Writer seeks tips on two-way rIn adios

General Discussion
1

Hello!

I’m a novelist working on a story that involves two characters communicating over two-way radio in a post-apocalyptic world. Without boring everyone with specifics, here are the highlights:

  • Our unnamed hero is holed up somewhere to be determined. He has a non-portable radio, however, and periodically scans for inbound communications. The story begins when someone finally reaches him.

  • Kaitlyn is “out in the world” and in danger. She somehow finds a radio and tries random frequencies until our hero answers. The two stay in touch as she journeys towards him.

  • At one point in the story Kaitlyn’s radio is destroyed. She eventually finds a replacement and contacts the hero again.

In the short term, I’m presuming our hero is in a police station and Kaitlyn found a police walkie talkie. When it’s destroyed, she finds a new one. For various reasons, however, I don’t really want to put the hero in a police station.

Are there other types of buildings that would have “general purpose” CB radios in them, and that anyone finding any walkie-talkie could contact if they stumbled upon the right frequency? Possible pairings:

  • A police HQ (fixed location) and police cars (mobile)
  • A construction site HQ (fixed) and construction vehicles (mobile)
  • A hospital (fixed) and EMTs (mobile)
  • Repair shops (fixed) and tow trucks (mobile)

Any others come to mind?

Also, how to frequencies work? Do both parties just agree to a random frequency to use? Are they assigned one by an authority? Are there common ones? If, for example, our hero is trapped in an auto garage and tries the radio, could anyone contact him if they happened to use his frequency?

Thanks for any tips you can provide. This is a new world for me. :slight_smile:

2

This is a bit like asking, “How does a car work? Are there differences from one car to another?” It is a HUGE topic to try to cover.

Businesses and agencies have radios set to assigned frequencies. So your scenario won’t work. Plus, all those people use either VHF or UHF radios for the clarity of the communication, but that is strictly line-of-sight. Even with very tall radio towers, reception is only a few miles at best, depending on buildings, terrain, etc. Most commercial users such as police, EMS, tow companies, construction companies etc. will use what they call “repeaters” which essentially take a signal near the fringe of an area and repeat the transmission. This expands the area where line-of-sight two way radios will work, sometimes across an entire city with enough repeaters on tall buildings. In fact, many agencies have gone to what is called “trunk” radios, meaning there are shared repeaters across an entire province or state. Agencies share frequencies, and their equipment automatically scans for a free frequency and transparently to the user, transmits on whatever is free at the moment. This is how thousands of users can easily use only a hundred or so frequencies.

This also doesn’t work for your scenario though. For trunk radios systems or repeater radios to work, they must be powered. They need to be on 24 hours a day and as soon as the apocalypse comes, power will be gone. Few have battery backup, and even if they did, they would only last a few hours.

CB radios might work. In their frequency range, the communication is not as clear but the range can be farther. In fact, in certain conditions, the signal can ‘skip’ off the atmosphere and transmit for hundreds of miles. So do some research on CB.

Maybe also read up on amateur (HAM) radios too. They can transmit great distances on certain bands.

So your hero will need something other than a fixed frequency radio in a business or police station. He will need a scanner of some kind, meaning a two-way radio that can also scan across certain frequency bands. He will also need a way to power it. Your heroine will need a way to charge the battery in her portable radio. It will only last a few hours. (Maybe she finds a USB charge cable and charges it from random abandoned cars on her journey?)

So forget business, police, EMS radios, as well as consumer radios such as FRS, GMRS and MURS. Focus on CB and maybe HAM.

Read up on how, in local or national disaster areas, HAM radios have been the only ones able to communicate with the outside world.

3

I suspect that for the story, you may have to live in fairy land. Bruce Willis in Die Hard was the great example. Huge numbers of radio related impossibilities. Story wise, they worked, but in general, the emergency services cannot talk to CB users, CB users cannot talk to hams, and in a post apocalyptic world, the only truly workable system is perhaps short wave - which probably means ex-military radios for anything portable.

Back in the 80s, I was a communications advisor for UK Civil defence, and once avery few months, all the emergency services and agencies met and played out some preset scenarios for emergencies, and we all were looking for problems. I remember one ex-army type who had a thing about ‘commandeering’ things. He would commandeer a helicopter from the North Sea Gas/Oil offshore people and then have them working with the coast guard and military - and I had to explain a person with a coastguard radio could NOT talk to the helicopter, who could NOT talk to the Police, who (at that time) could NOT talk to the fire or ambulance people - and then explain that a military aircraft other than S&R didn;t have the ability to talk to the Coastguard.

For your story - I suspect that unless you want to get bogged down in dull technicalities you will have problems with realism. Radio just doesn’t work like this.

I loved the way Bruce Willis also interrupted the baddies talking to the goodies, just like he was on the phone - another thing that you cannot do with radio as you cannot hear until you let go the button!

4

Yes, screenplays and novels are two vastly different things.

If this was a screenplay and not a novel, I would simply advise a writer to just write “radio” in the script and then let us worry about the rest. By the time it makes it to us in production, it’s going to be changed anyway. The first thing is to tell a good story. After that, they’re just props. They shouldn’t become the story unless they are an integral part of the plot.

25 years in the film business have taught me two things. #1 - don’t sweat the details unless they are paying me to sweat the details. If that’s what the director wants, that’s what the director gets. We are there to tell a story and entertain the audience, not deliver a documentary. I didn’t worry about the radios in Die Hard because I was being entertained.

#2 - If you forget to tell a good story, even Samuel L. Jackson can’t save your movie.

As for post-apocalyptic scenarios, you have to remember I am from Canada. Our scenarios run different than yours do in the UK. You worry about civil defense and communicating with authorities. Canadians just go … eh, we’ll be the first ones eaten in a zombie invasion anyway, so why worry about it.

We are far too polite. When the zombies attack, we will politely hold the door open for them. We will say, “Sorry!” if we bump into a zombie in the street. We will pick up their severed limbs laying on the ground and chase after them, yelling, “Hey! You dropped something!”

Yeah. We’ll all be eaten.

5

I think you’re right - the reality can’t work, so it shall be discard. Quietly. :slight_smile:

Thanks Chickenhawk and paulears!