Five entries, against an original target of ten, and the shortfall is the story. Half of communications readiness was claimed by other lists, correctly: the weather radio and alert enrollment stand watch on the Weather list, the power bank and cable pouch live with Energy, and the paper maps ride with Transportation. What remains is the part of the category that is purely about a household reaching itself, and it fits in five.
The plan comes first because everything else implements it. The cards carry the plan in every wallet, the radios cover the block when the networks cannot, the broadcast receiver brings the region's news in, and the prepared phone makes the device already in your pocket worth more in the moment it matters. Two of the five are free, and the two-way radios cost less than a tank of gas; this is the least expensive list on the site by a wide margin.
The specialized gear this category attracts, the license-class radios and the satellite units, is real capability with real pages in our Communications section, and it stays there. An essentials list earns trust by what it declines to include. The communications preparedness checklist pairs with this page for the household that wants the plan tracked and rehearsed.
How to read this list
A position badge on an entry means the item also holds a place on The First 100, our sequenced acquisition list; the badge links to its full entry there, with the reasoning and the objections. Cost bands are for a household of four: free, under $25, $25 to $100, over $100. Conditional entries apply only to some households, and skipping the ones that do not apply to yours is the correct outcome.
This page prints clean: the print button keeps the list and drops everything else.
The plan and the paper · 01–02
01
A family contact plan, written down
free
The agreement that turns a scattered household back into one during an emergency: who calls whom, in what order, and where everyone meets. The plan names an out-of-area contact, because long-distance lines often work when local networks jam, and a relative two states away becomes the switchboard. It names two meeting places, one near the house and one outside the neighborhood, so an evacuation has a destination instead of a debate. Texts go through when calls cannot, so the plan's standing rule is simple: text first, keep it short, and wait.
The plan from item 1, shrunk to wallet size and carried by every member of the household, including the ones with dead phones and especially the ones too young to have phones. A card carries the out-of-area contact, the meeting places, and the numbers that matter, readable by a stranger helping a separated child. Print them, sleeve them, and refresh them when anything changes. Memory was the old plan, and memory is the first thing stress takes; the card is memory that cannot panic.
Household-to-household contact with no network, no account, and no monthly bill. When cell service jams or drops, a pair of FRS radios covers the block, the neighborhood, and the space between the house and wherever someone walked to check on things. They need no license, cost less than a tank of gas, and run on the battery ecosystem the Energy list already built. Terrain and buildings cut their range well below the box's claims, which is worth knowing on a calm day; the stronger GMRS option and its license question are covered in our radio review.
Broadcast news when the internet is a memory and the phone is being rationed. The weather radio on the Weather list carries the official alerts; this receiver carries everything else, the local stations reporting which roads are open, where power is back, and what the region knows that the national feed does not. A small battery AM and FM set, sharing battery sizes with the rest of the kit, runs for days on what a phone burns in hours. Broadcast radio is the oldest resilient network there is, and it is still standing after every storm.
The device already in your pocket · 05
05
The phone, prepared
free
Ten minutes of setup that makes the phone you already own a better emergency tool. Set the medical information and emergency contacts that show from the lock screen, so a first responder can learn what matters without a passcode. Learn the phone's emergency call shortcut before a moment that needs it, and adopt one habit: when weather is coming, the phone charges tonight, not tomorrow. The Energy list keeps the phone alive; this entry is about what the phone knows, and both halves are decided before the sky changes.
Work the checklist
From owned to tracked.
This page decides what to get. The checklist tracks what you have.