Part of our Emergency Communications and Preparedness guide
What Is GhostNet?
GhostNet is an off-grid HF communications plan put together by S2 Underground, a preparedness and current-events channel that built out a real, working network for people to share information without relying on the internet or cell towers. It’s not a product or an app. It’s a published set of frequencies, times, and procedures that anyone with an HF radio can tune into, free to download and use.
The idea behind it is simple. If the internet goes down, even for a few hours, most people have no fallback for getting local news or checking in with anyone outside their immediate area. GhostNet exists to close that gap using high frequency radio, which can carry a signal hundreds or thousands of miles without any infrastructure standing between the two stations.
Who’s Behind It
S2 Underground runs under the handle S2 Actual and has built a following covering intelligence reporting, geopolitics, and preparedness topics. GhostNet started as a side project roughly a year into the channel’s life, meant as a stopgap communications plan in case of an internet or cellular outage lasting any real length of time. It’s grown well past that into a maintained, versioned document (currently sitting around version 1.5) with an active community actually using it on the air every week.
How the Network Is Structured
GhostNet isn’t one net, it’s a collection of them, each serving a different purpose:
- Weekly check-in net. Operators verify their gear works and swap local reports from around the country. This is essentially crowdsourced news gathered completely off-grid, and it’s also just good practice for using your radio under real conditions instead of only during a drill you invented yourself.
- Data bridges. These link different regions together at specific, published times so traffic can hop across the country rather than staying stuck in one local area.
- Receive-only options. If you just want to listen and decode traffic without transmitting, there’s a path for that. Good for people still building confidence or working on a license.
- ALE (Automatic Link Establishment). This layer automatically figures out the best frequency for a given link at a given time, which matters a lot on HF since propagation shifts throughout the day. A band that’s wide open at noon can be dead by dark, and ALE takes the guesswork out of that instead of making you sit there band-scanning.
Why I Think It’s Worth Your Attention
I like GhostNet because it treats radio as more than an emergency-only tool sitting in a closet. The weekly nets give people a real reason to use their gear on a schedule, and that’s the single biggest thing separating “I own a radio” from “I know how to use a radio when it actually matters.” A rig you’ve never keyed up before a real grid-down event is a rig you don’t actually know how to operate, no matter how good the spec sheet looks.
It’s also a solid on-ramp if HF still feels intimidating. You don’t have to build your own comms plan and frequency list from scratch. GhostNet hands you a published schedule to test against, so you can find out whether your antenna and radio combination actually works before you need it to, rather than discovering the gaps mid-emergency.
Before You Jump In
GhostNet operates on legal amateur radio allocations, so you still need a license to transmit on most of it. Listening doesn’t require one, but if you want to check in or pass traffic, get your Technician or General ticket first. The whole point of a system like this is that it keeps working after the grid doesn’t, and that only holds up if operators are trained and legal well before the emergency, not scrambling to figure it out during one. If you want to make sure your radio is ready for a scenario like this, see the frequencies every ham radio should have programmed for SHTF.
Where to Find GhostNet
The current guide is a free download from S2 Underground’s GitHub repository, and it’s worth printing and keeping with your go-bag or shack binder. Beyond the guide itself, S2 Underground posts updates, changelogs, and explainer videos across a few channels:
- GitHub (the GhostNet guide itself): github.com/s2underground/GhostNet
- YouTube: youtube.com/@S2Underground
- X / Twitter: x.com/s2_underground
Start with the guide, pull up your regional frequencies, and put the next scheduled net on your calendar. Testing it once before you need it is worth more than any amount of reading about it.
If GhostNet has you interested in other off-grid comms networks, check out what AMRRON is and how it compares, or MAGNET, a well-organized HF net built to connect local Mutual Assistance Groups nationwide.