It was about all there was a few decades ago. I tried a couple times from Pacific outposts and never worked my wasy up to the head of the line. Glad our guys and gals have better comms home during deployments now. Snail mail always meant stale cookies and dated letters (but I loved them) and read them a couple dozen times.
Hurricane Katrina proved that MARS is still necessary, because it was ham radio operators that got most of the information out of the affected areas right after the hurricane. Most other communications were wiped out.
The shack was that of K7UGA--Barry Goldwater--and he had a group of about a dozen operators who rotated in and operated. One of them was a guy I worked with at the time.
Helluva setup.