A good friend lives about 12 miles away from me, and we have been discussing options for communications in the event of an emergency/disaster situation.
Assuming that phones were not available due to power outages or "all circuits busy" interruptions; and communication through the Internet were not available ... the only possibility I can seem to come up with to keep our communications in tact would be Single Sideband CB radio.

One of the few SSB radios that seems to be on the market now, is the Cobra 148GTL. It seems that radio provides 12 Watts of transmission power in the SSB mode. I would guess that level of power would typically cover the distance that I would need for the scenario mentioned above.(?)
I am just starting to research all of this; so any information folks can share about Single Sideband CB, it's range, radio suggestions, etc... will be greatly appreciated.