Disaster films almost always start the same. A crowded supermarket; ping after ping as shoppers’ phones go off; screams.
An asteroid, a tsunami, World War III, a rogue AI bot. Something – or someone – is coming.
But whatever the disaster is, experts tell Metro it won’t be phones that people will ultimately rely on. It’ll be something a little more old-school.
And it’s something the UK government wants Brits to have as part of its ‘Be Ready’ emergency preparedness campaign.
‘Crises can take many forms,’ Dr Colin Alexander, a senior lecturer in political communications at Nottingham Trent University, says.
‘However, radio remains the go-to medium of communication.’
Why radio is still the ultimate survival tool
Some 44,000 radio stations are broadcasting as you read this, the UN’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) tells Metro.
Given that ITU dates back to 1865, it knows what it’s talking about when it says radio is ‘unparalleled’, even in the age of yapping AI.
The internet is made of tiny code that travels through razor-thin wires lining the ocean floor; if damaged, people can be left without signal.
But emergency radios, also known as disaster radios or wind-up radios, don’t need to be plugged in. They rely on being hand-cranked or solar-powered.
‘Unlike internet-based media, radio does not require any expensive digital devices, subscription requirements or a high-speed internet connection to function,’ the ITU says.
UK government tells Brits to ‘be ready’ with a wind-up radio
This is why the UK government has recently recommended having a wind-up radio somewhere in your home.
Launched last week, the ‘Be Ready’ initiative urges Brits to have, among other things, a stockpile of three days’ worth of food as well as a first-aid kit and a battery torch.
Sales of hand-crank radios skyrocketed fivefold in recent days, with seven major models sold out, The Telegraph reported on Saturday.
Neil Fraser, an information systems expert who spent nearly three decades serving with the British Army, says radio becomes essential during emergencies.
Officials need to mix-and-match communication methods, as the internet can be downed without a moment’s notice.
‘When one connection fails, another kicks in,’ the defence and space programmes director at satellite communication provider NSSLGlobal, says.
This happened in Gaza after Israel repeatedly attacked the enclave’s infrastructure, causing several ‘near-total’ information blackouts.
‘As we don’t have electricity, we are unable to watch the news and see what’s going on around us, but at least we listen to Al-Jazeera through the radio,’ one Palestinian told The New Arab in 2023.
‘We know what’s going on, but we don’t see anything.’
How does radio work?
Whizzing around you as you read these are radio waves.
You can’t surf on these waves, though, Chris Scott, a professor of space and atmospheric physics at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology, tells Metro.
‘Radio waves are a form of light. They are generated when electric charge-carrying particles called electrons are accelerated,’ he says.
‘By causing electrons in an electric circuit to oscillate, radio waves can be generated and, by coding information into either the amplitude (AM) or frequency (FM) of these waves, they can be used to transmit this information.’
During the coronavirus pandemic, not only was radio used to broadcast facts into homes, but the sounds of people’s voices broke the solitude.
Those voices included Andy Bush, a presenter at Absolute Radio.
‘We’ve had so many messages from listeners who say that just hearing a familiar voice and a welcome distraction from the horror ride of 24-hour rolling news helped get them through the pandemic,’ he says
When radio is used for anything but good
As much as radios were similarly used to boost morale during World War Two, the Nazi Party used the new-ish technology as a propaganda tool.
Iva Toguri D’Aquino, a Japanese-American, had her voice known to millions of American troops after she became stranded in Japan.
Forced to renounce her US citizenship, she was asked to host a Japanese radio propaganda programme, Zero Hour.
Across 340 broadcasts, D’Aquino’s voice told soldiers that the war was lost. D’Aquino, known as ‘Tokyo Rose’, was convicted of treason in 1949.
Doug Goodison, of the London amateur radio club, G4HMS, says radio is a communication tool that is just that, a tool.
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‘News is only as good as the information supplied through the announcer,’ Goodison, a former operations manager with TfL, says.
Radio is used to spit out disinformation because it is considered more trustworthy than other media. TV, for example, is more ‘entertainment’.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) found this was the case in 24 of the 37 countries surveyed last year.
‘Whether radio saves lives or encourages more death is open to debate. There is nothing about radio that is inherently peaceful,’ says Dr Alexander.
For Bush, whose voice has been on the radio waves for some 20 years, radio is something simpler than that.
‘Doing a radio show is a privilege as people welcome you into their lives in a way that Netflix or TikTok cannot touch,’ he says.
A version of this article was previously published on April 2, 2025.
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