I will add my own $.02 cents...

By my calculations, there is approximately 700,000 amateur radio licenses.
Out of the 700,000 licenses, not counting contest stations - that holds a call sign, has a trustee, but doesn't physically attach to one individual person.
There is probably at any one time - 100,000 licensee's that are sick, dead or dying. So you can count them out.
There is probably 200,000 that has a license, but doesn't own any equipment / or they only have a handheld - but they don't operate anymore...

That takes it down to about 500,000 licensee's...

Taking into account that the average age of a ham is about 69 years old.
This means that you are going to have another 100,000 that are either too old or too lazy to activate.

You are also going to have about 100,000 that are either working a job or going to school - too young or too busy to activate.

That leaves you with about 300,000 active hams that would be willing to participate in any type of activity.
This is probably how many people we have to operate field days..

The population of the USA is about 316.1 million people. That leaves you with a population of about .015 of 1% of the population that is a licensed amateur.

In my particular county, there is about 6 deploy-able hams.
Out of those 6 - I am the only one that participates in the Ares net - Saturday morning on 75 meters and the RACES net Sunday morning on 75 meters.

Out of all the hams in my county, I am the only one that participates in the Phone Traffic net and I am the only one that participates in the FlDiGi net.

Our county Emergency Coordinator - doesn't even live in our county.
He once lived in the county and he worked in the Emergency Operations Center as a dispatcher. He is now employed as a State Police dispatcher.
If TSHTF - he would have to go to work and wouldn't be available to play ham radio, and 8 hours out of the day - he would be sleeping! So any emergency that happens - would need to be out of convenience - would need to happen when it was convenient for him..
We have a licensed county agent, but he is a glad hand.

I have never heard him operate, and the only time he comes around is when something happens and then he wants everyone to follow him, but he never developed a repertoire with the local hams.

2/3rds of the population lives in the southern half of the county, for which I am the only active ham.
The question becomes - how do you cover an area like this with one ham?
The answer is - you can't!

There are two guys here that I have encouraged to get their license.
The father is for a lack of words - retarded.
The son - is just playing CB radio on the ham bands.

The father works as a greeter and part time cashier at the local Wal-Mart, and the son works as a mechanic at a local trucking outfit.
Neither of them are willing to participate in any kind of training - so in an emergency - they are of little use to me!

Of the 4 guys in the northern half of the county, one is employed as an ambulance driver and is the mayor of his local town.
One is employed as the operator of a saw mill, one is a retired radio tech and the other is almost 85 years old.

That means you would probably get two out of the 4 at any one time.

Some counties has lot's of hams on paper, but when it comes time to participate in any kind of training exercise, all they got is people with walkie talkies. At some point you have to have people with high power radios and HF radios - so you can talk 150 miles - back to the state EOC, and to the section manager - emergency coordinator in Pittsburgh PA.

And this is the reason why hams are not deployed anymore.
There isn't enough people, the people we do have is too old or too involved in their own lives to get involved, and the ones that are willing to get involved are usually old and afraid of computers.

There needs to be some type of mandatory service that all hams should have to perform to get and keep their license, and this should include some type of emergency communications.

Since we have had some children as young as 5 years old - obtain an amateur radio license, it would be very difficult to deploy them in any type of emergency situation. Mainly those children gets a license as a reflection of their parents .. Dad or grandpa is a ham, so they force the kids to get a license, and then they never operate.

So some type of uniform rules needs to be developed to ensure that all of this doesn't die in the next couple of generations...
I don't know how you would implement such a rule, but I would suspect that we need to start doing background checks on everyone we license and we need to have some compulsory service included with the license.

The clubs that gives the tests needs to actively recruit these people into their fold and they need to start doing more things with their members such as EmComms training.