How Will We Communicate?

I've been having discussions with a couple of friends about how we can communicate in the aftermath of some "event".  This doesn't have to be SHTF.  It could be as simple as power is gone and cell phone towers are down.  It's still important to maintain comms with my group for mutual support as required.  I believe normal communications within my group occurs as follows.

1. Blogging - non-urgent and not requiring a timely response
2. Email - non-urgent and not requiring a timely response.
3. Cell phone - non-urgent or urgent.  Leave message if no answer and want a call back.
4. Texting - non-urgent or urgent.  My understanding is texts may still go through even if cellular calls will not.
5. Show up on the doorstep - if nothing else works, this may.  No guarantees that anyone is home though.
6. ?

It's really the ? of number 6 that I want to find a solution for.  I've been looking at MURS radios.  I've focused on this type of radio because they are readily available, require no FCC license, are not line of sight, and have a somewhat reasonable range.  By reasonable range, I mean something like 2-7 miles.  They are not super high power, but with an antenna can extend out to the maximum range.

I was looking at these models by Dakota.

http://shop.murs-radio.com/MURS-Hand-Held-M538-HT.htm

http://shop.murs-radio.com/MURS-Base-M538-BS.htm

And antennas.

http://www.dpdproductions.com/page_murs.html

I haven't yet purchased radios for myself.  This is something I'm planning to work on with my group sometime this summer.  Right now my thinking is that it would be best to establish comms between everyone's houses within my group.  I'm planning on putting a base with antenna at each house and handhelds in each vehicle.  Handhelds can then be transitioned to backpacks for field use.  Eventually I may want to equip my vehicles with antennas as well.

With the use of batteries, these radios can at least get my group all moving in the right direction if we need to bug out.  I think we'll probably establish some frequency settings and perhaps broadcast times to conserve battery operations (for instance, every even hour for first 5 minutes of hour).  The radios will only be useful for as long as the batteries have charge.  Once we can no longer charge the batteries, they are paperweights.

I'm proposing within my group that the first step be that 2 people purchase base radios with antennas to see if we can establish comms between 2 houses.  Hopefully, we'll be able to transmit over that distance.  If not, we can use these 2 radios to establish what range is effective.  I have no idea if there is a way to create a repeater network with this kind of system.  My guess is if you can, its probably expensive.

What are your thoughts?