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so when shit hits the fan ....

... the infrastructure that mobile phones and the internet depend on, will be non-operational.

It's 'wonderful' having a laptop or mobile phone when those things have nothing to connect to.

Spend a bit of time in places where your phone says 'no coverage' and you'll understand just what a great paper-weight it can be. <grin>

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Nah, usually it works, just the calls don't get through.

Even after the Boston bombing, the people there couldnt get/take calls, because the network was flooded with other people calling.

Mobile networks survive most of the "shits hitting the fans", but usually the sheer amount of calls to/from that area makes them useless for emergency communication (unless you get a dedicated channel... or have "QoS" set up very very well)

So it becomes merely a PDA taped to an iPod. That's still pretty good.

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