A friend did a VERY THOROUGH analysis of amateur radios as communication tools when other means are unavailable.
A strong motivator for him was to reach home or help from the deep woods, but there are other factors, including grid-down disaster planning.
He is a high-order professional computer scientist who is very recent to amateur radio. I am hugely impressed by his methodical, thorough attack on problem and solution definition.
Thus, with his permission, I share these documents with you here.
The first is the overall analysis and conclusions.
Second is a Vietnam-era US Army analysis and conclusions
… that taught me a lot.