When the Grid Goes Down, Your Radio Becomes Your Lifeline — and Your Biggest Liability

Every transmission you make over a radio is heard by anyone within range on that frequency. In a stable world, that’s a minor inconvenience. In a collapse scenario — grid failure, civil unrest, societal breakdown — an intercepted transmission that reveals your location, team size, or movement plan can cost lives. Collapse Ready: COMMS is the field manual that fixes that problem.

Book 5 of the Collapse Ready Household Series, this manual delivers a fully operational CEOI (Communications-Electronics Operating Instructions) system — the same foundational concept used by military units to secure radio traffic in the field. Written by a combat veteran and former private military contractor with real-world experience operating in denied and hostile communication environments, this is not theory. It is doctrine adapted for the prepared household, the survival group, and the off-grid network.

What’s Inside Collapse Ready: COMMS

Chapter 1 — Introduction to CEOI and Communications Security

Understand what a CEOI is, why communications security is non-negotiable in a collapse environment, and how this system is structured. Learn the four-tier cipher hierarchy — from primary operations to last-resort — and the mandatory handling rules that keep the entire system secure.

Chapter 2 — The LNTC-7 Cipher System (Option A — Primary)

Your everyday encryption backbone. The LNTC-7 is a substitution-and-transposition hybrid cipher engineered for voice and short-burst radio transmission. Cipher pairs are phonetically distinct to prevent confusion on degraded radio. A 365-day daily modifier system shifts the cipher every 24 hours, making cross-day traffic analysis impossible for any interceptor. Full encryption and decryption procedures with worked examples.

Chapter 3 — Variant B: Emergency Compromise Cipher

When Option A is burned — operator captured, materials lost, or call signs imitated — Variant B activates immediately. Reverse-alphabet seeded with consonant-heavy cipher pairs that share nothing with Option A, Variant B is your clean fallback. Learn the activation phrase, the sealed envelope protocol, and the step-by-step procedures for switching your entire net in under five minutes.

Chapter 4 — Option C: Last-Ditch Field Cipher (LDFC-3)

When everything else is burning, you need a cipher you can run from memory under extreme stress. Option C uses syllables, not letter pairs — harsh, clipped, non-alphabetic syllables that are completely alien to anyone who hasn’t trained on them. Minimalist by design. Short-lived by necessity. This is the cipher for the worst moment of the worst day.

Chapter 5 — Option D: One-Time Field Pad (OTFP-1)

A properly used one-time pad is mathematically unbreakable — not a marketing claim, but a proven theorem of information theory (Shannon, 1949). This chapter explains the three non-negotiable conditions for OTP security, the structure of a one-time pad page, and the pad destruction and distribution protocols that prevent the most common points of failure. Appendix D includes printed one-time pad pages ready for field use.

Chapter 6 — The Daily Cipher Key System

All four cipher options are powered by a single 365-day daily key table (Appendix A). This chapter breaks down the three-digit key structure, how each digit drives different cipher options simultaneously, and the key distribution and security protocols that ensure your daily keys don’t become the weakest link in the chain.

Chapter 7 — Authentication Procedures

Knowing a cipher isn’t enough — you need to know who you’re talking to. Monthly authentication grids, challenge-response protocols, and duress authentication procedures ensure every station on your net can verify friendly identity and detect enemy imitation. Twelve monthly grids in Appendix B, ready to use.

Chapter 8 — Radio Operating Procedures and EMCON Discipline

EMCON (Emissions Control) is the discipline of not transmitting when you shouldn’t. This chapter covers EMCON levels, brevity and transmission discipline, antenna positioning for signature reduction, and the operator mindset that keeps your network invisible to passive collection. Your best cipher is not transmitting at all — learn when each applies.

Chapter 9 — SALUTE Report Procedures

The military-standard SALUTE format (Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, Equipment) structures contact and observation reports for maximum information density in minimum transmission time. Full encryption procedures for SALUTE traffic over an LNTC-7 net, with worked examples.

Chapter 10 — SPOTREP and Contact Reporting

Standardized SPOTREP and contact report formats, escalation procedures for developing contact, and authentication requirements for urgent traffic. When things go loud, your reporting needs to be fast, accurate, and unreadable to anyone on the wrong side of the frequency.

Complete Appendix Package

Appendix A — Full 365-Day Daily Cipher Key Table (all four options)
Appendix B — Twelve Monthly Authentication Grids (Grid A through Grid L)
Appendix C — Reference cipher cards for Options A, B, and C (laminate and carry)
Appendix D — Printed one-time pad pages for Option D (OTFP-1)
Appendix E — Operator Message Log (printable field format)
Appendix F — Document Destruction Log and destruction procedures

Who This Manual Is For

Survival groups and preparedness teams who communicate over radio and need secure, trainable cipher discipline
Ham radio operators and preppers building grid-down communication plans
Household preparedness coordinators establishing a family or neighborhood communications network
SHTF planners who understand that radio OPSEC is just as critical as physical security
Military veterans who want to bring field-proven comms doctrine into their civilian preparedness planning

About the Collapse Ready Household Series

The Collapse Ready Household Series is a comprehensive preparedness library built on the principle that real readiness comes from doctrine, not gear lists. Written by a combat infantryman, paramedic, and private military contractor with operational experience in conflict zones across Iraq and Africa, every book in the series delivers the same standard: the system works, the training is real, and the information is earned.

When Systems Fail — We Don’t.

Collapse Ready: COMMS is Book 5 of the Collapse Ready Household Series. Available in print for field use. Sized for your kit, built for the long game.

ham radio prepper

Collapse Ready: COMMS