@mandaris They left out a most important item: one or more ham radios and a license and the skills to operate them.
@mandaris we are so unprepared and it's a strange phenomenon that so many are still hesitant to prepare with everything going on, especially here (in CA). I've learned (am learning) so much from Dr. Lucy Jones over the years. Her podcast is also great.
@Ron I remember taking a ham radio 📻 class in jr high. People would have these huge antennas on there car so that they could talk to truckers on the road. Now, I wouldn’t know where to start if I wanted to get into that.
@ptrck I subscribed because I like that it’s a short podcast to listen to. I have the one about insurance and trusting to science queued up.
@mandaris Talking to truckers on the road is more likely to be done on Citizen's Band, rather than ham radio.
If you're interested in preparing for natural disasters, ham radio can help with that. When power lines are down, cell phones are not connecting and so on, the hams will often get through when others can't. In fact that's why the FCC allocated a lot of freq bands to the hams in the early 1900's.. Communicating with ham radio uses radio waves, no wires, routers or computers needed. When people first experience this it feels magical to them.
Being in Toastmasters suggests you are comfortable talking to a lot of people. That would serve you well in ham radio where you can be.meeting people all the time from all over the world.
There are tons of different ways to participate in ham radio, little niches and specialties. To learn about these many different things, there are a lot of specialized blogs, a million different books and there are thousands of local ham radio clubs all over the world. My ham radio blog is here..
I think you are in CA, is that right? Anywhere near Palo Alto? If so, I can point you to the friendliest radio club on the peninsula. Finding a good local radio club is a great way to get started in ham radio.