The UK trial (in April of this year) was - uh - underwhelming. As The Telegraph reported:
The national emergency alert system test descended into a farce on Sunday after it failed to work on up to ten million phones .
We were in Turkey, so were untroubled by the kerfuffle (and unalerted). Weirdly, two months earlier we had been in Athens when there was an actual National Alert, which somehow found its way onto my cell phone while we were having dinner in a taverna, and scared the bejesus out of me. (Because (a) nobody forewarns tourists about possible upcoming real alerts; and (b) we didn’t realize that a real national emergency was going on. Snow was forecast. In Greece that’s a real national emergency.)
I don’t remember anyone else in the taverna getting the alert, BTW.
j
it startled me at 2:18pm.
I was unaware there was to be a test, so it definitely got my attention at 11:18 Pacific Time. I don’t think I’ve heard that emphatic tone since I got an earthquake alert (30 seconds before I felt it) in Japan 10 years ago.
I’ve now gotten it three times on the same phone. Two in relative quick succession around 12 PDT and once about 40 minutes later. Anyone beat that?
I turned the phone off. Didn’t want to deal with it. Turned it on about 11:30, and there it was! Ever since then, the phone has been giving me the Incoming Text alert randomly about every 3-4 minutes since.
Fucking Shit! And way to be On-Time Assholes! 11:18 My Ass!
I got it twice within seconds. Once in American, once in Foreign.
We had the same alarm in Germany on September 14th, and it seems to have worked. The last one was on December 8th 2022 and it was disapointing: I was one of the few who got it, if the press reports were correct.
I know the precise dates because I found the notifications on my phone, I forgot to erase them:
PROBEALARM!!!
PROBEALARM!!!
PROBEALARM!!!
don’t panic!
Are they doing this all over the world now?
My sister got a LOUD BBBZZZZZ and a message when we were driving home from the market aroung 11:15 AM PST. I just got mine – small beep with a text.
I thought it was going to be louder than it was.
I’ve since gotten it a 4th time, but sounds like you still have me beat.
I only got mine twice. Presumably because I was away from my phone and didn’t respond the first time.
There’s no response required.
Maybe my phone wasn’t aware of that. I’ve not had any further alerts since I hit the “OK” button.
I feel sorry for Communication Center 911 folks. I bet they got thousands of calls.
Wow that was pretty loud. And my Amber alerts are disabled.
Reading an article, it was full of alphabet soup. These are some of the related acronyms:
WEA = Wireless Emergency Alerts
EAS = Emergency Alert System
CAP = Common Alerting Protocol
IPAWS-OPEN = Integrated Public Alert and Warning System-Open Platform for Emergency Networks
Say that last one 3x fast.
I found an old thread about Amber alerts. From 10 years ago. My Amber alerts have been disabled for 10 years.
Time flies. We must be having fun.
The two phones that went off in the office weren’t all that loud. And they didn’t go off at the same time, so it must have depended on your carrier when they went off. I assume the other 2 people in the office also have cell phones, but they (the people) are pretty old so maybe theirs were turned off.
I also noticed it was 2 minutes early. I guess they wanted to make it an actual surprise when it came through. That or someone in charge had a time piece not connected to the internet.
One of those was meant for me. I never got one.
We were having lunch at our favorite diner, when 15 phones went off at once. I stood up and exclaimed We’re all gonna die! and actually got some laughs. It’s that kind of place; we love it.