[jyl]

Aside from exotic stuff like sat-phones, ham radio is the best. Even a handheld can raise a repeater 30 miles away (from Berkeley my handheld can talk through the San Jose repeater). The hams who run repeaters are pretty resourceful and will do everything to keep them running (and you could simply donate a small generator to the repeater you use the most). And the ham community is oriented to emergency communication and helping each other.

The problem is that you have to study and take a test to get your ham license, and when I took it (mid-90s) it wasn't a trivial test. The radios are marketed to geeks hence pretty complicated, no way could my wife or kids use one.