"During catastrophes you most likely want to have at least “multi-hop social mesh” or yet even better “public mesh” where you share messages not only with your contacts but with anybody using Briar."<p>What's the novelty offered here? It sounds like mesh sounds like broadcasting, and we already have those.<p>"Briar could offer a significant advantage over analogous walkie-talkie communication if it allowed to send high-quality voice, image and other attachments."<p>Insofar as severe disasters go, you have to consider the case whereby a whole mobile network is either temporarily or even permanently down.<p>Ref.:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169066">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169066</a>