A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.
It is more like say some kind of disaster destroys a local/regional power grid. It could take weeks or maybe months to restore power. Those big transformers are built to order and normally power companies order them 2 years out.
This would disable most if not all other forms of communication. Local FM is out, cell towers go down, and the local Internet is unpowered hell local newspapers couldn’t even print a paper. An AM radio station outside of the area could easily be used to transmit important information to the whole area. This was more or less the plan during the cold war if there was a limited exchange of nuclear weapons. Yes a large exchange of nuclear weapons or a nation wide EMP burst would disable AM too, but at that point there is likely no longer a functioning government to send out information.
Was the plan during the cold war that we had to get in our cars to hear said message? I don’t take issue with AM, by why does it need to be standard in every vehicle and not in public spaces or cell phones or clock radios or something else?
Not necessarily back then more or less every one also has a home radio which often could be run on battery. But the car provided an independent power source that was removed from the grid. For most of the cold war cars were purely mechanical no micro chips to fry. Also vacuum tubes were a common thing which are much more resistant to EMP.
For cell phones, kind of a space issue. Like, they’re already trying to use all the space inside the case.