter you.

I'm just trying to be straight with you. Don't let it deter you to the point that, oh, I don't want to deal with that because that could save your life. It could save your family's life. And that's why I'm kind of harping so heavily on this. I want you to get the fact that weather radios are very important for preparedness. And no, it's not a rifle or no, it's not a bucket of beans or rice, or it's not a water filter, or it's not a, you know, it's not a bucket of beans or rice, or it's not a water filter, or it's not a, you know, pre 1978 Chevrolet square body pickup truck with the rotor button.

No, it's none of that stuff, guys. It's a crazy little thing. You plug into the wall, has a nine volt battery backup, and it could save your life. And of course, I'll go back to it as well. Uh, in the event of a national emergency, these things are going to be talking about more than the weather, especially if one of these CMEs or solar storms affects the distribution of information through the internet and cellular telephone networks. So it's a $35 insurance policy. It costs about twice as much as one smoke detector. It uses about as much power as a smoke detector. It uses about as much power as a smoke detector, and you can set it over there, program it the way you want it programmed. And you really like, if you live in a flood prone area, you can set it up to alert to floods. If you

live near a large metropolitan area and there's a lot of missing kids or whatever, you can set it up for Amber alerts. So you can set it up to Amber Alerts. You can set it up to ignore Amber Alerts. You can set it up to ignore floods. All sorts of things. Freeze warnings. Anytime that the alerts go off, they send these tones that are specific to the emergency they're alerting folks to. So it's a great investment. $35. If you have nothing and you've bought your little AM FM radio, before you buy any walkie talkies at all, buy a weather radio. Because you're going to hear me say as we progress through

this journey of preparedness communications, that you have to learn to listen and worry less about talking. Because listening is going to get information to you that you're going to need in an emergency that you may or may not have prepared for. But the more you know, the better off you'll be. And that's why you need a weather radio. I know I harp on this. I'm kind of weird about it, and that's okay. But I understand how powerful they are and what they can do to protect you and your family.

All right. Thank you so much for listening to the PrepComs podcast. Please check out the show notes on our website, prepcoms.com. We have the links to the videos I've mentioned as well as the weather radios. We've got those in the store. And you need to be weather aware, especially this time of year, right? So just take this to heart. Listen to the old man here.

It's a worthy investment. I appreciate you listening. Thank you guys. I've gotten some great reviews. I've had some purchases in the store. Thank you, Larry and Sean. It's just great to connect with you guys as well. Private Facebook group, all that stuff, prepcoms.com. We'll see you next time. Thanks again for listening. 73, y'all.