I’m a member of the Tarrant County RACES and we do a lot of spotting for the National Weather Service. I’m not a prepper. Regardless of what Woden thinks we can still talk around the world when conditions are good. Look ma no satellites or cell towers!
MARS has been useless for decades. It was perhaps a good idea back during WWII, and it did a nice service of relaying messages to and from service personnel and their families back when snail mail was the alternative, but it never had any appeal to me. Cellular phones and the internet rendered it obselete a long time ago.