TELL ME
I was thinking about this WiFi idea, because I think it could be useful in case of an emergency. I think there should be services hosted inside of cities. I mean in their local networks. It could be local government websites and maybe things like a Lemmy instance where people could talk. Even stuff like Open Street Map could maybe be useful. So if the city was for some reason cut off from the internet and the mobile network, most people would still be able to communicate and have access to information. It would be like having a tiny backup of the internet (at least whatever is possible to self host). I think it's a big oversight to only rely on the internet.
Something like this could maybe be also useful in countries with authoritative governments, which sometimes cut off internet access in the entire country. In the long term the government would probably find out and try to stop it, though.
But as you've explained, making something like this would require many people working together and ideally should probably be handled by a local government instead. It's not something I plan on doing, it just seemed like a cool idea to think about.
I might try playing with LoRA for some other project some day, if I can legally use it without a license. But if I can't encrypt the messages, then I would probably prefer to use WiFi (for short distances) instead.
In your case, to have emergency communications with your family, maybe CB radio or satellite phones would be a solution?