Years ago I had a multi band radio that had Ch 1-23, I believe, as part of it to go along with the AM, FM, etc.
My dad and my sister had H.E.L.P., a G.E. CB radio with an antenna you could put on your car’s roof, etc.
In Stephen King’s The Stand, the members of the Boulder Free Zone and others used CB to communicate. It was written in the late 70s.
Initially I had a 23 channel but by ‘78 I got a 40 channel with sideband that a friend had tweeked and added a power mike. I was traveling about 60,000 miles a year in construction and was always on the road. The single sideband let me contact bases at home from a 40 mile radius with dependable results.
Across Kansas and Missouri I knew hundreds of handles of guys in the trucking business or traveling for work. I knew about a dozen troopers in various areas that would shout-out to me when they saw me as I had helped in a number of accident situations and road closures.
The best example of why I had a free pass from many troopers is a wreck where two women went off a rural bridge approach into a 75’ ravine. I used the CB to (a) get the guy behind me to cross a median and stop an ambulance on a blood run that had just gone by me, (b) get the troopers, (c) get the Fire Dispatcher to send the local fire crew and (d) got three other vehicles to stop and go into the hidden ravine to get the women out with the ambulance crew.
That radio allowed us to have these two elderly women transported within 10 minutes of their running off the road. They both survived.