Written in the style of Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (thought not nearly as witty):

They gathered in the forest clearing around the televisor. The test card on the screen winked out, replaced by the face of a broadcaster, who was handsome, but not overly so.

“Citizens,” he said, shuffling important-looking papers across the counter. “Thank you for your patience.”

It was ingenious, Jerry thought. Despite worldwide nuclear holocaust, there were still hundreds of survivalist communities scattered across the homeland, each with its own transceiver. All it took was an enterprising bureaucrat at Central Govt with a long-range amplifier to take those disparate threads of community and re-knit them…

… Into something like a nation.