There's a guy who is the founder a large firearms-related company. He writes preparedness articles for his companies newsletters and elsewhere. He has some good information about some aspects of preparedness, others, not so much. One thing he's written about multiple times is radio transceivers. His advise has always been to buy used amateur radio High Frequency (HF) and to not pay attention to other writers of the same genre who say to buy handheld VHF/UHF transceivers. His rationale is that you can communicate to loved ones over long distances with the HF transceivers but with the handhelds you can't so everyone else's opinion is garbage.
That is horrible advice. I don’t know the author you are referencing, but from your description he sounds like a classic survivalist grifter.