Monitoring Our Local Mesh Network in Virginia
There is something quietly beautiful happening across Virginia, and most people never see it unless they know where to look.
Right now, our local mesh network covers roughly two thirds of the state using nothing but radio. No cell towers. No carriers. No contracts. Just small devices talking to one another across distance, hills, and neighborhoods. If you layer the internet on top of it, the reach becomes as wide as anyone who still has a connection. But the real magic is that it does not need the internet at all.
Radio only needs two things. Power to the devices, and enough range between them to pass a signal along.
That is it.
The red dots on the map are live nodes. Each one is a person or a place. Each one is actively communicating as simple text messages with the others. No central infrastructure. No single point of failure. Messages hop from node to node like neighbors passing notes down a long porch.
If you have internet, you can relay traffic out to the wider world. If you do not, the network still breathes and moves on its own.
What flows across it is even better.
There are independent channels that cannot be blocked. They are encrypted by default. They are used to report ICE activity in real time, to ask for help, to offer help, to check on someone when the weather turns ugly. One day it is a heads up about enforcement moving through a county. The next day it is someone asking if anyone has a shovel to clear a driveway for an older neighbor. Sometimes it is just people staying in touch, making sure they are not alone if phones go dark.
This is what resilience looks like when it is built by regular people.
No corporation decides who gets to speak. No platform decides what is acceptable. There is no algorithm boosting outrage or burying kindness. It is just text moving through the air, carried by trust and proximity.
In an age where so much communication depends on fragile systems and distant companies, radio feels almost radical. Old technology doing a new job. Quietly. Reliably. Human scale.
As long as there is power, and as long as there are neighbors willing to keep a node alive, the network stays up.
That is worth monitoring. That is worth protecting. And honestly, that is worth being proud of.