Not to worry. 
I thought it was used locally for things like tornado warnings. What do they use instead?
Yeah, what does that mean? It’s used in New Orleans on a pretty regular basis, whenever there’s a tornado warning or flash flood warnings. I heard it used in Mississippi in the hours leading up to Katrina as tornadoes (tornados sp?) started touching down along our evacuation route.
The EBS/EAS is the way it is for the same reason that the air traffic control system continued using 'Sixties-era vacuum tube computers and pre-TCP/IP networking well into the 'Nineties, or the Space Shuttle using Apollo-era AP-101 guidence computers: because it’s less risky and less costly than trying to implement a new and potentially flawed replacement system. Implementing new technology–especially on a large scale–brings in considerable risk and requires a substantial investment in new hardware and training. Often enough, the decision on whether to upgrade a system or not isn’t based on how much better it might be, but rather that the old junk works good enough. “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
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Perhaps not nationally, but it’s been used a few times here to announce severe weather conditions.
I like it that the majority of stations are smart enough to ignore an accidental activation. I prefer that people do a bit of thinking before knee-jerk reacting, and use their common sense.
Ridiculous! Completely inaccurate!
I have personally heard the system being used, for dangerous weather conditions in the area.
If you mean the system has never been activated nation-wide, that’s probably true. But I can’t recall any emergency that actually threatened the entire nation, from Maine to California, Alaska to Florida (and Hawaii, too). When do you think it should have been activated, but wasn’t?
I have had smoke alarms in my house for over 25 years, and they have never gone off except when I test them. But I still consider them worthwhile.
Good Lord. Am I the only one here who remembers CONELRAD?
I remember plastic table radios in the 50’s and early 60’s with the CONELRAD symbol on the dial.
I was going to ask, has it ever been activated? I’ve never seen it happen, for hurricanes or ice at least. I mean, there’s weather alerts, but those aren’t the same thing, are they? I’ve never heard the beep and not heard “This is a test…” - in fact, if I did I believe I’d crap my pants.
Here’s a radio link for anyone who’s interested to a humorous EBS test from the early 70s.
Okay, explain how a low-budget production gets through better than a high-budget production when both of them would use the same carrier frequency and the same modulation and both of them would be subject to the same environmental factors.
There was no guarantee of that back in the old days, regardless of how far back you go. The only difference now is that the veneer of incorruptibility is being broken, and I think that’s a good thing. Oh, and news has always been a public enterprise in this country, and the countries where it is a public service have the news that has the least to do with reality. (Fox News is bad, but Pravda back in the Soviet era was much worse.)
“Well, I remember seein’ some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn’t work so well.” I think Bob Dylan said that.
“Had this been a real emergency, do you think anyone would have stuck around to put on this recording?” I said that.
One potential problem with “jazzing it up” is that people wouldn’t recognize an alert from a Seven Up commercial or a regular news bulletin. When your bubble of slick white noise is popped by the screech of the EAS and the TV goes all retro, you know something is going on and it gets your attention.
Because, in this case, someone actually did think about the children!
I wonder if the crappy sound, cheesy graphics and and grizzled voices are used precisely because it does stand out from the slick graphics and production values used in normal programming?
EDIT: Beaten by Sapo
Yes, what I meant was that it has never been activated nationally, or even on a multi-state basis. It has been activated on a local level many times, for relatively small-scale weather incidents such as a tornado sighting or an approaching storm. Frankly, there’s no particular reason why this sort of situation requires the EAS. The NWS, NOAA or the National Hurricane Center are better equipped in these situations, with regards to a) making the decision to issue an alert and b) knowing what information to disseminate. And of course, local stations can report this information at any time… they don’t need the permission of a government agency to allow them to warn people of an approaching storm.
The purpose of the system is to allow the President (or since 1963 a governor) to commandeer the airwaves to report on wide-spread incident and allow emergency management to communicate with the public immediately and directly. The EBS/EAS has not been activated for this kind of event, where a broad geographical area is endangered, or when the scope of the threat is potentially quite large. For example, the EAS wasn’t activated in Lousiana or Mississippi in the hours before Hurricane Katrina, despite high level discussions that concluded the devestation would be enormous and widespread. The EAS wasn’t activated during the wild fires in San Diego a few years ago, which at one point engulfed an area the size of Rhode Island. The system wasn’t used on 9/11, when there were multiple terrorist attacks in multiple cities. If you’re not going to use it in these cases, when would you use it? And if the answer is never, then why continue to spend money on the infrastructure and why require all FCC-licensees to mantain and test the equipment?
In retrospect, I’m not sure an alert on 9/11 would have accomplished anything, but at the time, as the events were unfolding, the scope of what was occurring wasn’t clear. A functional EAS could have done a much better job of letting folks in New Orleans know about the mandatory evacuation, and better disseminate the warnings that the NWS and NHC had issued (with regards to the destructive force of the winds and the expectation that the levees would fail.) The EAS might also have done a better job of reaching the members of that culturally diverse area who didn’t speak English and weren’t served by the traditional media.
I always figured it was for nuclear armageddon, or barring that at least national stuff. I thought we’d hear it if there was a bomb or an invasion or something. I don’t think of it in terms of local events.
What system would you have used, for hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, etc? Why invent a second system when we have a working first system? As for depending on local stations to report the info instead, do you mean all the cable channels that are actually broadcast hundreds of miles away? I don’t expect Chicago area WGN to tell me when a tornado is near my house in Minnesota, but I hope the local cable network with override the feed from Chicago, and tell me.
I’d use the National Weather Service, which was designed specifically for that purpose and works quite well for the sorts of events you describe. And I never said anything about creatng a second system. I’ve tried to make two points. First, the EBS/EAS system was designed for national or large scale events. It hasn’t been used that way, although there have been times when it could have been helpful. Second, we have better systems in place for making more localized announcements.
I have no idea why you’re confused about what I meant when I said local stations. Local is local. Chicago is not local to Minnesota.
Besides, cable networks don’t participate in the EAS, but your local cable provider does. If you are watching WGN in Minneapolis and there’s a tornado, your emergency notification comes courtesy of Comcast
The EAS consists of primary plus secondary stations, and the latter are supposed to rebroadcast the emergency statements. These secondary stations have special receivers tuned continuously to the primary station, which are designed to be triggered by the two-toned screech of the test. Thus, your reaction isn’t being tested, so if you hide in the closet curled up in a fetal postion, there is no need to notify anyone.