Family Safety Plan ?

Daily Life, Swiss News and General Topics
1
Wasn’t sure whether to call this a Family Emergency Plan or a Family Contingency Plan, it’s a little bit of both mixed into one.

This came to mind during the Facebook Whatsapp outage.

So many were rather anxious as they rely on these to connect to family or check up on their children.

I was wondering if people actually have a family plan, or ideas, to reach family if there were no possibility to do so via internet due to an outage like the one we just had?

2
Well isn't the obvious step to simply call them, using a telephone, directly to their telephone number? If you have someone's whatsapp then you already have their telephone number. Ideally you should always have all of your family's (at least those you are in contact with) telephone numbers and email addresses stored in your phone.

It's amusing how people become so dependent on Facebook and Whatsapp that they forget about fundamental basics like cellular calls or SMS, that need no internet connection whatsoever. Yes, it may cost you a few francs extra to make a short call over long international distances, but does that really matter in a situation where safety is a genuine concern?

3
Telephone? Or email. Alternatively Signal or Threema.

4
mail pigeons

5
Lol, it's funny how facebook being down causes people to panic

As for checking up on them, as other has said, it's possible to use normal calls - they still work. Also , there is this old, old thing called SMS, there are also non-facebook owned internet communicators, like Threema, Signal or even Skype.

6
I don't think the Swiss care much about Facebook but whatsapp has definitely become THE medium to communicate with.

7
Love the answers

I meant, what do people have planned if everything was out?

(asides from a baby boom 9 months later)

8
Especially in Italy.

Tom

9
Ahh, but you specifically said via the internet . Cellular calls and SMS do not need internet, so maybe that caused the confusion.

If every method of communication, both celullar and internet (or even satellite phones?), was "out" then I don't think that is nothing you can do besides either sending someone a letter or physically go and see someone.

10
Except pray

11
I think the OP question is a good one, because modern services were not designed for reliability and emergency use. Internet can, does and will fail, more often than the bare network below.

My favorite answer is "SMS". You don't even need an app for that technically speaking it's a more basic layer of communication and if that does not work then most likely the entire infrastructure is down.

As a side note, I can't avoid thinking that I was born in pre-cellphone age, and I used pre-paid cards or tokens for saying hello to my parents once per day during long trips. I find it beneficial to myself to still keep part the old habits, mainly by not being constantly reachable and telling my friends and relatives not to expect that.

I barely noticed the outage the other day; I had to meet with a friend for dinner, he sent me an SMS, all good.

12
The original telegram service is still available for international messages. Though it would take a few days to be delivered, and get a reply if needed.

13
Write a letter.

14
Satellite phones, of course.

They work, even when the cellphone towers are out (happens after a few hours, after the backup batteries have run dry).

Of course, calls and data is expensive there, so I’d keep it brief with folks.

Apple is rumored to plan iPhones that can somehow directly tap into those satellite networks in case of an emergency (like semi-recently in Germany, when power, phones, utilities were all out for days or weeks).

Do not rely on a service run by an ad-company as a means of communication for anything critical.

Their goal is to data-mine your life to be able shove as many highly-paid ads down your throat as humanly possible - everything else is a mere byproduct that can obviously break any time they try to deploy to their servers.

It should be noted that both founders of WhatsApp have left the company and god knows how many other key-employees from back when WhatsApp ran a billion users from just 50-ish servers are actually left.

Currently, I’d recommend Signal or getting an iPhone to use iMessages.

Signal recently got a big donation from one of the WhatsApp founders.

That should really make you think about what exactly WhatsApp has become.

15
Made me think - when I first went to live in London, I was still a teenager. No internet, no mobiles- and I had no phone either. So we wrote letters with my mother, a couple a month. Then when we got married 1 year later, in Switzerland- and I had an accident and spent 7.5 months on my back in hospital, we wrote long letters, every day... No internet, no phone, no TV- but I had a small transistor radio.

I have a book containing letters family who emigrated to Victoria/Australia in the early 19C - of course by the time they had sent the letter and it was received- the 'I am OK mum, all good' could have turned into an utter disaster... Lots of letters from my dad's older brothers and sisters who emigrated to the US, NY and one up to Montreal, in the early 30s, and same again- but the time letter received, everything could have changed. My Uncle Francis always signed his letters 'l'immigré'.

So yes, it would be a great ideal to send real letters again- I might have a go today <3

16
Well if absolutely everything is out, then you’re screwed until something is back up and running again. But something major would have to happen to take out all internet all mobile and all land line communications.

17
Not really, sometimes an electrical outage can create that situation.

So, with the idea of being prepared, especially for families with kids, what would you do?

telegraph, letters, pidgeons 😊

How about a meeting place?

Radio waves? Drums? Poney Express?

Or, in case of need, could society get old technology to work?

18
Hardly likely that phone lines are down long enough that you’d need to send letters or telegrams

If you’re at home/work/school, the obvious thing is for everyone to go home no? I think it could be useful if you’re on a day out to have a designated meeting point for if someone gets lost or goes somewhere alone and mobile phone contact isn’t possible for any reason.

19
Ummm, land lines generally don't exist any more except in 3rd world countries, certainly no longer here.

Virtually all "land lines" these days are VOIP, and not real "land lines".

Tom

20
We don’t have a landline either, but people do. Either way, I think they’d fix the phone network faster than getting a telegram system set up.