Tools to SEND and RECEIVE when the network is down

The internet playbook for disaster scenarios.

Almost everything now depends on connectivity — until a storm, a quake, a blackout, or a war takes it away. Good Ancestor builds, researches, funds, and advocates for open emergency communication systems that keep working when the regular ones stop.

Build your own comms station → Our test satellite

Main ideas

A local comms station you run, an archive of helpful tools, a satellite connection, and live maps.

Together they form a path for resilient and private communication in regional and global disasters.

01 Run it · build it

Comms Station →

Open software and open hardware recipes that turn a vehicle or a room into an AI-run communications hub — mesh networking, radio, and satellite reception — operable in an emergency by someone without radio skills. See this one in an electric VW bus.

02 Download it · keep it

The Archive →

Develop and customize curated offline libraries and a local AI librarian, sized to run on phones and home computers. Evacuation maps and first aid; the open-source toolchain for rebuilding. No internet required to use it.

03 Reach everywhere

Via Satellite →

A low-cost open satellite design that broadcasts alerts from orbit straight to commodity cell phones — no SIM, no subscription, no cell tower. Our test satellite has been on orbit since June 2025, and your group can build your own.

Dark world map with live precipitation radar clusters over the continents.

04 Use it now

Maps →

Live public maps for weather, conflict zones, and the physical infrastructure the internet runs on. They cache for offline use, so they keep working after the connection drops. Open one in a browser — nothing to install, no account.

Why it matters

The network isn't guaranteed.

Water treatment, power, banking, phones, and emergency services now depend on the internet and the electricity that keeps it lit. That co-dependence is only a few decades old, and we have not built robust alternatives for the wars and disasters we can already see coming. A regional disaster, a cyber attack, a solar storm, or a deliberate shutdown can take the whole stack down at once — and the places hit hardest are usually the ones with the least to fall back on.

Early warning and coordination are the cheapest lives saved per dollar in disaster response, and the UN reports they are still missing across much of the world. Every tool we make or fund is meant to be genuinely useful in normal times and essential in a disaster.

~50%

of developing countries lack early-warning systems even when the internet works (UN / WMO)

$3–16B

annual disaster losses avoided through modest early-warning spending in developing countries (Global Commission on Adaptation)

2004 · 2013

US EMP Commission found civilian power and internet unprepared for EMP or a major solar flare

Dark world map tracing submarine cables between continents, with landing points and chokepoints marked. — Nearly all intercontinental traffic runs through a few hundred submarine cables. Our infrastructure map traces them, their landing points, and the chokepoints where a handful of failures can cut off a region.

Who we build with

Partners who work where the connection ends.

The project began when ALLFED asked how you coordinate feeding people through a global catastrophe with the internet down. These organizations shape what we build and where it goes.

Orbit · open small satellites

SatSlice

The open small-satellite project that grew out of this program with our support. SatSlice built and flies Kilakila, and publishes the designs, tooling, and lessons so anyone can put their own slice in orbit.

Iraqi Kurdistan

Ideas Beyond Borders

Works in formerly ISIS-occupied areas with Yazidi refugee camps and remote mountain communities that have limited connectivity and no emergency weather or safety alerting.

Ukraine · Global

Human Rights Foundation

In conflict zones, cutting communication is a standard tactic — as tracked by NetBlocks. That makes emergency alerting and relief coordination across war-struck or disaster-struck regions far harder.

Global

ALLFED

Researches how to feed the world through global catastrophes — and faces the problem of storing critical knowledge and distributing it when normal channels are gone. This project originated with their request.

Global

Disaster coordination groups

We've used supply-chain management tools to coordinate disaster relief, and are exploring nonprofit partners to do it at scale.

Digital rights · Global

Holistic Resilience

Helps people in closed societies stay connected and safe from surveillance, with circumvention tools, threat intelligence, and advocacy — resilience against the digital side of a crisis.

Lincoln, Nebraska · maker education

MakeShift

A community makerspace running educational satellite ground-station monitoring with SatNOGS and TinyGS — building the hands-on electronics and maker skills these systems depend on.

Why now

A few things became true at once.

A free, global broadcast network — from space or from a high-altitude solar plane — would have cost tens of billions of dollars a decade ago. Several shifts brought it within reach of civic efforts.

Space launch got cheap. Rideshare launch costs fell dramatically, opening orbit to small teams.
Hardware improved. Low-cost, open software-defined radios and compute now fly on cubesats. Solar became more powerful, and batteries more dense.
Phones can hear satellites. Recent 3GPP standards let ordinary handsets connect directly to networks in space — the same shift behind commercial direct-to-cell services.
Protocols matured. LoRa, Meshtastic, Reticulum, Bluetooth LE, and 5G give small, cheap devices workable ways to reach each other without infrastructure.
We obtained broadcast spectrum. Rights to broadcast from space to the ground at usable power across much of the world — normally very expensive — which we can share.
Ground stations can be automated. Local AI models can run a station's radios well enough that operating one no longer requires a trained operator standing over it.
The knowledge exists, and people want to help. The open radio, mesh, and offline-library communities are active, capable, and looking for problems worth solving.