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Comment by izendejas | Hacker News Reader

I lived in LA for 7 years and experienced a few 3.0+s on older four-floor or so apartment complexes. Now I'm living ~7 miles away from a fault in the bay area.

Always have water and supplies.

And I hope ad-hoc/mesh wireless networking technology takes off sooner rather than later. http://www.wired.com/2014/03/apple-multipeer-connectivity/

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>"And I hope ad-hoc/mesh wireless networking technology takes off sooner rather than later."

Definitely.

I became fascinated with the idea of mesh networking for disaster response after seeing the 2011 east coast earthquake [0] disrupt communication for many people.

I kicked the idea around to a few folks and became pretty discouraged at the consistent "I don't get it" responses.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Virginia_earthquake

> And I hope ad-hoc/mesh wireless networking technology takes off sooner rather than later

Are you familiar with the Serval Project [0]? These guys are working on exactly this solution, for exactly this (and other similar problems).

[0] http://www.servalproject.org/

I was not. Thanks!

Drones, a la Facebook, might also be a solution under severely damaged infrastructure, it occurs to me now.

There have been 9 aftershocks as of now (around 1 hour 45 minutes after the first quake):

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

Each more than a 5.

I never considered this technology could be used during a disaster. That is a brilliant use case that could save lives. No phone, no power, trapped under rubble this could be your lifeline.

Well, it hadn't really occurred to me that it could be used for localization exactly, just for building an adhoc communication channel. :)

The one problem is that batteries still haven't caught up. We need easily deployable, emergency wireless charging stations. :) And solar-based ones for those who aren't stuck under rubble.

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