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I wrote and rewrote this story so many times, I had mentioned ham radios etc in other versions, but the story grew too long, and my primary objective was brevity. Before, I had the narrator mention that if anybody was running ham or HF radios on their own power, he had no way of knowing it. It didn’t really add much to the story, so I dropped it. But yes, hams could still be operating, if they wound up in a safe location, with food, and could make their own power. But to non-hams, they might as well not exist, unless some rumors were passed along. In time, hams might develop their own news programming based on the reports they heard and shared.

Good story, I guess I role played it in my mind if I was in it. BTW, I'd like to add CB radio in there too, it is low powered but there are times you can shoot skip for hundred or thousands of miles in the daytime if the sunspots are cooperating. When I was on CB, there were times I talked to places like Maine, Compton, California and even Mexico. Just the other day on my shortwave, I heard "outbanders" (illegally modified CB's or other radios operating outside the CB band) just below the standard CB band talking in Spanish from Central America.

Even as far back as the 1960's and 1970's, hams have made minature transceivers for voice and CW (Morse code) about the size of a transistor radio where you can make worldwide contacts using 1 watt or less running them off of flashlight or even penlight batteries. There was interest in even using solar power to charge up the batteries and run a CB/Ham station, then again it was the Carter 1970's, interesting parallel I see.

The interesting thing in your story is if there are fewer station on the air, the AM band will be less crowded and at night, it should be easier to receive weaker stations (like the 100, 500, 5000 watters) as well as across the Atlantic (or Pacific if you live there). KDKA first put 100 watts out in 1920 on 909 kc (in our present AM band) and they were received in Canada, Finland and even New Zealand. I've picked up stations as far away as Cuba, Berkeley, California and Anguilla in the West Indies here in Pittsburgh. Heck, if the UK is still intact, you might be able to receive BBC Radio 4 on 198 kc longwave (or Allouis in France on 162 kc) if things are right.

Somebody, somewhere will still be broadcasting but the trick is if the info is correct or based on rumor but still if it is there, at least you can try to put the pieces together as to the real story as well as knowing there is a voice out there.

Lastly about hearing things in radio static (or "snow" on an old analogue TV receiver), if you go above 30 Mc, most of it is generated radio noise in the receiver and any signal received must overcome it, it is a matter of physics, but other parts of the sound comes from space like the Sun, Jupiter, the Milky Way and even echos of the Big Bang at The Creation. It is an interesting thing to ponder but I think most people, even hams, most likely would not be involved into amateur, ad-hoc radio astronomy, except to contact the ISS if there is anyone there or if any ham radio satellites still exist and are working. There is even an amateur radio satellite that has been working since 1974.

It's just me, it is like when the power goes out, the first thing, after reaching for a light source, is to get my police scanner, usually I find out what's going on if it is storm, someone whacks a pole, etc.

My intention with this story is that it is an enclosed set piece, over, done. It’s sort of like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” for me, but shorter. Just an image of a world, with more back story explanation of how the calamity might have happened.

All of my novels have as a background some type of infrastructure decay or collapse. My Dan Kilmer novels will delve much more into outlaw radio, since their setting is a 60’ steel schooner with two equal masts, which any sailor knows is a perfect dipole setup, with 60’ of steel as the ground plate to the earth. A dipole antenna 90* to its target like that is a hot setup for long range comms, or so I am told.