Remember those messages on TV from the Emergency Broadcst System? The ones that said “This is a test…” etc. Years ago I was shown a videotape that certainly appeared to be an authentic copy of the secret tape to be played in the event it was not just a test. After the beeeeeeeep! with the EBS yellow triangle logo, a list scrolled across the screen giving various instructions on how viewers should respond to an imminent nuclear attack, with the familiar-sounding voiceover reading it.
I remember the list included things like, 1}Turning off the gas to all buildings, 2}All military personnell had to report to their command, 3}all household pets had to be exterminated(!), etc. It appeared to be from the early 60’s. It was pretty mindblowing, so I just want to know if anyone else recalls seeing this particular tape or has any information about its background. It’s probably pretty obscure, but I’d be interested in seeing the rest of the list again, since some of the things on it that the government was gonna order us to do were really scary. Does the government still maintain a secret list of civil defense orders that it can impose on the population along with martial law? If so, how has it changed over the years?
I did see a Grade-Z B&W Cold War era epic entitled “This is Not a Test,” which was based on the old EBS PSA–only this time “we were in a real shootin’ match.”
Also, I work with someone who has a sister who works in some capacity in the Turner empire. She said that she had heard that if the End of the World were ever imminent (nukes, asteroid strike, etc.), that they have a special set of recordings that they will play, recorded by the great voice of James Earl Jones–presumably similar to the familiar “This is CNN,” but with a little more finality.
Supposedly, also according to this FOAF report, only James Earl Jones and Ted himself know what they say.
They are used rather frequently for severe weather. I heard a couple of non-tests in the last few years, one for a flood watch or warning and one for a tornado watch or warning. This has been covered in the Mailbag. See What happened to the Emergency Broadcast System?
This is stepping out far on the high-board of recollection, but I remember The Atomic Cafe, a very entertaining documentary, showing this. Anyone else remember correctly?
Why would that be disturbing?? I know that they have this in Germany in car radios and find it to be a pretty cool idea.
Germany uses this idea for the Autobahn. Since sections of the Autobahn are speed limit-less, they designed exits about 20-30 miles apart to restrict the amount of cars moving around on and off the road. So when a really bad accident happens, it is not unusual to be stuck on the Autobahn for hours on end. Thus they have a system that turns your car radio on if you are in the area of an accident. That way, you can get off the Autobahn and go around the accident via city streets. All this info I got from my German teacher who lived in Stuttgart for 35+ years and has not been back for about 5 years. If I am incorrect then please tell me.
Anyway, like I said, whats so disturbing about a radio that turns on to tell you of an emergency? It’s not like it is a tracking system or anything. In this situation, Big Brother isn’t trying to follow you, they are trying to inform you. Makes sense to me.
Back in the days when I worked for a tiny PBS station in central Illinois (1994-1996), we didn’t have any tapes claiming that we are all about to die. If we had, I should have certainly known about it since I worked in the Master Control booth and it was my duty to insert the tapes we played as well as run EBS tests on the system. What we did have was a sealed envelope that contained codes for each month of the year such as:
January - Alpha Delta
February - Zulu Epsilon
March - Charlie Zulu
So on and so forth. Occassionally, the National Weather Service wire would run warnings about such things as storms, tornados and the like and the NWS printer would start beeping like a madman until you checked the warning and reset it. From what I was told, in the event of a civil emergancy, the wire would say something like “EBS WARNING CHARLIE ZULU ZULU DELTA 168” and then it was my job to check the envelope and see if the code for that month was indeed Charlie Zulu. If it was, I was to open the envelope and see if the internal code was indeed Zulu Delta. If that matched, I would look up the information on emergancy code 168 and then finally I was to run the EBS tone, interrupt the programming with a crawl giving whatever the information for 168 was as well as break in with a voice over. Luckily, no civil emergancies occured during my reign as Master Control operator and so I never got to put this to the test. Unluckily, this means I never got to see the secrets the envelope contained.
I don’t think [italic]The Atomic Cafe[/italic] showed anything close the detailed list of things that the OP is referring to, though Sofa King’s right that it did include a number of snippets that covered some of the civil defense instructions at the time. Plus, it had that turtle cartoon demonstrating how to duck and cover.
Definitely worth a rent if you’re even remotely interested in this topic.
Strider, I don’t know if I understood you correctly, but I lived in Germany for a number of years and never had my car radio come on to tell me about accidents or the like. Some radios have a feature that will interupt your listening for traffic bulletins, but that function is built into the radio and dependant on the station transmitting a particluar tone before the traffic bulletins. Your radio picks up this tone and knows to interrupt the killer guitar riff you were just listening to in order to tell you about some dumb traffic jam a hundered miles away. However I believe that this radio feature is pretty standard now. Interesting but pointless factoid, the German traffic news on the radio is often late or out of date because such bulletins have to be approved by the Autobahn Polizei before they can be broadcast.
Well, I’ve been in Germany several times, and once I rented a car and my radio was certainly in the OFF position when it suddenly came on to inform me of some traffic incident or another. I’m not exactly sure what the situation as I was pretty much surprised by my radio turning itself on all of a sudden. So, yes, this system exists.
Strider, I don’t know if I understood you correctly, but I lived in Germany for a number of years and never had my car radio come on to tell me about accidents or the like. Some radios have a feature that will interupt your listening for traffic bulletins, but that function is built into the radio and dependant on the station transmitting a particluar tone before the traffic bulletins. Your radio picks up this tone and knows to interrupt the killer guitar riff you were just listening to in order to tell you about some dumb traffic jam a hundered miles away. However I believe that this radio feature is pretty standard now. Interesting but pointless factoid, the German traffic news on the radio is often late or out of date because such bulletins have to be approved by the Autobahn Polizei before they can be broadcast.