The limitation on most radios has more to do with what is between your two receivers than it does most other factors. The little handheld that says 6 miles will talk 6 miles if you can get high up and talk in "line-of-sight". That is why I mentioned the slickwire antenna tossed into a tree. It gets your signal above a lot of the things that defeat it like buildings and stuff.
The "little handhelds" do only have a range of 5 miles or so (at best) under normal usage and conditions. However, the dual-band "handitalkies" (ham radios) can be greatly extended thru the use of repeaters. Most ham clubs put up and run repeaters that anyone can use. I can talk from one end of Brevard County to the other and often well into Orange County.
In case of a SHTF scenario, I have seen home-brewed repeaters made out of a pair of handhelds that could be strung up in a tree to help extend range.
Another possibility is using satellites with the handhelds. I know it sounds bizarre, but some ham enthusiasts do it on a regular basis.
As to "uncle grab" ,
1. they dont keep any kind of record of who has what ham gear.
2. they really dont have enough people to track down hand held ham radios (one of mine is smaller than a pack of smokes)
3. they have a lot better chit than that and don't want our little rigs. Believe me. I know this for a fact.
Then ONLY way they would track down you and your gear is if you were considered a threat of some kind, and if that is the case they will do it whether it is a ham rig, a cb, or a gms radio.
If the concern is about a "big-brother" government using ham license lists to hunt down "rebels," I don't think that's a realistic enough worry to be a deal-breaker in getting licensed. If you're a "problem" to a future totalitarian government, there's already plenty of data from the NSA's other sources that they have for the "troublemakers."
If you're worried about being tracked using ham radios (it's pretty easy to do with inexpensive equipment), then you need to practice OPSEC with your radios - use of brevity codes, short transmissions and moving before you transmit again, etc. So rather than an excuse not to get licensed, it's more of a driving need to do so...