The Pros and Cons of Cell Phones for Preppers

cell phones

I am old enough to have lived before cell phones. When I was child we lived in a home with a wall-mounted phone with a hand crank and a party line.  Now I am sure very few of you even know what a party line was.  It was where several families shared a phone line.  The phone would give a distinctive ring for each family and you would answer your phone.  The problem was that anyone else on the party line could pick up and listen in.  Kind of like now, except it is the government listening in.

Today we are in a different world and it is changing fast and I am not entirely sure it is for the better.  Granted in the past it was a bit harder to get hold of someone, no instant communication or texting.  Today everyone including me has one of these little leashes in our pockets.  Many of us spend our life tied to electronic devices.

The question is, are they good or bad for preppers.  Just this morning I asked my wife for the number of someone she call regularly and her answer was check my cell phone.  No one today remembers phone numbers or writes them down.  In the past, either you remembered the numbers you called on a regular basis or you wrote them down and carried a little black book.

The advantages of cell phones for a prepper are

  • Instant communication from almost anywhere.
  • Convenience, you almost always have one with you, no looking for pay phones.
  • Ability to send pictures and texting.
  • Emergency, can call for help.
  • Access to the internet and e-mail
  • Access to GPS and maps
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The disadvantages of a cell phone

  • The government can listen in to your conversations, of course this applies to almost any phone today.
  • Your cell phone can be used to track your location.
  • Your cell phone can be used by the government or hackers to listen to your conversations even when turned off.  If you want to have a conversation and be sure no one is listen in, leave the phone at home or at least take the battery out.
  • You develop a dependence on the phone to remember your phone numbers, memorize the important phone numbers in your life, you may not always have a cell phone available.
  • You begin to develop a dependence on instant communication and get use to the idea of someone having a leash on you.
  • The cell phone industry will continue to develop new ideas to make people become dependent on them.  In the young people today it has become almost an addiction.
  • The government can shut of your phone system anytime it wants.
  • Possible health affects, for example possible brain tumors.
  • A large time waster for many people, playing games and social media.

Now I am not saying that you should get rid of your cell phones, but don’t let your children or even yourself become dependent on them to where it becomes hard to function without them.

Howard

 

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2 thoughts on “The Pros and Cons of Cell Phones for Preppers”

  1. I agree many of us are drinking the kool aid and falling into the electronic trap that the left has set for us.

  2. Anyone who isn’t worried about government snooping should read this article, which is an eye opener:

    https://reason.com/archives/2013/08/07/your-phone-is-a-pocket-rat

    ….Since the early 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that people have no constitutional right to privacy with respect to information they voluntarily share with others.

    ….The 5th Circuit, ….said people should know by now that connecting their wireless phone calls entails transmitting their locations to their service providers. Since no one is forced to use a cellphone, it reasoned, anyone who chooses to do so is voluntarily disclosing his whereabouts to a third party, thereby losing any reasonable expectation of privacy in that information.

    ….”Cell site data are business records and should be analyzed under that line of Supreme Court precedent,” the appeals court said, meaning they receive only as much protection as legislatures give them. While the case involved requests for two months of specific customers’ location data, the court’s logic would also apply to less discriminating investigations.

    …. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is constrained by secrecy rules from explicitly discussing classified surveillance programs, repeatedly hinted that we have not yet learned the full extent of the NSA’s domestic snooping…..Wyden also mentioned the perils of cellphone tracking no fewer than five times, which would be puzzling unless it had something to do with the subject of his speech, NSA surveillance.

    “Government officials are openly telling the press that they have the authority to effectively turn Americans’ smart phones and cell phones into location-enabled homing beacons,” Wyden said, adding that “the case law is unsettled.” That warning takes on added gravity in light of the 5th Circuit’s decision, the first by a federal appeals court to squarely address the issue.

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