Survivor communities outside the known world

[Divra]

Voice is easier to disrupt than morse. I'm surprised they're not using morse

Morse is a specialised skill set, which would cut down on the number of potential radio operators. Second, does the increased legibility compensate for the risk of transcription errors? Third, did any copies of Morse code actually survive to the time Post-Rash when radio communications came back?

No, I'm not asking rhetorical questions. I actually wonder. Though I still think sending a radio message around the world when the rig in the Cat-tank can barely get a transmission 30 km to Malmö is asking a bit much.

[urbicande]

Morse is a specialised skill set, which would cut down on the number of potential radio operators. Second, does the increased legibility compensate for the risk of transcription errors? Third, did any copies of Morse code actually survive to the time Post-Rash when radio communications came back?

No, I'm not asking rhetorical questions. I actually wonder. Though I still think sending a radio message around the world when the rig in the Cat-tank can barely get a transmission 30 km to Malmö is asking a bit much.

Specialized, but prett easy to learn.  I'd expect that there were military people and ham radio operators who'd know enough, especially given that emergency operations are a normal part of their remit.

That or beasts and trolls put out a lot if interference

[Sunflower]

Specialized, but pretty easy to learn.  I'd expect that there were military people and ham radio operators who'd know enough, especially given that emergency operations are a normal part of their remit.

That or beasts and trolls put out a lot if interference

Morse code was written down by lots of groups, from the military to ham radio enthusiasts to Boy Scouts, so I imagine pre-Rash documentation wouldn't be hard to find.  And once a single copy is found, it's a small body of knowledge to transmit -- i.e. it's not like relearning how to build a computer chip foundry.

[Balthazar]

Voice is easier to disrupt than morse. I'm surprised they're not using morse

Most likely because they haven't had a need for it. Most of their communication has been short range and nobodies probably thought through that the code they found that consisted of dashes and dots could be used anyway more that just having a secret comversation with your friend. As for it being clearer than speech, the "black sound" seems to have a more fantasy quality about it than scientific, and I believe it would probably stop morse as well.

[JoB]

Morse is a specialised skill set, which would cut down on the number of potential radio operators.

That frankly doesn't strike me as a problem. It's not that much more specialized than knowing how to get your radio equipment powered up and tuned to the proper frequency, and we're not speaking about putting those into the hands of everyone, like cell phones.

Second, does the increased legibility compensate for the risk of transcription errors?

The comparison here is being able to receive Morse vs. not being able to pick up voice at all. True, receiving nothing at all prevents transcription errors ...

Third, did any copies of Morse code actually survive to the time Post-Rash when radio communications came back?

Morse code is in a similar position as ASCII: It needs special additions to seamlessly support various languages' special characters, but the core is the Latin alphabet and thus quite international.

Because of that, copies of the base alphabet are a quite popular "decor" on all sorts of survivalist equipment, and appear in virtually all literature on that genre - the assumption "they'll need it, and they mightn't already know it by heart" is pretty much a given. Considering how much such equipment will be sought for right from Year 0, I'm quite sure that copies will have survived even if survivors' minds were completely unable to piece it back together from memories.

[JoB]

Most likely because they haven't had a need for it. Most of their communication has been short range and nobodies probably thought through that the code they found that consisted of dashes and dots could be used anyway more that just having a secret comversation with your friend.

Eeeehhhh, I disagree. I don't think that you can have a group of survivors containing people who know how to do radio without them also being aware that Morse existed to this very day because of its ability to pierce through noise in a way voice (modulations) can't.

As for it being clearer than speech, the "black sound" seems to have a more fantasy quality about it than scientific, and I believe it would probably stop morse as well.

That is, of course, a possibility. As I said, Morse is better than voice to pierce through noise, but that doesn't mean that you can't put up intentional interference in such a way that it "attacks" Morse transmissions specifically. And we already know that the black speech does contain voice artefacts.

[Stefan]

@Divra: First about the argument of Morse being a specialised skillset. While I will not deny that you need some training to become proficient in the use of Morse code, the knowledge to decipher it should be widely present. The reason for this is simple: Morse code was the first usefull way of transmitting message via electric signals, and is therefor often used as an example in books about electricity, also it is part of almost every printed encyclopedia(omitted only in specialized encyclopedias like those for biology and chemistry), it can be found in many adventure novels as part of the plot. As an example I have no less then FOUR books in my shelves that contain translation tables for morse, two of them are novels, one is an encyclopedia and the last is a childrens book about electricity. So I can savely assume that not only people will know that there is something like Morse, but I can also say that people will know how to decipher such a message. Second about the problems of our heroes getting a message to Malmö. These are propably due to the fact that voice transmissions require a considerable bandwidth(at least 3000-4000 Hz). If they used Morse they would only need a bandwidth of no more then 10 Hz which would boost there effective range considerably, how much greatly depends on there carrier frequency. This brings me to the point of global broadcasting. For a given carrier frequency and transmitter power the range is in a inverse relation to bandwidth. That means if you reduce the bandwidth of your signal you increase its range and vice versa. And for the possible power of transmitters, already in the 1930s broadcasts were made with a power reaching several hundred of kilowatts and there is nothing which says you can't build transmitters in the megawatt range. Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life. And I have not even started with the possibilities other radio bands offer.
With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?

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Edit 1: corrected typo in the morse sequence

[Divra]

Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life. [...]
With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?

Sufficient resources. A lot of resources, a pretty decent manufacturing base (even if it's just hand-tools), and a fair bit of technical know-how. But assuming that someone out there has the resources and the knowledge (which is by no means given), why would they want to spend the resources on a huge powerful radio, as opposed to, say, electrical lighting? Fighting off trolls? Making medical equipment? There are a bazillion and nine things that would be higher prioritized than making contact with a settlement on the other side of the world for possibly no reason.

The real reason, of course, is because plot.

[Amity]

With all this in mind the question remains: Why is the rest of the world silent?

To me, radio raises less of a question than other factors.  Radio as we've seen doesn't work anymore, without exceptional magical aid.  Everything we know about life in the rash era supports this, including the fact that the Finnish lake communities can only learn each others' fates from passing travelers.  (It's possible that radio within cleared areas starts to work again, and while that would be of course helpful it doesn't help with communicating between areas.)

For me the big question is ocean travel.  We've seen that islands fare better than connected areas when it comes to survival.  That should mean that, in general, coasts are a likely place to find survivors, and also the easiest to assess and reach from the sea.  So if Iceland has the resources to establish regional trade in a serious way, which we've seen that they do, they certainly have the means to attempt long-duration contact expeditions to likely survival areas -- Greenland, the Azores, the Canaries, the Mediterranean, even the Canadian maritimes are all within roughly the same range as Finland and Sweden, and half the world is within range of a deep water expedition with only 2-3 times the endurance of a trade run between Reykjavík and Keuruu.

I guess my point is, even without radio, they can still just go there and ask.  Knock, knock!  "Hey!  Hellooo!  Anyone home?"

So.  What's stopping them?  Is it cultural taboo?  Or does something bad happen to every mission they attempt?

[Amity]

Therefor it is save to say that it should be possible for every community with sufficient ressource to build a station that could punch through all interferences and let the rest of the world know that they life.

It should be.  But we know that the rash creatures are very active on the radio spectrum.  Some people are assuming that this is just "chatter" but I don't see any reason to think it's that simple.  If nothing else, what biological organism is able to speak over radio frequencies?  Something more mysterious is going on there.

What if radio rash noise is more than just a nuisance?  What if it's a hazard?  What if they are actually radio-aware, and broadcasting draws their attention?  Or possibly even gives them a means to transmit something bad back to you?  Even if it wasn't anything worse or more magically far-fetched than an EM surge, that would mean that transmission above a certain power range was futile, unless you were already in a very large clean area like all of Iceland.

Or unless you had a lot of mages working together.  Maybe in 90 years no one has simply put together a large enough group to attempt that.

[Divra]

We don't really know what happened in the early days when he Rash broke out. It's possible that all those places didn't manage to close their borders in a timely and effective manner, and were wiped out. Furthermore, we know that cold and light are the key aspects to keeping the rash monster population down, with cold being more important (if it was light, why aren't the expedition heading out in the summer when the days are long?) and the Azores, Balearic Isles, and Canary Islands have precious little cold. We know that there are leviathans in the ocean, and while they don't seem to hinder the North Sea trade much, there is also a dedicated Norwegian hunting effort.

Personally, I think it boils down to lack of funding. I mean, remember the effort it took Trond & Co to get enough money to get five idiots desperate, bored and suicidal people and a Cat-Tank? Why would anyone throw money at longer and more costly sea journey?

[BreezeLouise]

No problem Snommelp. Beside Japan and Madagascar detailed cases were made for New Zealand(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg2437#msg2437), the North Americian Pacific Coast(https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg4507#msg4507) and New Foundland (https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=24.msg445#msg445 and following posts).

I'm sorry, I'm in more or less the same position. I swear, one of these days I will go through and read the whole thing. x_x

Has there been any in-depth talk about the islands in the Great Lakes, Puget Sound, and off the coast of New England? I miiight be interested in attempting a map of the US (outside of Alaska, since that's been covered), as long as that hasn't been done yet.

Morse code was written down by lots of groups, from the military to ham radio enthusiasts to Boy Scouts, so I imagine pre-Rash documentation wouldn't be hard to find.  And once a single copy is found, it's a small body of knowledge to transmit -- i.e. it's not like relearning how to build a computer chip foundry.

I don't think that you can have a group of survivors containing people who know how to do radio without them also being aware that Morse existed to this very day because of its ability to pierce through noise in a way voice (modulations) can't.

I agree! I could definitely see Morse code coming back in a big way, especially in military settlements that need to stay in contact with each other at relatively long ranges. The training wouldn't be that hard, and I'm sure even an untrained person could figure it out if they had access to a cheat sheet. It's pretty much perfect for this kind of situation. What would be interesting, too, is that it's not necessarily limited to radio--widespread use of Morse would open up worlds of communication options. Smoke signals, strong lights, so on and so forth. A small island community with a lighthouse would be able to transmit messages to the entire area instantly.

[BarbaryLion22]

So.  What's stopping them?  Is it cultural taboo?  Or does something bad happen to every mission they attempt?

Whale, dolphin, or other sea mammal beasts? Currently some form of sea mammal is found in every ocean, and almost every sea in the world. Is sending a ship to check in worth the risk? What if the ship becomes infected with the rash illness, and they find the other communities, if they exist, and they infect the community? I bet these are some of the doubts hindering the Nordic Council, or other government types from moving to implement the plan.

[urbicande]

What if radio rash noise is more than just a nuisance?  What if it's a hazard?  What if they are actually radio-aware, and broadcasting draws their attention?

Now this I'd accept as a reason to not use radio much, but I'd still expect that morse would be more efficient at cutting through the noise and making the contact as short as possible.  My own radio interest is in low-power operations and it's entirely possible to have a conversation across the Atlantic using no more than a few watts.

(My actual guess as to why it's not in use is that Minna isn't a radio person and just didn't consider it )

[JoB]

I'd still expect that morse would be more efficient at cutting through the noise and making the contact as short as possible.

Minimize exposure (as in, throw in a narrow band-pass filter to prevent most of the black speech from coming out of the speaker in the first place), yes. Minimize total time, no. Unless you're a rather experienced operator, the speed of Morse is measured in tens of letters per minute; there's a reason why virtually all those strange abbreviations (CQ DE DD0KZ PSE K QSY 5K UP) were originally invented for use in Morse.