Nationwide Test of the Emergency Broadcast System

First time accepted submitter PattonPending writes "Mark your calendars! On November 9th national communications will be disrupted for around 3 minutes during the first nationwide test of the emergency broadcast system. From the article: 'On November 9, at 2 PM EST, FEMA will transmit the EAS code for national level emergencies to Primary Entry Point (PEP) stations in the national level of the EAS. The PEP stations will then rebroadcast the alert to the general public in their broadcast vicinity, as well as to the next level of EAS Participants monitoring them. This should continue through all levels of the system, until the national alert has been distributed throughout the entire country.'"

Comments

Now THERE'S a system you don't want hacked

[elrous0]

Cue inevitable future headline "Anonymous Hacks FEMA System, Broadcasts Godzilla Attack Warning Across U.S."

Re:Now THERE'S a system you don't want hacked

[MoonBuggy]

"Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News. At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation, and describes the phenomenon as (quote) "like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun" (unquote). We now return you to the music of Ramón Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York. "

I wonder:

[tverbeek]

Did they pick 11/9 for this on purpose?

Re:I wonder:

[MagicM]

Yes and no. FTFA:

The November 9 date is near the end of hurricane season and before the severe winter weather season begins in earnest. The 2 PM EST broadcast time will minimize disruption during rush hours, while ensuring that the test occurs during working hours across the United States.

Re:I wonder:

[gknoy]

"The 2 PM EST broadcast time will minimize disruption during rush hours,"

In CST and MST it will be lunchtime rush hours.. But I don't suppose FEMA give a sh!t about the middle of the country.

Neither do natural disasters. A rush hour test of the EAS would likely be pretty useful.

Obligatory

[Monchanger]

On November 9th national communications will be disrupted...

A communications disruption can mean only one thing...

This is a test...

[DragonHawk]

"This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been writhing on the ground in unspeakable pain, bleeding from every orifice, while your skin peeled off in long, black, ragged strips. This was only a test." (Unknown)

effectiveness in 2011

[tverbeek]

I have to wonder whether this system has lost its effectiveness today. In the 1960s, the combination of radio and television would reach a pretty big percentage of the population; during the day someone in any given house or office was probably watching TV or listening to the radio. But with more people listening to music on iPods and watching video on DVD/DVR - to say nothing of streaming services over IP - that's a lot more gaps in the system.

Re:effectiveness in 2011

[Sockatume]

Japan's government-mandated cellphone earthquake alerts are a wonderful modern solution to that issue. If there's one thing you can count on, it's that you either have a cellphone or are near many people who do.

Re:effectiveness in 2011

[sjames]

Actually, 9/11 would have been a terrible time to use EBS. Emergency broadcasts are only helpful if there's something you can do to mitigate the problem if you are informed.

Re:effectiveness in 2011

[Quietust]

EAS alerts have a distinctive noise they make before the announcement.

Specifically, that noise is a data burst which encodes most of the details of the alert (who sent it, what happened, where it happened, when it happened, etc.). Wikipedia provides a reasonably detailed description of the signal structure and the data encoding.

Time to attack!

[B5_geek]

How kind of them to notify us of when the entire warning system will be disrupted. If I wanted to stage an attack, this would be the perfect chance. All levels of emergency services will be 'confused' and not know what is real and what is fake.

Add the frightened sheep to the mix and it is a perfect chance for an act of terror.

Re:Time to attack!

[Leebert]

"This is not a drill" sounds great in movies and TV, but you do *not* want to hear it in real life. Ever.

You haven't met my dentist.

Not the "this is a test" test.

[DewDude]

This is different than the current test procedures. those are generated locally to make sure the stations equipment works. this going to be a live test. they are actually activating the new AES system as if there was an actual emergency.

the big difference over this new system is that it has better penetration. rather than relying on broasdcast stations alone, cable/satellite operators now have AES equipnent. when an alert is sent, it will interrupt whatever youre watching and throw your box over to a channel. so, unlike before if youre watching dvr or on demand and would miss these alerts, your viewing is interrupted. Verizon ran a test test the other morning at about 3am....dvr viewing was stopped...the box flashed AES on its display and i was shown a computer generated text screen. theyre even talking about being able to activate the system on things like hulu, netflix, xbox, but those are in the works (and may be implemented now).

Announcing the exact date seems bad...

[Tha_Big_Guy23]

I know, that in this environment of increasing paranoia, I'm probably not the first person to think that announcing a nationwide test of the emergency broadcast system and giving the exact date and time of the test could potentially be a bad plan. It seems to me that perhaps someone wishing to perform any sort of nationwide nefarious activities would plan to do so on a day like that. I can see it now...

"Did you hear that there is a "

"Oh, don't worry about it, they were just testing the emergency broadcast system today. Nothing to worry about."

Just my $0.02 though.

Re:First time, eh?

[Sockatume]

Indulge me for a moment. Is there any way they could do a test of this system which would not cause you to make that empty, cynical remark?

What, already?

[SEWilco]

Another Election Day, another national emergency.

Re:Perfect time for an incident

[SuricouRaven]

All evacuation tests should include a $100 award to the first 10% of people to reach the safety point, plus a couple of disruptive people like mothers fighting against the flow of traffic to reunite with seperated children. It's more realistic then.

Operating the old EBS equipment

[Punchinello]

I would guess a good percentage of the Slashdot community worked in college radio (seems the nerdly thing to do). But for those who didn't, let me tell you about the old Emergency Broadcast System...

The radio station DJs were taught to take the EBS equipment in the studio very seriously. Our studio was located in an actual fallout shelter... thick concrete walls and no windows... we even had the cool fallout shelter sign outside the door. If one needed to take shelter from nuclear fallout there was plenty of vinyl to keep you company but not much else. The space was tiny.

We had to know the procedures for handling both an automatic EBS test (triggered at random times) and a manual test which we performed weekly. More importantly we had to know the procedure in the event of an actual emergency.

The automatic test would just happen randomly in the middle of your show any time of day or night (I don't recall how frequently this happened). My normal broadcast would get hijacked by the EBS equipment (which was connected to the transmitter) and the alert system would begin broadcasting the test message, followed by the tone, followed by closing message. After this test we had to manually reset the EBS equipment by pressing a button (or power cycling the damned thing) in order to regain control of the local broadcast from the studio.

The manual test was performed weekly by the DJs (we did it at 6AM on Monday). I'd play a cart with the opening message, "This is a test..." and then I'd have to press a button on the EBS to play the tone. It tested the system's ability to interrupt my broadcast. At the end of the tone I hit the reset (or as previously mentioned, power cycled it) and then played a second cart with the closing message "this concludes a test of the Emergency Broadcast System..."

In both test cases I had to log the time of the test (or risk going to FCC, bang you in the ass, prison??).

If the message turned out NOT to be a test I was to tear open the special red envelope hanging by the equipment. Sadly, I never got to do this. The envelope contained a codeword. One would compare the code transmitted to the EBS with the code in the envelope. If it was a match there were further instructions in the envelope which remain a mystery to me (although someone once told me that since we were a small station we would likely be instructed to shut down our transmitter while stations with more kilowatts would be instructed to boost their signal).