How Communications Fail

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And Why Prepared Groups Plan for Silence This article references parts of the story in my fiction books, The Meadow Protocol (book 1) and The Brush (part 2), part of The Continuity Chronicles series. Available in my store for signed paperback and hard copies or from Amazon to include Kindle and Audible. In disasters and systemic failures, communications rarely disappear all at once. They degrade—quietly at first, then catastrophically. The groups that fail are not the ones without radios; they are the ones who didn’t plan for how failure unfolds. Preparedness communications is not about talking. It is about maintaining intent, coordination, and timing as systems fail in layers. This article explains how communications failures cascade, why silence is more dangerous than noise, and how disciplined groups avoid being caught flat-footed when their primary systems stop working. Communications Fail in Layers, Not Switches Most people imagine communications failure as a binary event: working or down. Reality is messier. Failure usually follows a predictable progression: Latency increasesMessages are delayed. GPS updates lag. Information arrives just late enough to be wrong. Reliability dropsCalls connect intermittently. Push-to-talk systems queue or fail silently. Check-ins are missed. Habits breakPeople keep trying systems that no longer...