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I came across a short (under 4 min) professionally made video showing how citizens in fire prone areas took action to have some kind of communication network. This came about because of the horrific fires in rural areas and loss of telephone and cellphones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhOwng_j38 The solution was to purchase GMRS radios and apparently quite a few where sold in just one rural area. They had some help from what looks like a ham or two (but did not identify them as such), and even set up a modest repeater to get across one ridge area. The equipment shown were Midland MXT series radios. And for this application, I think this is a good choice for plug and play.

Someone with more recent experience can correct me... However, I believe the GMRS V1, at least the early versions, only provides 8 repeater capable "channels" (actually memory locations). So, you could program the same frequency into 2 of those locations, each one with a different PL. Then you would just switch "channels" as you traveled.

It's like being angry at the guards for catching your kids playing around on Area 51's land. "How dare you scare my kids that were breaking the rules?! I want to speak to your manager!"

I just got back into it after 20 years. I had GMRS radios back around 2000 and used them for keeping track of my daughter in the neighborhood. I recently got back into them because of the problem of text messaging while driving. I will go out with my daughter and her family and we'll follow each other in our cars to some site for a hike and text messaging is: 1) unsafe 2) a PITA to do while driving GMRS radios fit this bill for this. You can just pick up the mic and say, "I think the trailhead is just ahead on the right," or, "We need to stop for a break - Exit 31" That's much easier than trying to SMS the message. Also, you get into areas where maybe you don't have mobile service or maybe one of you has mobile service and the other doesn't (ie. Verizon vs AT&T). GMRS make a lot of sense. If I'm not caravanning then the radio just stays off and it's not of much use to me. I'm not looking to talk to randos on the road like how it was back in the CB days. As such, the GMRS channels seem pretty quiet, which is good. CB, back in the day, was always kind of a pain to use because of: 1) chatter 2) noise 3) limited distance. I think GMRS wins on all of those fronts.