First test of National Alert System

[duodecima]

Who paid for this test? And who's gonna pay to fix it? And just why would anyone need to tell everyone in the entire mainland, Alaska, Hawaii and other territories something all at the same time?

Not like communications has anything to do with preparedness or anything... I hope to god we never DO need to tell everyone anything so important as that, because widespread, coordinated terrorist activity, nuclear war, or an actual zombipocalypse are the things I can think of where relying on usual (primarily commercial) media sources wouldn't work. If it's something like widespread terrorism, everybody getting their slightly different info with a slightly different spin from their favorite talking head might be disastrous.

We get similar critiques for spending time&money on our personal preparedness, and some of us have been known to rail about our government's lack of preparedness to respond to citizen's needs in a widespread disaster. Well, they're working on it. Think of this like your first practice bug out, where you figure out exactly what you've missed. I'm glad they did it.

[rhi]

Just for fun, I checked the 5 FM presets I had programmed into the little radio I keep in my office:

2/5 got the alert right at 1400 EST and the audio was good.
2/5 got the alert a little late and the audio was unintelligible.
1/5 never got the alert and just kept playing music.

One of the stations that got the alert and good audio was having some fun with the whole thing. The DJ was playing "dentist office" music (this is a classic rock station) and talking about the test for a few minutes before it happened.

The test was so short I never got to check the AM stations.

[Shaper]

Looks like their curfew warning system still needs a little work...I sure hope they get it all sorted out.

[Czechnology]

And just why would anyone need to tell everyone in the entire mainland, Alaska, Hawaii and other territories something all at the same time?

*looks around*

This IS the zombie preparedness forum, right? Where we talk about any and all possible disaster scenarios and how to prepare for them?

[Czechnology]

And just why would anyone need to tell everyone in the entire mainland, Alaska, Hawaii and other territories something all at the same time?

*looks around*

This IS the zombie preparedness forum, right? Where we talk about any and all possible disaster scenarios and how to prepare for them?

[Regulator]

I agree this is a preparedness forum where we discuss all possible disaster scenarios. I also agree that communication is important. However we don’t spend a lot of time communicating about how to survive full scale nuclear war because it’s not a credible threat. If someone wants to prepare for alien attack, I would help and even encourage it knowing that some of their preps could help in another scenario. Now if they spent all their money on magic crystals to repel those aliens and then demand that I also give them money to help their misguided effort, it becomes a problem for me.

I still can’t think of a realistic disaster that would immediately need to be known by the entire country. Even if there was a good reason to have a national emergency alert system currently, why try to upgrade a system from the 50’s? Particularly when you can upload a video of a fat kid with a lightsaber or a couple chicks and a piece of kitchenware to youtube and everyone in the world knows about it in a matter of hours. Maybe the EAS could just get a free facebook page or something.

To be fair, the reason I’m not particulary excited about this deal is this. The only nationwide disaster that I am concerned about is the economic one that we are currently in. Spending more money doesn’t seem to me like a good way to help the situation.

And I’m still curious as to what kinda of disaster would require the entire USA an outlying territories to be notified at the same time. And how would the possible few minutes lead time over the regular news outlets reporting the same disaster make any difference?

[NoAm]

First nationwide Emergency Alert System test hits glitches.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/09/us/emergency-alert-test/

[Patriot Pirate]

Yes communication is good , I am just against the TOTAL takeover of anything by one entity, group or person ect., that's all.

[Czechnology]

Spending more money doesn’t seem to me like a good way to help the situation.

Not on this, I'll agree with that. This was planned before the crisis, and the current administration most likely, and you know how flexible the fed can be.

The EAS is a "Holy shit everything is fucked" system. No internet, no cable, no satellite, no cell, it'll still go out on radio. It's not supposed to be useful for everyday scenarios. I'll grant there's likely more important shit that should be going on, but nobody asked us, and I don't have a time machine, so I'm trying to see the positives in the situation.

[Krustofski]

Yes communication is good , I am just against the TOTAL takeover of anything by one entity, group or person ect., that's all.

I don't pretend to know much about such things, but as far as I understand, it's not a total media control system. While it allows the government to interupt regular broadcast and take control of radio and tv channels, any technician at the station can retake the channel by simply bridging the EAS unit, or if that doesn't work, pulling the plug. At least that's how these little blackbox thingies seem to work.

[Patriot Pirate]

Ok. if the Alert System was intended for the stated ... Why was it not initiated on 9/11 ????? Enough said I think.

[phil_in_cs]

Ok. if the Alert System was intended for the stated ... Why was it not initiated on 9/11 ????? Enough said I think.

I agree. The test happened, some things worked, some things failed, and this thread is now full of bullshit tinfoil crap and I am closing it.