The Emergency Alert System, that annoying beeping test you hear on TV and radio, will get its first nationwide test this November 9. Every broadcast, cable, and satellite outlet is supposed to take part at 2pm Eastern that day. Anybody got any thoughts on what’s actually gonna happen that day? Is the damned thing even going to work?
Interesting this is the first national test, in that it’s never been less relevant, given our increasingly Internet-using society.
Also, it’s difficult to imagine what would even necessitate a national EAS alert. After all, 9/11 didn’t make the cut. The article vaguely mentions Japan, but what is Japan land-wise, about California? Maybe the entire West Coast if you include all the outlying islands? That’s a regional alert at most. Granted, a large region, but not even close to being national.
Well, Yellowstone is due to blow any day now.
SFC Schwartz
An incoming nuclear attack? :dubious: Then again I never really though the government would bother to give civilians advance notice of WWIII. What good would 10-15 minutes of blind panic & rioting do?
So what now if the terrorist all say “Hey, let’s all attack at once on November 9th, just before 2pm!” Do they win?
Every Tuesday, at noon, San Francisco tests its emergency alert system. Across the city, sirens wail, and in most parts you can hear the recorded announcement afterward. Here’s the thing: I have wondered what sort of emergencies are likely to arise that require this sort of warning, or whose management would benefit from it. Earthquakes are the biggie here, but can be neither predicted nor warned of. The various other emergencies I can think of seem unlikely to be ameliorated by a siren warning, or unlikely, period.
No, the only real danger to San Francisco I can think of for which that siren would be just the ticket is a tsunami. We had one hit California in March, after the earthquake in Japan. It didn’t do much damage here, though some other cities suffered. But it’s just the sort of thing that cries out for a siren, to give folks some warning, and time to make preparations or flee.
I didn’t hear anything.
Oddly, three weeks ago (the last time I worked a weekend) for about 15 minutes around 10:30 every time the library door opened I could hear an air raid siren. Like, the old spin up air powered bwaaAAAAAaaaabwaaaaAAAAA siren, which I haven’t heard since I was a kid when they’d test things at my school. I’ve heard tests before of city sirens in Five Points on Wednesdays, but they aren’t that old fashioned kind of siren and I’ve never heard it downtown. It went on for a while - maybe 20 minutes? And then it stopped. No “all clear”, if anybody but me knew what that sounded like, 'cause I went through a little phase about the Blitz last year.
So WTF? Nobody seemed excited about it.
I find this odd, wouldn’t San Franciscans get inured to that by now, and not really pay attention to the siren that goes off every day at noon - to the point that they’ll similarly ignore the siren that’s going off at 3:27pm one day warning about incoming Russkie nukes set to land on the Golden Gate Bridge?
The sirens go off only on Tuesday at noon, not everyday, also the test is just one sounding of the siren followed by a voice announcement saying this is a test. In a real emergency I believe the siren sounds 3 times followed by info to kiss your ass goodby ;).
Yup. A bunch of suburbs in Chicago test their sirens once a week at particular times, similarly. We use them for tornado warnings.
That being said, I agree that it’s confusing about what we might actually use this for on a nationwide basis considering what has happened before without such warnings going off.
Totally worthless in my book. The big ol’ earthquake knocked out the power so there was no radio or tv broadcasting to all the people who couldn’t hear what wasn’t there. Plus, I was busy dodging my entire kitchen barfing all over my head. An emergency message would have been a great big Duh! at that point.
digital tv sets (USA) have the capability of automatically turning on when an alert signal is sent. good time to test your set.
That’s interesting, I never knew that. I wonder if they’ll ever implement this on the internet in general? It’s not unfeasible for any technical reason, is it?
Unless they can broadcast this through all of the interwebs simultaneously, it’s not going to reach a majority of people. How many people are watching tv or listening to the radio between 11am (for the west coasters) and 2pm on a workday? Most people are going to be at work. Some will be on computers. Many won’t (like retail workers), and the only tv/radio playing in most stores is purely internal.
Tsunami, chemical spill, tornado, emergency evacuation notice… all these are things I could see testing on a large scale, say several states at ones, or even an entire coastline.
I can’t think of a disaster or event, short of an actual 9/11 scale or larger attack that would require national level notification.
That being said, even 9/11 was a highly localized event. But I could see a national level advisory going out, in case it turns out there was 10 or 20 or 200 planes hijacked.
It’s completely infeasible, because the Internet is not a broadcast medium. The Internet is a pull medium, meaning you only get what your software requests; a bunch of information you did not request wouldn’t be displayed for you, it would be ignored like all of the other noise on your connection.
Will they use any weather alert tools?
I have Weatherbug on my phone and am often getting alerts of things like coastal flood warnings, tornado warnings etc. Seems like this would be a good piggyback onto that technology.
My Droid also has an Emergency Alerts app (came with the phone, doesn’t seem to be removable) which I’d bet will be activated on the 9th. I thought I found ways of configuring which alerts would sound (e.g. excluding things like Amber alerts, but Presidential alerts couldn’t be turned off) but I can’t find that now.
See this is the thing about sirens. They get your attention, but there has to be something after that.
I used to live fairly close to a nuclear power plant and they would test their sirens one Wednesday a month which ensured if I ever heard the siren that I would ignore it as a test.
I never received any information by mail or otherwise what action one should take if one heard the siren and it wasn’t a test.
I was once in a grocery store where the fire alarm went off. Since everyone in the store, like me, grew up hearing fire alarms that were only drills absolutely no one evacuated the store.
Aha - just found it: Just found it - for some reason I missed the Settings area of the screen. D’oh! You can disable alerts for Extreme Alert (extreme threat to life and property), Severe Alert (severe…), and AMBER alert.
I would guess there is something similar on iPhones.
I totally get that, and I know how crazy it sounds. But I guess I’m wondering, ifthe Federal Govt could require ISPs to route all traffic to an EAS under certain conditions. Would that be possible, if not probable?