Disaster films almost always start the same way. A crowded supermarket, ping after ping as shoppers’ phones go off, screams.
An asteroid, a tsunami, an earthquake, World War III. Something – or someone – is about to upend the world.
But whatever the impending disaster is, experts told Metro that it won’t be mobile phones that people will rely on to survive.
It’ll be something a little more old-school.
‘Crises can take many forms,’ Dr Colin Alexander, a senior lecturer in political communications at Nottingham Trent University, told Metro.
‘However, radio remains the go-to medium of communication in these moments.’
When the world is silenced, radio speaks
Radio isn’t just for listening to easy-listening jazz and Top 20 pop tracks.
In 2005, Pakistan was shaken by one of the most devastating earthquakes in the country’s history, a 7.8-magnitude tremor that killed 87,000 people.
The quake ripped through cities and far-flung villages in the North-West Frontier Province, injuring 38,000 people and flattening thousands of homes, shops, schools and hospitals.
More than 3,500,000 people were also left without any access to information, researchers said.
How does radio work?
Whizzing around you as you read these are radio waves, among the longest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum.
You can’t surf on these waves, Chris Scott, a professor of space and atmospheric physics at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology, tells Metro.
‘Radio waves are a form of light. They are generated when electric charge-carrying particles called electrons are accelerated,’ he says.
‘By causing electrons in an electric circuit to oscillate, radio waves can be generated and, by coding information into either the amplitude ( amplitude modulation, or AM) or frequency (frequency modulation, or FM) of these waves, they can be used to transmit this information.’
You can turn sound into ones and zeroes, blast them as waves for a radio receiver to convert into sound played from a speaker, Scott adds.
Shortwave radio – waves less than 100m in length – is used by aircraft staff and rescue teams as it is ‘simple, low-cost’ tech for reaching people over large distances.
It is what it is today thanks to English physicist Edward Appleton. His experiments proved the existence of the ionosphere – a region in the upper atmosphere – by, in part, bouncing shortwave radio signals off it.
‘One hundred years on from Appleton’s pioneering experiments,’ Scott adds, ‘radio communication remains as important as ever.’
People twisting their FM dials proved invaluable as stations were set up to tell victims about rehabilitation and reconstruction plans.
During the coronavirus pandemic, not only was radio used by officials to broadcast crucial policy updates and facts into homes, but the sounds of people’s voices broke the solitude that countless faced.
‘We’ve had so many messages from listeners who say that just hearing a familiar voice and a welcome distraction from the horror ride of 24-hour rolling news helped get them through the pandemic,’ Andy Bush, a presenter at Absolute Radio, tells Metro.
‘Listening to radio, these people have a tomorrow’
Human-made catastrophes also see radio play a central role.
With Kyiv’s TV tower flattened and signals jammed by Moscow forces in the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainians in occupied territories were left in an information blackout.
As one Ukrainian journalist recalled to the BBC, Ukrainians huddled around crank radios to learn of escape routes through coded messages.
‘Listening to the radio, they feel that this country and these people have a tomorrow,’ said Liudmyla Tiahnyriadno, a host on Ukrainian Radio.
‘We know what’s going on, but we don’t see anything’
People living in the Gaza Strip amid the Israel-Hamas war know the radio all too well. The coastal enclave, where health officials say Israel has killed at least 50,5000, has endured repeated ‘near-total’ information blackouts as Israeli offensives target telecommunication services.
Without the internet or phone signal, Palestinians had little choice but to use the radio to know when the next bombs would fall.
‘As we don’t have electricity, we are unable to watch the news and see what’s going on around us, but at least we listen to Al-Jazeera through the radio,’ Osama Humaed told The New Arab in 2023.
‘We know what’s going on, but we don’t see anything.’
And people listen for the truth, too. Radio Fresh, broadcasting from Syria’s northern Idlib province, was handed a top media award in 2019 for its part in exposing the corruption of the Assad regime, which tightly controlled the press.
Why radio is still the ultimate survival tool in emergencies
Some 44,000 radio stations are broadcasting to billions of people in the world as you read this, a spokesperson for the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) tells Metro.
Given that the agency dates back to 1865, it knows what it’s talking about when it says that radio is ‘unparalleled’, even in the age of yapping artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots.
‘Unlike internet-based media, radio does not require any expensive digital devices, subscription requirements or high-speed Internet connection to function,’ the spokesperson explains.
After all, the World Wide Web is made of tiny code that travels through razor-thin wires that line the ocean floor; people can easily be left without internet or mobile service during crises when the infrastructure is dented.
Emergency radios, also known as disaster radios or crank radios, are designed with this in mind. Many don’t need to be plugged in, instead relying on being hand-cranked or soaking up solar power, so downed power lines won’t be a problem.
‘In times of crises, radios are not just economical but essential to ensure disaster preparedness and response,’ the ITU says, especially in rural communities.
The spokesperson says that DAB+, an improved form of digital radio, is ‘indispensable’ as radio broadcasters work with the government and NGOs.
‘Additionally, international collaborative efforts, exemplified by the International Radio for Disaster Relief (IRDR) initiative, allocate specific shortwave frequencies for emergency use, ensuring the capacity for long-range communication when local infrastructure is unavailable,’ they add.
‘In parallel, amateur radio services can also be essential for sustaining communications and responding to emergencies.’
When radio is used for anything but good
Doug Goodison is behind the amateur radio club, G4HMS. The shack has been vibrating with radio waves from the HMS Belfast moored along the River Thames since 1973.
‘News is only as good as the information supplied through the announcer,’Goodison, a former operations manager with TfL, tells Metro.
‘In most cases, the important, embarrassing items are left out by the news and the truth on many occasions is used sparingly or not at all.’
‘Media news is only as good as the source.’
Indeed, Dr Alexander says that during war, radio can become ‘weaponised to meet the ambitions of the powerful’.
As much as radios were used to boost morale during World War Two, the Nazi Party used the new-ish technology as a propaganda tool. Manufacturing an inexpensive yet stylish radio, party programming lured young men into the army, while heavily censored music and opera shows tricked civilians into hearing Adolf Hitler’s speeches.
Or take Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American whose voice was known to millions of American troops during World War Two after she became stranded in Japan following Pearl Harbour. Forced to renounce her US citizenship, she was asked to host a Japanese radio propaganda programme, Zero Hour.
A soldier’s greatest weapon – a ‘walkie-talkie’
As much as powerful nations enjoy wheeling out supersonic jets and nuclear weapons, the humble radio is integral to the military today, explains Neil Fraser, who served 26 years in the British Army, leading the Ministry of Defence’s global satellite and radio communication programmes.
A soldier’s most important weapon may wind up being a walkie-talkie-style radio or backpack satellite terminals, Fraser says. Mobile and Wi-Fi networks can become ‘overwhelmed’ in wartime, meaning military officials mix-and-match radio.
‘The military is used to working where there is limited communications infrastructure, and the best solution is to have different systems to deliver options, meaning they can switch between “combat radio”, mobile phone networks (where they have a signal) and satellite connections,’ the director of defence and space programmes at the satellite communication provider NSSLGlobal tells Metro.
‘When one connection fails, another kicks in.’
‘The war in Ukraine, with its heavy use of drones, sensors and dispersed, relatively small teams of soldiers, has reinforced the lesson that having easily accessible diverse connectivity and the ability to use satellites is vital,’ he adds.
For years, over 340 broadcasts, D’Aquino’s sinister, seductive and demoralising voice told soldiers that the war was lost. D’Aquino, known to her listeners as ‘Tokyo Rose’, was convicted of treason in 1949.
Radio is so often used to spit out disinformation because, as the ITU and Dr Alexander stress, it is considered more trustworthy than other media.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an alliance of broadcasters, found this was the case in 24 of the 37 countries surveyed.
‘Television and other visual media are more associated with entertainment,’ continues Dr Alexander.
‘In short, you have to listen attentively to the radio, but with television, you mainly watch the images and let the narrative wash over you without as much attention.’
‘Whether radio saves lives or encourages more death is open to debate. There is nothing about radio that is inherently peaceful,’ he says.
But for people like Bush, whose voice has been on the radio waves for some 20 years, radio is something more simple than that.
‘Doing a radio show is a privilege as people welcome you into their lives in a way that Netflix or TikTok cannot touch,’ he says.
‘It’s a personal conversation and pep talk that gets more and more crucial as daily life gets increasingly stressful.’
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