2nd out of 160 teams · HackHarvard · Oct 2025

When a disaster knocks out cell towers and wifi, these cheap pocket radios keep working. They pass your texts and location from one device to the next until they reach rescuers.

Why it won: Any phone can join without installing anything: each radio broadcasts its own tiny wifi network with a plain webpage where you type a message and mark yourself safe. Each unit costs only a few dollars. Disaster tech usually fails because nobody set it up ahead of time; this works with the phone already in everyone's pocket.