Is there a hand held 2 way radio that can get some distance in urban terrain 15-20 miles?

Question

In the event of an emergency I want to communicate with my family, cell phones will overload .

Answer 1

One word.. NO will not and cannot happen without some other radio system in line.... or at least not in handheld form..

Almost every type of system out there rely upon a radio above the city either on a building or a tower to give the user mulitple area coverage using hand helds as the longest coverage I have personally done has been about 5 miles and that is over a rural area (with no buildings to interfere)

15-20 miles is unrealistic with a handheld.... 15-20 miles can be done with vehicle mounted and/or powered units with a mobile antenna . Amateurs and Business band users do this on VHF and UHF frequencies regularly over a small city mobile to mobile.

But best to answer your question is to look at what emergency communicators rely upon... GMRS (50 watt units that have to licensed , not those 2 watt want to be radios at wal-mart that promise 20 miles but that's actually only if you are talking mountain top to Mountain top etc), Business band (Low band 30-50 mhz or VHF-Hi 148-174 mhz) or most used of all Amateur radio

All require licenses but the ham radio is the cheapest however you have to study and can't discuss business over the frequency.. but in a emergency, most ham radio repeaters and such stay on as most are built hardened just for disasters