[Townhall] When the Grid Goes Dark, AM Radio Is America’s Last Line of Defense
When a hostile nation, a terrorist cell, or a solar storm takes down the power grid, Americans won’t find out what to do from a smartphone app. Cell towers will go dark within hours, and internet service will go with them. But one technology will still be talking: AM radio.
That is why the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act matters. On September 15, the House passed it with overwhelming bipartisan support. Its Senate companion has more than 60 cosponsors and has cleared committee. It is ready for passage today. Yet the bill still waits for Senate floor time. With a broad bipartisan majority ready to pass it, a lone procedural objection should not be enough to stand between the American people and the most resilient communications system the nation has. Now is the time for the Senate to act.
BUILT FOR THE WORST DAY
Most Americans have never heard of the Primary Entry Point (PEP) system, but they depend on it. Working with FEMA, a network of dozens of radio stations, most of them AM, has been fortified to serve as the backbone of the national Emergency Alert System. These stations exist so that the president can address the nation when every other channel has failed.
PEP stations are hardened against electromagnetic pulse attacks. They keep enough backup fuel on hand to broadcast for days without commercial power. Many have separate, protected broadcast facilities and sleeping quarters so staff can stay on site through a prolonged crisis. Together, they can reach the vast majority of Americans.
But every dollar invested in that infrastructure is wasted if Americans have nothing to receive it with. Eighty-seven percent of Americans still listen to broadcast radio each week, and much of that listening happens in the car. In a disaster, the car is often the only working radio a family has left. It has its own power source and its own antenna, and it goes wherever the family goes. If automakers continue stripping AM receivers from new vehicles, they are quietly unplugging the endpoint of America’s emergency communications system.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
