CHAT Grid Down: Intel Gathering Week One

RCSAR

RCSAR

Veteran Member
As we know intel gathering during a grid down situation is a life and death proposition and a key in making decisions.

I am asking for input for methods that I may have overlooked.

If you would list options and procedures for neighborhood, city, county and State wide INTELOPS. I have a very bad list of methods and am making a new one. I lost my detailed one I made a decade ago but I want to question the group on newer or better options.

You may assume the shortwave is working and local cell towers will be operational for a few days. Did a recon and noticed the local tower with a backup genny, it had 1 50 gallon tank 5 years ago but now has a 200 gallon tank and 2 small buildinggs on site approx 10x12 not including diesel tanks.

On hand is CB/VHF/UHF transceivers and scanners, all portable. Some portable satelite gear operational. Out of band tranceivers in key locations.

What am I missing?
 
L.A.B.

L.A.B.

Goodness before greatness.
Hmmm. Grid down Week One.

(1). The ability to scan Police-Fire
(2). Municipals as they relate to what water is at hand. (2.1) disease laden, chemical laden due to fail safes failing.
(3). Emergency food and water distribution nodes (if and when available)
(4). Knowledge of hospitals location, status as to triage or number of available beds, outbreaks of waterborne pathogens.
(5). Curfews Checkpoints locations manning and duration.
(6). Business channels of radio spectrum as this might relate to off loading trucked shipments at logistical hubs
(7). Rail frequencies
(8). Postal Comm's
(9). NG and FEMA response FREQ's

HUMINT is measures above SIGINT.

Get to know people, even if you have to follow them from work to their favorite watering hole.
 
RCSAR

RCSAR

Veteran Member
L.A.B. said:
Hmmm. Grid down Week One.

(2). Municipals as they relate to what water is at hand. (2.1) disease laden, chemical laden due to fail safes failing.
(3). Emergency food and water distribution nodes (if and when available)
(5). Curfews Checkpoints locations manning and duration.
(6). Business channels of radio spectrum as this might relate to off loading trucked shipments at logistical hubs
(7). Rail frequencies
(8). Postal Comm's
(9). NG and FEMA response FREQ's

HUMINT is measures above SIGINT words to live by!
.
Get to know people, even if you have to follow them from work to their favorite watering hole.
Click to expand...

Thank you L.A.B.! This project was tossed in my lapwith no notice.

EVERYONE should review all S.O.P.s at least once a year as tech and conditions change rapidly.
I have also noticed many radio freqs have changed over the years.

Here is another plus, the Baofang radios can receive on freqs they transmit very poorly on. For all intents and purposes they are disposable due to the cost. The SWRs are so high on extreme out of band freqs they will just burn up the finals. But the object is to listen anyway.
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The Mountain

The Mountain

Here since the beginning
_______________
FMRS/FRS radio. Gonna be LOTS of ordinary people yakking into those, as well as site coordinators for everything going on on the civilian side of the response effort.

If you're near a navigable river or any kind of water port, you'll want Marine radio. Ports are great places for bringing large volumes of *anything* into an area. Ditto for aircraft radios and ATC.

The ability to "wardrive" for WiFi. A directional (Yagi) antenna and a high-power wireless adapter mean you can at least spot WiFi hotspots out to a distance of a half-mile or more, even if you can't see the content of the traffic. In a disaster coordination scenario, with numerous agencies involved, they're going to name the SSIDs of their WiFi to keep everyone on their own networks, so you can easily build a catalog of who's online in the area just from SSID names. Bonus points for being able to monitor the traffic with Wireshark, so you can tell how much traffic is going across their net, and the general type of traffic (streaming video, web, email etc).
 
M

mecoastie

Veteran Member
Attend any meetings that are called by the town, neighbors etc. Be a fly on the wall and just listen. Dont say much of anything and dont commit to anything. Talk to people both before and after the meetings. Get a feel for the general feeling in the community.
 
Mongo

Mongo

Veteran Member
"Grid down" and almost everything mentioned requires power...

Humans are more important than hardware. Set up your info/intel network now. Become a people person - whether you like it or not. Get to know all kinds of people. Work at and get them to want to share info with you. These things do not happen over night and are very tough to put in place after an emergency.

Get out
Meet people
Get to know them
 
Hacker

Hacker

Computer Hacking Pirate
I have a short-wave received with a slew of backup batteries. It has a BFO - which means I can get SSB and morse code transmissions (yes, I'm adept at copying morse code).
 
W

Watchman2

Veteran Member
The 2M repeaters around here will be under gov control. I have listened to them do their semi annual comms training on them, to include NG, ANG, Red Cross, Local State Police, Sherrifs office, Red Cross, Power Company, Telephone Company, and I feel like I am missing something.

So, listening to the local repeaters is a key to know what is going on locally.

W2
 
E

ejagno

Veteran Member
Cell towers are the first to go down in our experiences so please do not rely on them for anything but texting, if and when that is even possible.
 
W

Watchman2

Veteran Member
BTW- the PA State Police Radio system s based off of cell towers.

I have no idea what other states do the same.

Something to think about.

W2
 
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