Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
So why should PCs have more information about the world beyond their immediate line of sight than anyone else? Communications have effectively broken down as evidenced by the slow spread of the Omega orders in Going Home.
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According to the 1996 CIA World FactBook (
mirror) the US had nearly 5,000 FM and AM radio stations and over 500 million receivers. According to a copy of an
old Usenet post the US also had over 600,000 licensed hams (about 3 per 1k population). There were also thousands of RadioShack stores in the US in the 90s. Every long haul truck was also likely to have a CB radio. This is a long way of saying the US is/was lousy with radios. Even if you want to assume the TDM EMPs destroyed some ridiculously large percentage of electronics there's still many tens of millions of functional radios and salvageable bits of gear. It does not take huge infrastructure to conduct long range communications via radio.
Every ham and electronics geek would have broken out (or fixed) their radios as soon as the dust settled after TDM. They would be crucial for local governments to communicate with neighbors and state governments with telephone systems down. Governments of any size would want to get broadcast radio stations back online. There would be millions of radios in people's hands, many battery powered, for those governments to broadcast emergency information and civil defense type pieces.
This is all in addition to more primitive muscle powered couriers. Mail service would be another vital government function, even if it was just passing coordination messages between local governments or groups in power. Who delivers the mail would likely be who you paid your apocalypse taxes to, either MilGov or CivGov. Part of governing a region is maintaining lines of communication in that region.
Between millions of radios and bike/horse/foot couriers and/or mail carriers, only the most remote or inaccessible parts of the country wouldn't know about MilGov and CivGov. Both would put effort into propaga...advertising campaigns to make the case for their legitimacy and loyalty to them.