Being a ham and doing a fair amount of emergency communications, if I were really out in the sticks, I'd pick radios in this order, if I could afford them: satellite phone, cell phone (+external antenna), ham HF mobile, CB, FRS/GMRS, business band radios. Phones are obviously great when they work because you can pretty much pick who you talk to. A reasonable ham HF mobile setup can almost always make contact with an established net or random helpful hams within several hours, depending on the atmosphere. With a decent CB setup it's pretty likely that you can track down a random trucker if you're within a few miles of a truck route, or a pickup-driving get-r-done kinda guy if you're more out of the way. Otherwise you end up dealing with the same atmospheric conditions ("skip") that hams have. FRS/GMRS and business band radios are pretty rare outside of theme parks, malls, and businesses and users often use "privacy" squelch tones so that even if someone is in range and on the right frequency, they may never hear you.

I've been intrigued with the idea of carrying a portable airband transceiver but that's pretty specialized. If you're anywhere near the coast, a VHF marine radio would make a lot of sense and they're quite cheap.

What we need is a cheap-ish prepaid satellite phone just for emergencies. $400 for the phone and 30 minutes of airtime doesn't seem that expensive once you price out all of the alternative land-based communications.