Look folks, if you haven't already added GMRS radios to your prepper equipment, do so ASAP. This at least could provide some local area comms - which it could be valuable to have that as an option.
You can go to the FCC website and apply for the license online (no test is required). Cost is $70, is good for 10 years, and extends to household family members. The turn-around on approval is same day to next day. So you can get this done fast.
The thing that's valuable about GMRS over, say, CB radio, is it is capable of using repeaters and there are lots of GMRS repeaters around the 48 states.
These repeaters can greatly extend the reach of ability to converse with others in the radius of the repeater. Even if you have a lowly 2 watt hand-held GMRS radio, if you are able to reach the repeater with it, you'll be able to converse with anyone else that can reach the repeater. I'm within ten miles line of sight to a repeater and use a hand-held radio to reach it. I can converse with people that are like 40 miles out from the repeater where they're using 40 to 50 watt radios and automotive or house mounted antennas. My transmissions on that repeater are very clear, high quality for the recipients.
Can get a BTech GMRS-v1 hand-held for about $55 and they make another GMRS unit, BTECH GMRS-50X1, that is 50 watt and is around $200. Kenwood and other companies have products in GMRS space too (check YouTube for reviews and product comparisons).
When you get one, find a repeater, and get online, start inquiring if there is anyone else that are very recently new to GMRS - chances are they might have arrived for similar reasons (given what is transpiring). Get to know them (carefully) - never get into political talk over radio transmissions. Just use it to do useful comms. People yak about all kinds of things over GMRS (it's basic orientation, though, is a mission of civic emergency use so if anyone needs to break in with an emergency situation, everyone needs to get off to allow for that use - and be ready to assist if can in some way).
Here are the pertinent links on FCC and getting GMRS license:
FCC Info - General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS)
BTW, there are nation-wide GMRS groups that have networked comms sessions (about once a week at an appointed time - checkout mygmrs.com). There is also an entrepreneur company that makes a device (about $155) that establishes a repeater in the home via an Internet access point. It adds your mini, local repeater device to a network of such repeaters across the Internet. Those in this Internet-extended network can then do radio comms with each other (as though they were all on one grand terrestrial repeater). Naturally this network of comms goes a way if the Internet access goes away, but while the Internet is available, then GMRS users can try to establish a nation-wide community: The new age low cost Coast to Coast GMRS repeater
As will be noticed, the FCC web site page on GMRS says that since 2017 text messaging and GPS location info transmission is allowable. However, there doesn't seem to be anyone in GMRS community that is actually doing that yet. (Text messaging for, say, 140 char msgs, opens the door to async comms capability and can be SMS gateway connected to cell phone text messaging.)
Now in the HAM radio world they have had packet radio for many decades and it supports a multi-layered data stack that enables TCP/IP kinds of applications (but at very slow bandwidth - like 1200 baud dial-up modems from back in the day). None, the less that can easily support things like text messaging and GPS location info.
I don't think that anything like the packet radio stack would really be allowed on GMRS, so what I would propose doing instead is using computerized encoding/decoding of text messages and GPS location info into analog Morse Code, which then gets transmitted over GMRS. It would be even much less bandwidth for info transmission than the HAM packet radio stuff but would still be sufficient to do text messaging. The hardware device this HAM radio enthusiast made using a Raspberry Pi Zero SBC, audio hat, and a wee bit of custom circuitry is the hardware solution (though I'd use the new Raspberry Pi 400 which is a Pi integrated inside a keyboard but still with the GPIO header exposed): Packet Radio Raspberry Pi build and demo
A computer server could be equipped with this hardware device and GMRS radio and setup to monitor and filter any Morse Code text messages off of a repeater. It would run a service that would be something like a poor man's Twitter for posting messages to. And this computer would have an Internet connection and SMS gateway - so that a text message that is incoming over GMRS radio could be relayed to a recipient's cell phone. The GMRS radio coupled to this device would need to poll the server to check for messages - kind of like polling POP3 to check for email (indeed, an email server software could be suitably wrapped to provide the text messaging service).
Now imagine a world where patriot DNS have been banned from all the typical DNS servers out there, then these GMRS-based text messaging servers could be repositories for DNS info, and anyone's computer could be suitably hooked up to refresh their DNS info from it (as no doubt IPs associated to DNS will be in constant flux and need to be frequently updated).
Don't think it would be too much of a technical challenge to get this kind of infrastructure up and running. The way to sell this, though, to the broader GMRS community is just as an async text messaging feature enhancement.