Following a disaster it must be assumed that the infrastructure we take for granted will cease to be available, due to physical damage, lack of power, or simple overuse. Without infrastructure we cannot use Cellphones nor can we recharge cellphone batteries. The previous sentence is not 100% true, emergency power can be sourced with a tiny investment in hardware, and alternative means of communication, ad hoc networks, can be established using smartphones and freely available “store and forward” data applications. Currently available commercial off the shelf hardware enables these ad hoc networks to link with distant conventional networks and communicate with the wider world. In the near future hardware, currently in prototype, will permit the joining of these ad hoc networks into a wider area mesh.
