Been a ham over 40 years. One of the basics like water, food, decent weapons and ammo!
Ham equipment can be found very cheaply. New cheap walkie talkies that cover VHF/UHF can be bought for less than $30 and are wide open transmit even outside of the ham bands. These can be used for direct point to point contact or extended range through repeaters.
HF SW radios can be bought used on ebay for under $100 that work just fine. The key to SW ham radios is the antenna. A simple dipole made out of cheap wire can be used to transmit anywhere in the world. I use a dipole just a little over 100ft long and it works well all the way from 3.5 Mhz to 54 Mhz for world-wide contacts. This is with 100 watts single side band voice.
I can use less than 10 watts and communicate worldwide using PSK31 digital mode. People have done world wide digital under a watt.
You can buy a CW transceiver running a watt for about $5 on ebay also. The prices are unbelievably cheap today.
The tests are not bad. You can buy study books that have all the questions and all the answers from the FCC testing pool. Just a little memorization and you are on the air!!!