Failures Mark First National Test of Emergency Alert System

An anonymous reader writes "The first full-scale test of the National Emergency Alert System failed on Tuesday at 2 PM. Some radio and television networks did not air any alert, while the performance of others was inconsistent. 'Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test. Some Comcast subscribers saw their cable boxes turn to QVC before the alert, while Time Warner Cable customers in New York did not see any alert at all.'" If you were tuned to any American broadcaster at the time, did the alert system reach you?

Comments

Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those words never go together. I am shocked.

Re:Government failure?

[ackthpt]

Each failure is an opportunity to learn and improve.

The real failure would be to not identify failures and not improve - then we'd have to be blasted about it by the sensationalist media, trumpeting how inept government is.

Re:Government failure?

[rwven]

This is intended to be satirical and sarcastic, right?

Re:Government failure?

[BradleyUffner]

Those words never go together. I am shocked.

Yeah... except it was the private broadcast companies that failed to properly show the alert not the goverment.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say, I think an actual failure would be if it were during an emergency.

As I say at work, this is why we test. Debugging finds bugs. That's kinda what it's for.

Re:Government failure?

[Crudely_Indecent]

As I understand it, the system was supposed to take away the local broadcasters control over the alert.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what the word "Test" means, right?

Re:Government failure?

[neokushan]

^ This

Testing for something and finding that the test didn't pass is NOT a failure of a system. It's exactly what it said - a test. Now they know where the faults are they can work on fixing them.

Re:Government failure?

[timeOday]

Government negativism has reached a questionable new high. Most often the criticisms are not even quantified (as in this story), not compared to private industry (where possible) (e.g. Social Security fraud), and not compared to historical or global norms. The economy sucks and the public is united only in being unhappy about it, in which they feel some solidarity, yet can't form a consensus on what to do about it.

Re:Government failure?

[smpoole7]

>private broadcast companies ... failed ...

Been waiting for people would say that.

The engineer at the local PEP (Primary Entry Point) in our state was standing at the transmitter site, watching the equipment, when the test began. He was on the phone with FEMA, as a matter of fact.

The test never came through. The (FEMA-supplied) equipment never responded. As a result, most of central Alabama never even got the test.

The failure was on THEIR end, not ours. We had done TWO statewide tests just prior to the national one and they worked fine. Don't blame us, dood. :)

Re:Government failure?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Err, Human failure....

I'm never sure why people like to pile on the government. Like any social organization, and Soylent Green, it's made of people. Just like Citibank screwed itself, Enron self destructed, Goldman Sachs enabled Greece to self-destruct, all governments and companies are made of people.

One additional thing to add, government employees rarely get high pay (remember that those $600 toilet seats were paid to private contractors). So, you're blaming fallible humans, a group made more likely to be fallible by the fact you don't want to pay (taxes) to hire the best.

Re:Government failure?

[quetwo]

I was at the PEP in our area. The CAP message that FEMA sent out was coded wrong. They sent out the CAP message using the format they dictated last year, not the newer format dictated this summer. Most of the equipment I know threw out any message it did get, and it simply didn't forward it to any downstreams.

Those who supported the backup method of the older EAN system, which they were supposed to foward regardless of the CAP messaging did so.

10136: EAN NATIONAL EMERGENCY ACTION NOTIFICATION 'LP 1(L1)'(MI-TXPEP) ORG=PEP
                'Wed Nov 9 14:03:00 2011 EST' to 'Wed Nov 9 14:18:00 2011 EST'
        Forwarded : 'Wed Nov 9 14:00:34 2011 EST'
                  United States(000000) District of Columbia, DC(011001)

All in all, in our area, we had 1 TV station, 2 radio stations, and 1 cable system (out of 5) that did any type of notification -- wether it came from IPAWS or EAN. That's a failure in my mind, as we were supposed to have our older EAN system as a backup.

Re:Government failure?

[hairyfeet]

Question: Were they supposed to set off the Klaxon horns? Because with everyone online the only time I know if anything is going on is either ForecastFox pops up a warning or the klaxons go off. If they were supposed to go off it was an epic fail here, nothing. My mom has the TV on pretty much 24/7 and didn't report squat, so fail there too.

Re:Government failure?

[Obfuscant]

Testing for something and finding that the test didn't pass is NOT a failure of a system. It's exactly what it said - a test.

And when the test fails, it is, indeed, a failure of the system as a whole. What was the intended outcome? (A nationwide alert.) Was the outcome achieved? (No.) This is almost a "by definition" kind of concept, you know. You test something and it doesn't work, that means IT FAILED.

The only way this test didn't fail "because it was a test" is if you think the important operational criterion is the ability to test, not the ability to notify people in an emergency. Or maybe you are confused by the use of the word "test", and are thinking of how when a student takes a test and doesn't pass it doesn't mean the system failed. Well, in this case, the test wasn't applied to students, it was a direct test of the system as a whole and yes, it did, really, overall, fail miserably.

Now they know where the faults are they can work on fixing them.

Now they know where some of the faults are and can work on fixing them. If you don't get a successful test of the entire system, then the parts that didn't get tested may still have faults that weren't detected. If a major switch somewhere failed, you can spend a lot of money fixing it and then feel safe, without realizing that every leaf node that it fed would have failed had it gotten the alert.

There is no question that we are going to need another test, after a significant period of time. And then another. And another. Soon we will be getting tired of the testing and it will take place at 3AM like the regular regional tests already do.

The important, unasked question is just why do we still need a national alert system? Is there someone out there ready to plop 100 nukes into all our major cities all at once? Unlikely. Would notifying all those people all at once really have much positive effect? We already have localized alerting systems that are tested on a regular basis, and we have better means of distribution -- NOAA weather radio. Do we need to fix this system, or should we just pull the national plug and let the regional ops continue?

As for the original article mentioning that Comcast switched to QVC before the test message, yeah, so what? That's how the system is designed. It is much easier for a cable system to send the "everyone change to channel X" command downstream instead of trying to insert the alert message into every digital stream. Or insert the alert into one digital stream and then copy it to all the other streams. Of course, the ANALOG channels need to have individual alerts for those people who use analog TVs, but all the digital subs who have digital cable boxes can get by with one channel for the alert.

I was listening to local AM radio -- not a peep. The news story leading the 11AM (2PM EST) report? "If you can hear me now, the test failed."

Re:Government failure?

[RockClimbingFool]

Hey, you do know the difference between DEVELOPMENT testing and ACCEPTANCE testing, right?

The national alert system is a product in development. This was a test to determine what is working and what is not working. You can simulate and test individual pieces all you want, but until you get the opportunity to test the entire system, you have no idea what links in the chain are broken.

This country is full of fucking idiots that have no clue how engineering is performed. Just keep your misinformation to yourself and stop trying to make those around you dumber.

Re:Government failure?

[misosoup7]

Seriously? If anyone it's inept, it's the cable companies. Government mandated you to do a test. You screwed up. How this is a government failure is beyond comprehension.

Re:Government failure?

[mspohr]

I remember the good old days when every town had an "air raid siren" (in the USA). They would test them weekly (usually at noon on Saturday). Great fun. Maybe we should bring these back.

Re:Government failure?

[Applekid]

This country is full of fucking idiots that have no clue how engineering is performed. Just keep your misinformation to yourself and stop trying to make those around you dumber.

If I were a bettin' man, I'd say that since the general public perceives it as a failure, it will be leveraged to milk some more government spending. To keep us safe from communism / terrorists / pirates / ghosts / pirate ghosts.

Re:Government failure?

[Obfuscant]

The national alert system is a product in development.

Incorrect. It is a system that has been in place, in one form or another, for decades. Broadcast stations are regularly inspected to verify the existence and operability of their equipment, and state and local testing of this system has been ongoing for decades. While parts have changed, the concept has not.

This is not a "development system", it is a full blown production environment and it has never been tested as a whole. Now it has. And it failed.

You can simulate and test individual pieces all you want, but until you get the opportunity to test the entire system, you have no idea what links in the chain are broken.

Which changes nothing about the fact that they system truly did fail, and trying to wave it off as "development testing" is just ridiculous, or that it wasn't a failure because this was "just a test" is even more so.

We've had the opportunity to test the entire system for a very long time. Decades, at least. What's the excuse for not testing it ten years ago?

Re:Government failure?

[Shirogitsune]

Failure? In my Government? It's more likely than you think.

Re:Government failure?

[AlienIntelligence]

We've had the opportunity to test the entire system for a very long time. Decades, at least. What's the excuse for not testing it ten years ago?

I'm gonna guess, lack of digital devices adapted for the task.

But that's just a guess.

-AI

Re:Government failure?

[4partee]

I'm sure this disappointed Obambi. He wanted to use it to declare himself KING so he wouldn't have to work around that pesky Congress and that stuffy Constitution! Such bother!

Re:Government failure?

[thegarbz]

I have to say, I think an actual failure would be if it were during an emergency.
As I say at work, this is why we test. Debugging finds bugs. That's kinda what it's for.

Debugging is a pre-release concept. If you test the system that is in place and has been commissioned it is no longer a bug, it is a failure. You can not rely on testing after release of a system to find bugs. Testing after release is verification that it hasn't failed since its introduction.

Or to think of it another way, if the test hadn't been done now and the system would need to have been used tomorrow would you still have called it finding bugs?

Re:Government failure?

[thegarbz]

^ This

Testing for something and finding that the test didn't pass is NOT a failure of a system. It's exactly what it said - a test. Now they know where the faults are they can work on fixing them.

I disagree. Testing for something before commissioning is a test. Once a system has been commissioned and handed over any subsequent bugs can no longer be considered as bugs. The basis for this is that once a system has been handed over to a client the assumption needs to be made that any bug will turn up in a live scenario.

Basically imagine if this wasn't a test. It would have been considered a horrendous failure of an installed and presumed working system.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]What was the intended outcome? (A nationwide alert.) Was the outcome achieved? (No.)[/quote]

I take it you're not a big fan of the discovery part of the scientific method, since you would view anything other than verification of predicted results of an experiment as a failure.

Re:Government failure?

[meerling]

Yes:
test as in an engineer trying to find the problems,
  not test as in this affects your grade...

Re:Government failure?

[mug funky]

some of them are trying to figure out what to do about it. who knows if they'll be successful.

i'm finding the occupy thing fascinating as a social experiment. and also as a means of making business and politicians pee their pants in fear. their (over)reactions have also been fascinating.

Re:Government failure?

[camperdave]

If an alarm does not go off when it is supposed to go off then it is a failure. It doesn't matter if it was a test, or a drill, or whatever. The system failed to do what it was supposed to do. The TEST of the system was a success, however, because it found that the system failed.

Re:Government failure?

[hairyfeet]

Bring them back? they never left here (north central AR) as they are useful for tornado warnings. They set them off on noon every Wed just like clockwork, in fact i know a couple of older folks that actually check their clocks by listening for the horn. Frankly I don't see why everyplace don't have them for warnings because they really do cut through any noise and you'd can't mistake the klaxon for ANY other sound.

Re:Government failure?

[NiceGeek]

This is why they *tested* it you dipshit.

Re:Government failure?

[flosofl]

Air Raid Sirens? Not in the midwest. They've always been for storm and tornado alerts. In Illinois municipalities test them at 10am every first Tues of the month.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely right. Heard several comments that the old grey boxes did a better job at decoding the gibberish than the new blue digital boxes. And CAP Compliance, now that's a hoot! Despite the mandate for broadcasters to have CAP compliance by the end of September, the FCC could not even put together the rules for CAP in time, so they just kicked that can into next year. Anyone criticizing broadcasters should note that they have been doing EAS successfully for years, saving lives through tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, and missing child alerts. They only time it was totally screwed up was when it originated from our capital. I believe when the dust settles we will find out that FEMA originated the test badly and set off a chain of events from decoders that did not know what to do with a badly formed audio recording that was passed down from station to station to station to station. Seems to me that in a true national emergency we want the folks in DC protecting our freedom and safety while leaving the warnings to the TV and radio networks. EAS really only makes sense on the local level, not national.

Re:Government failure?

[cpricejones]

Well, NPR had the test on. But imagine that if you draw a Venn diagram of "fucking idiots" and "NPR listeners" ... well, you get my point.

Re:Government failure?

[ksemlerK]

Colton WA, and Uniontown WA have the air raid siren. They are tested daily. The Uniontown one goes off at noon sharp, the Colton one goes of at 1830 sharp. Since the towns are 3 miles apart, You can hear both sirens in either town.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the good old days, when you tested to make sure things work as they should, not to ensure they don't work but it's not a big deal since nobody expected them to anyway.

Re:Government failure?

[mspohr]

When I was in grade school in Ohio (50s) we had civil defense drills. Something about nuclear war... when the sirens went off we were supposed to kiss our ass goodbye.

Re:Government failure?

[freedom_india]

Nice try. Since 1950s it has been in in use.

Re:Government failure?

[freedom_india]

...and duck under your tables.

Re:Government failure?

[tehcyder]

Those words never go together. I am shocked.

Because failures by non-governmental organisations are unheard of, of course.

*cough* Lehmans *cough* Enron *cough*BP *cough* Bhopal *cough*

Re:Government failure?

[tehcyder]

No, you are wrong.

If a car manufacturer does a safety test by crashing a car filled with creash test dummies into a wall, is it a failure if a hitherto unnoticed weakness is sptted and one of the dummies is beheaded by a flying iPhone dock?

Re:Government failure?

[tehcyder]

Basically imagine if this wasn't a test.

Yes, let's imagine it was a small teapot or a pink unicorn. Never mind that it was in actual fact a test.

Re:Government failure?

[tehcyder]

Debugging is a pre-release concept. If you test the system that is in place and has been commissioned it is no longer a bug, it is a failure.

This isn't some computer game. It is a real world system, which obviously is imperfect, and this test shows where the improvements need to be made.

In real life it will never reach 100% of people anyway, but even if it only reached 50% that is a lot better than nothing. Obviously you want to get as near to 100% as possible, but the fact that you don't doesn't mean the whole thing is totally useless even as it is.

It's not like a piece of software which can be rendered totally useless by a single error somewhere.

Re:Government failure?

[thegarbz]

True, but read the comments. This result wasn't even in the ballpark of the design case. Hell it wasn't even the same game. It's not just cable companies, and satellite TV which didn't broadcast the message, but it also didn't go out on most radio stations.

Based on the result 50% would have been a lot better than nothing, but also would have been a lot better than what they actually got.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

My CS teacher once asked: "When is a test a failure"?
The correct answer: "When it doesn't find any bugs".

A test that doesn't find any bugs is a waste of time. If you didn't test, you would have the exact same result. You don't test to prove that the system works, because that is not provable. All you can prove is that you didn't find any bugs. In a complex system, there are always bugs, but we can fix the bugs we find.

Re:Government failure?

[0-until-pink]

I'm curious. I work for an American corporation and in any problem that arises that requires collaboration the first priority seems to be proving it's not your fault as quickly as possible.Recent software engineering methodologies try to emphasize that a problem belongs to a team or even to a team of teams but the onus is to get the issue solved not show it's somebody elses problem. Am I wrong? I blame the fact that it's so easy to get fired in the US.

Re:Government failure?

[surgen]

As I understand it, the system was supposed to take away the local broadcasters control over the alert.

The broadcaster doesn't lose technical control over their systems, they are obligated by the FCC to use their systems to relay alerts.

The hardware for the EAS is owned and operated by the broadcaster themselves. In some places, individual broadcasters failed to receive the alert at all due to a failure upstream. In that case failure to transmit it is not on them, but if the upstream did transmit, responsibility is handed to the broadcaster. When I worked at a radio station, basically we had two different upstream radio frequencies to monitor, if there was an alert on either of them that met the criteria for us to retransmit, it was our responsibility for doing so.

Re:Government failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are never "failures" when running any tests or experiments. You always get useful information after the event even. If it works flawlessly, you get important info; if it does not work flawlessly, you still get important info.

Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[cwgmpls]

Tests are supposed to fine failures. That's what they are for.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

yes and no....It is so posed to work but does not (Which is good because it is a test). What if something bad happened and it could not reach you or me?

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[MichaelKristopeit353]

the test was successful... in showing the failures.

i use charter digital cable on a tivo HDXL with a cablecard... i got the alert right on time while i was watching other recorded content. it didn't last a full 30 seconds... i was on a work conference call at the time and everyone else said they got the alert too... one on radio and the other on broadcast tv.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[DikSeaCup]

Because there's a fiscal penalty for failure when it's found!

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[gl4ss]

you'd have heard it on tweets and on cnn. seriously. "omg nukes incoming!!"

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

Under what circumstance would everyone in the nation need to be informed instantly? To warn you the nuclear weapon that's been pointed in your general direction since birth actually launched? That the hurricane we've been watching for over a week is finally going to make landfall? That the [insert party not running the warning button] is holding up some piece of legislation? That someone flew planes into buildings in downtown Manhattan?

Pretty sure we can live without the national wide warning system for another decade or 100. News of 9/11 spread very rapidly just from word of mouth, flaky internet access and even before everyone older than age 1 had a cellphone. Not to mention the local emergency responders reacted without it as well as the local citizens who were away from ground zero didn't have a panic trample everything in their path reaction.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[khallow]

Under what circumstance would everyone in the nation need to be informed instantly? Under what circumstance would everyone in the nation need to be informed instantly? That the hurricane we've been watching for over a week is finally going to make landfall? [...] That someone flew planes into buildings in downtown Manhattan?

Oh look, good reasons just showed up. It's almost like you don't need us at all to do your thinking for you.

Pretty sure we can live without the national wide warning system for another decade or 100.

You just gave three reasons to the contrary.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[oddjob1244]

Tests are supposed to fine failures

Maybe we could run more "tests" to help balance the budget? =)

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

Like your test post where you misspelled the word find. Now you can correct the spelling error and work on post version .02

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[DarkOx]

Tests are to discover failures but there is a difference between and handful of stations not getting it right across the country and needing to remediate those and wide spread failures by major carriers being the mode of the outcome.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

This gets an "informative", not a "funny"?

Do you see what he did there? The OP wrote "fine", not "find", so he said "fiscal penalty". Get it?

I weep ...

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understood what he was saying. Hurricanes don't require a NATIONAL alert. Communities affected already receive regional emergency broadcasts. Same goes for tornadoes/earthquakes/etc. It is unlikely in the event of a nuclear/terrorist attack the government would alert the american public, since odds are it will either 1) Do no good and just cause widespread panic and be too late to allow evacuation or 2) Turn out to be a false alert and piss everyone off. Like the other AC, I can't see any actual use for the system. And this is totally ignoring that a radio/television broadcast alert system is going to miss a *LOT* more people than it did even 10 years ago as we move away from those mediums. Colleges have it right: an opt-in text message alert system that warns you of danger no matter where you are.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[cheater512]

Erm a hurricane affects a city or two, at worst a state. Planes flying in to buildings has a even smaller net effect only part of a city.

Neither need *nation wide* emergency broadcasts.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[GameboyRMH]

I was wondering what kind of situation could make such a system necessary. When a disaster happens the whole world is watching the news channels and sites within minutes anyways.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[khallow]

I don't think you understood what he was saying.

I sure did. A national alert system is not only useful for national alerts, but also local ones.

Like the other AC, I can't see any actual use for the system.

In the event of a disaster, you're more likely to have a working radio than a working cell phone.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[khallow]

Erm a hurricane affects a city or two, at worst a state. Planes flying in to buildings has a even smaller net effect only part of a city.

Neither need *nation wide* emergency broadcasts.

So remove the coverage from the places that will never experience disasters. Problem solved.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[omnichad]

I'm a staff member at a public university. Those signed up for text alerts did NOT receive an EAS-related text yesterday.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[antdude]

Fine failures? Why would we want that? ;)

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Locutus]

except fire drills and things like that where they tell you the time it'll occur and even stage evacuations to pass "the test". I once worked at a new facility where strange tripod sensors were all around and we were told to not use certain equipment for the week. It was only much later that I learned those sensors were some kind of environmental sensors required before long term occupation of the building was allowed.

I agree that properly run tests are supposed to find failures and proper procedures solve the problems found and future tests find other failures if there are any. Ten years after 9/11 and this is just coming about is my question. Remember how the dead hijackers were given visa extensions something like 3 years after the enacted the attacks? I think it was the 2008 election before Bush and his party started talking about immigration issues.

I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system instead of relying on a government operated one. Maybe something tied in with HAM operators and their data passing system. Handhelds and base station radios are not that expensive these days.

LoB

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[epine]

Yeah, after Y2K there were headlines screaming about the failure of failure wondering if the preparation had been worth it after all.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[EdIII]

I think the geeks would be better off relying on their own form of warning system

Yeahhhhhhh..... maybe not.

I remember the Internet on 9/11. It went basically this way:

1) IT people talking/screaming with other IT people relating information as it was happening. Information got *slightly* altered from one "hop" to the other.
2) Mailing Lists and IRC channels on fire with reports about everything from aliens, aliens raping people, mad cow disease attack, the Russians invading on the East Coast, ICBM launch confirmed by a friend at an undisclosed military location, etc.
3) Screams of, "But I have not gotten laid yet! It's NOT fair!"
4) Fuck it. Meet me in Everquest. We're taking those bastards down before we die.

The "Enemy" could not have created a better disinformation system if they tried.

Facebook? Twitter? ... Farmville? It would be an even more glorious cluster fuck if it happened twice.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[geekoid]

No there isn't.
Failure is a failure. It's a huge complex system that's never been tested.
The issue seems to have been a software bug.

Of course, I can't think of a reason we need one anymore.
What has ever happened that needed everyone in the nation to take immediate action?

9/11? no. Pearl Harbor? no.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[jafiwam]

Events that would make a national alert useful:

Super large solar flare

Asteroid/Comet imminent highly probable hit Earth or Moon

Coordinated widespread terror attack (biological, or conventional)

The above combined with declaration of war by outside party

Aliens (unlikely, but also can't be ruled out)

A national warning system isn't USELESS, it's just addressing low-probability events and filling gaps that may be covered by other more localized means. Saying it won't work perfectly is different than saying it won't work at all. You should learn the difference.

The thing is, if it isn't in place we definitely can't use it. If it is in place, it may turn out to be quite useful in ways that weren't imagined.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[geekoid]

ALl that will still happen with a country wide alert system

Frankly, 9/11 was on the news in minutes after the first impact.

And what could anyone outside do anyways? /. carried a pretty damn good recording of the events.
The VAST MAJORITY of online information was reasonable accurate.

Twitter has alerted people extremely well in earthquakes and hurricanes.
Social media is where a lot of people are, so information spreads quickly. And any incorrect information gets corrected the moment people turn on the TV, or goes to a illegitimate news source.

What disinformation? A minority of people saying patently obvious nonsense?

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

When the US or Israel attack Iran in the coming months, the situation could be very interesting. Random missiles from random countries could start flying around.

I am not talking about a Russian or Chinese massive retaliation, but any sympathetic country (N. Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.) could decide to make some noise.

If you haven't noticed, there is some guiding force behind the Arab spring goverment overthrows. Most of the regimes ousted may have backed Iran. We are laying the groundwork for those countries to sit out the upcoming operation.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Obfuscant]

I sure did. A national alert system is not only useful for national alerts, but also local ones.

Nonsense. There is no need for an alert sent to people in the northwest that the hurricane that the news has been reporting on 24/7 for the last week finally made landfall in North Carolina. If you care, you're already watching the news. If you don't care, you don't need to know about it right this very minute.

Ditto someone flying a plane into the Chicago Sears Tower. If you live in Chitown, then yeah, you need to know. But not only do I not need to know about it right this minute out here in Oregon, there is nothing I can do about it right this minute anyway. The US postal service will take a day or two to get my additional check to the Red Cross. Any local Red Cross critical volunteers already have their own alerting system. If the phrase "Red Cross" confuses you, replace it with DMAT or any other crisis reaction team.

In the event of a disaster, you're more likely to have a working radio than a working cell phone.

In the event of a national alert, you're more likely to be listenting to your iWhat or cell phone mp3s than to a broadcast station, and by the time you figure out there was an alert (by seeing many of the people around you starting to panic) you'll have missed it.

In the event of a disaster on the other side of the country, or even in the middle of the country, I'm more likely not to be impacted by it, and most likely not able to do anything about it or need to do anything about it, anyway. Even if I had relatives in the impacted area, there is nothing I could do for them right this minute that would require instant notification of the event.

Now, if something happens in this region, yes, there is a chance I might need to know. A tsunami alert for the coast, for example. That's why the regional and state-level alerts are valuable, and that system is tested already. We don't need Daddy Obama or Mommy FEMA issuing a nationwide alert telling us that a hurricane has hit Florida or an earthquake has hit SF. Or even that a tsunami is headed for Oregon.

Face it, the Cold War is over, the threat of the Ruskies lobbing a few hundred MIRVs our way is gone, and the best means of notifying people being a national alert system using broadcast is over. Regional disasters require regional, not national, systems.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

Declaration of nationwide martial law by the federal government.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[thegarbz]

Tests are supposed to find failures before a system is handed over to the customer.

A test is done because a system is not guaranteed to be working. A test done post commissioning is not a test, it is a validation that the system is still working. A test on a live system is definitely not supposed to find failures.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[marcosdumay]

How much can failures pay anyway?

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF internet were you using? The one I was using looked nothing like that on 9/11. Other than the fact it didn't exist yet, it sounds almost like you were getting your info from 4chan.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[smpoole7]

> It's a huge complex system that's never been tested.

Ummm ... no. It has never been tested on a nationwide basis -- that was the purpose of this particular test -- but folks, we've been using EAS for years at the state level and it works just fine. Those of us who set up the systems (I'm a radio engineer) are completely familiar with it, and it's a no-brainer. It's essentially 70's-era technology. (Ever notice how it the intro and extro sound like old dial-up modem tones? That's exactly what they are: they're at a relatively low baud rate, similar to the packet radio that Ham radio operators came up with decades ago.)

The fact is (forgive me, because I'm very frustrated), the Federal Government could screw up boiling a pot of water. They'd find some way to burn up the pot, or they'd turn on the wrong burner. Why? Because it's all politically-correct committee meetings and long drawn out "planning sessions" and other tommy rot for something that just AIN'T THAT DEEP, people. There are probably dozens (if not hundreds) people here on Slashdot who could design and program a simple encoder/decoder pair for EAS, using the sound card in your computer.

I normally try to steer clear of the political discussions here, but nothing -- and I repeat, NOTHING -- dismays me more, as an American in his 50's, than the rising number of Government Fanbois nowadays. The Government can do no wrong, we can trust them with everything (including our healthcare) . .. . and they can't even get a simple, nationwide test using 70's-level technology right?

Give. Stephen. A. Break.

We (meaning radio and television) are generally credited with saving a lot of lives on April 27th when those horrible tornadoes came through Alabama. I'm VERY proud of that. We were HUMMING. All of us were working together, and we had info on the air as soon as we received it. Bang, bam, "go to your safe place NOW." Local and regional emergency officials triggered the system multiple times. For each, our equipment automatically picked out the correct alerts for our area and we never missed a beat.

Repeat: THIS IS NOT THAT DEEP. We do it all the time. We're very, very good at it. And why the Federal Government has taken years, and STILL can't figure out how to send out a uniform, nationwide alert signal, is absolutely, utterly baffling to me.

Now: some decaf, then I'm off to bed. :)

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[L4t3r4lu5]

I was walking from college to the local town when the first plane hit the WTC. That's a 10 minute walk. As soon as I entered the town I knew something was up, as the local TV stores were rammed and the streets were empty. I walked into the store I was heading for and the guy on the till said "A plane's just been flown into the World Trade Centre."

I waited for a bus, 15 minute ride and 5 minute walk to my mate's house to watch the news, and I still saw the second plane hit live.

I live on the other side of the Atlantic. News spreads REALLY fast.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[EdIII]

WTF internet were you using?

Other than the fact it didn't exist yet

Oh Boy. You caught me. The InterTubes came after 9/11. :D

I guess all that stuff from the before time, that looked a lot like TCP/IP v4 with peering and transit agreements, routing, BGP, fiber op cables across oceans... was not the Internet.

Who knew?

it sounds almost like you were getting your info from 4chan

There is no information on 4chan. Just a bunch of goatse and random anime/furry pictures.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[evilviper]

2) Mailing Lists and IRC channels on fire with reports about everything from aliens, aliens raping people, mad cow disease attack, the Russians invading on the East Coast, ICBM launch confirmed by a friend at an undisclosed military location, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I remember all that, too, but that doesn't undermind the idea, it just means we need a hierarchy, rather than wikipedia style anarchy or a "truthiness" system such as /. moderation.

There was certainly good information going around. NANOG is a great place to start because it's unbiased, unemotional technical information about which routes are down. That could be complimented by the worlds biggest nagios monitoring system, just grabbing a couple SNMP values from random devices spread all over the country.

With GPS and wifi in every phone, you could also get a good picture of where there is abnormal activity, such as a dead spot where there is typically constant cell traffic. And drill down to the exact spots where people are making lots of calls, and where they aren't.

Hey, you could even supplament that with some monitoring of a few networked webcams, if you had a list of all those before the fact, ready to go.

Re:Um... That is why it is called a "TEST"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 4chan makes goatse look normal.

All I saw during the test was...

[Anonymous Coward]

goatse.cx

Re:All I saw during the test was...

[wierd_w]

Really? All I got was rick astley on every channel....

Does that constitute a national emergency?

Re:All I saw during the test was...

[Krojack]

Would have been awesome if everyone got this on their TV's

Spotty

[DrgnDancer]

I was in the car listening to NPR for this. The NPR (WGBH) station did a nice little lead in story and switched smoothly to the test. As soon as it did I started jamming presets and none of the other station I had programmed got the test. Local Alt Rock station, local R&B station, and the other NPR station all failed to broadcast the test as far as I can tell.

Re:Spotty

[PolygamousRanchKid]

No, the government is just being selective about who they save in the event of a catastrophe. Apparently, they believe that we will need NPR listeners in the post-apocalyptic world. Alt Rock and R&B listeners, they think they can do without.

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, then. That sounds entirely reasonable.

Re:Spotty

[jmcharry]

The alert is sent to a primary station in each area and daisy chained to others. WHQR is, I think, third in a chain. The alert hit there at 2:00:39. It got the start and stop "duck farts", but not the message itself. The scuttlebutt is that FEMA messed up the head end audio.

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of those in the House must still be waiting for that memo...

Re:Spotty

[jellomizer]

Why yes, what would we do in a world without whiners. And Bluegrass players.

Re:Spotty

[Phreakiture]

There are different message priorities. I don't remember what the priority levels are called (it's been about eight years since I've been involved in broadcasting), but the options essentially allow some messages to be stored and rebroadcast later (with a limit on how much later). Higher priority messages go out in real-time; lower priority may be discarded.

The radio station's EAS ENDEC is supposed to manage this for them. In the event of a top-priority message, it just takes over the airwaves in real-time. Middle and lower priority alert the engineer to the situation and let him/her decide when to send the message. If the message is not sent before the time is up, middle-priority messages will seize the transmitter and lower-priority messages will get dropped.

I would expect this message to have been encoded with the middle option -- store it for up to xx minutes, then take action automatically if the station didn't do so voluntarily. This would result in it going out over different stations at different times, and that would be desired outcome.

Re:Spotty

[peragrin]

Just remember you can play bluegrass and jazz without electricity. Unlike all rock.

Re:Spotty

[bennomatic]

I was at my computer, with several browser windows and a couple of email clients open. My cell phone was right next to me. When the time came, my Outlook reminder popped up and told me it was time for lunch.

Too bad these notifications don't reach those of us who don't rely on antiquated broadcast media.

Re:Spotty

[cayenne8]

Just remember you can play bluegrass and jazz without electricity. Unlike all rock.

I dunno..I remember an OLD special on MTV (back when they actually played music)...with Aerosmith Unplugged...one of the first unplugged specials.

Those guys rocked in acoustic!!

I had it recorded on VHS back then, I wish to hell I could find that whole 30 min special ( or longer if it exists) out there somewhere either to buy or download.....

Re:Spotty

[omnichad]

What they need to provide is a CAP feed of their EAS alerts. Leave it up to hardware developers how to implement it. Or implement it DIY as well. Can't seem to find any public URL, but apparently this is how they provide the information to broadcasters..

Re:Spotty

[ColdWetDog]

Seemed to work fine then. The government obviously doesn't want to help people who are out to lunch.

Re:Spotty

[choprboy]

Came across here at 12:02 MST and the audio stream was screwed up. The audio alerts came thru fine, but the message was extremely faint and unintelligible. About half way thru the 60sec test someone at the radio station cranked the input volume all the way up, horrible high-pitched whine of background noise, but you could at least understand what was being said then. Still, it sounded like trying to tune into a radio station a thousand miles away... The normal monthly tests have never seemed to have that problem.

Re:Spotty

[jellomizer]

MTV Played Music.... Wow so weird. I though MTV stood for Media TV, and just reshowed all the stuff on Youtube.

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen. My thoughts about it entirely. They should have sent texts, ISPs should have had pop ups, or at least e-mails.

Re:Spotty

[Lakitu]

There's no way this should be marked insightful. An EAS style system for the internet is so unnecessary it's almost comical to think about.

do you really have a hard time being the recipient of information on your up-to-date information technologies? Why would you want to receive a test message for an antiquated system on an antiquated medium you have no desire to use?

in the event of a real emergency, do you think nobody who does rely on antiquated broadcast media receiving the information would be of any use to you?

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically it still works like the old CONELRAD system?

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Whiners would be the Rush Limbaugh audience. On second point, agree; I certainly, wouldn't live in a world without Bluegrass.

Re:Spotty

[Zaphod The 42nd]

The GOVERNMENT thinks that we need NPR listeners?
Well, surely not the Republicans!

Re:Spotty

[dietdew7]

It's time for you kids to get off my lawn.

Re:Spotty

[babywhiz]

I had totally forgotten there was supposed to be a test until I read this. I was like...oh ya. My browsers didn't tell me, my OS didn't tell me, my email didn't tell me, even the news stations that I have apps on my phone for didn't even tell me (KNWA, 40/29, KY3, Discovery, NPR, Cnet, CBSNews, Fox10 (Florida), TNT, Action News (Florida), ABCNews, The Weather Channel..all set up to push notifications...didn't get a single one...nothing from Google+ or Facebook...Nothing from Pandora.). . Inside the server room, we can't even hear tornado sirens when they go off, so I wouldn't know anyway if the 'test' was successful or not here in Northwest Arkansas. If the existing tests on the existing broadcast systems are this broken, there is no way that alerts to 'new media' is gonna be in place.

Re:Spotty

[babywhiz]

Stop thinking locally, and think globally. If something happened in Southwest Missouri (let's say the earth opened a huge sinkhole and took out all of Springfield), how exactly would information about that go out in a way that would let everyone know? My mom doesn't get cable or sat out on the farm, she only gets 'over the air' .... and remember, all the TV stations just fell into the huge sinkhole.......There needs to be a really big 'ohshit' button that sends out info to all mediums....

Re:Spotty

[Obfuscant]

There's no way this should be marked insightful. An EAS style system for the internet is so unnecessary it's almost comical to think about.

What you forget is that the Internet is designed to route around failure, and a static radio-linked system is not.

I think it would be rather forward-thinking to make the alerts use the existing internet, and allow open development of systems to decode and notify people. That way, when Eugene, for example, fails to process the EAS messages and trigger their alert, the rest of southern Oregon isn't left with their thumbs up their ass ignorant of the incoming aliens or whatever the feds think we ought to know about.

Re:Spotty

[Talisein]

IPAWS has a (just barely out of development AFAIK) private RSS feed that you need a special pin code or something for. It is just for broadcasters. They also have a private SOAP server that you need some X509 certs for to pull public CAPs from (this is a superset of EAS alerts).

IPAWS eventually will have a public RSS feed for EAS messages, but they don't seem as concerned about making sure that it will be properly provisioned to serve millions of clients hitting it up constantly.

I'm developing an OSS application to feed IPAWS messages from their SOAP server to a public xmpp server: https://github.com/talisein/Stormee

Its not really ready for prime time yet, but I should have something that works in a couple weeks.

Re:Spotty

[Ihmhi]

Wouldn't the simple solution be to have an SMS alert sent out to all US-based cell phones (for free)? I don't think there's been a cell phone made in the last 15 years that doesn't have SMS capability... and even if there were, I'd think that there is a very, very small minority of phones (if any) that don't have the capability to receive SMS messages.

If it takes multiple messages to push out the message, so be it.

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here! Too bad there isn't a TCP specification for this that isn't exclusively reliant on ICANN, USA, etc. (so that other countries can use this spec)

Re:Spotty

[fotoguzzi]

I do not know the technical details, but over the last decade (??) or so, our local messages have often been scratchy and the text non-standard. The wording is so bad sometimes that one is not sure until the very end if it really was "only a test."

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

What does TCP have to do with ICANN and the USA??

Re:Spotty

[Zadaz]

do you really have a hard time being the recipient of information on your up-to-date information technologies?

No. But then neither does anyone who has a radio or TV. So really, what was the point of this test?

Re:Spotty

[Chicken_Kickers]

Yes, in the immediate post-apocalyptic world, the Internet will be the last to fail (Sarcasm).

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they wrong?

Re:Spotty

[izomiac]

The average American watches 5 hours of television per day. While that's bad for a number of reasons, it's not terribly reliable as that only leaves a 20.8% chance someone will be watching TV during an emergency. It's also not independently distributed, so a family of four isn't going to always have someone watching TV, and a neighborhood may well not have anyone watching at 4:00 in the morning. Radio is even less likely, as a good portion of people don't listen to AM/FM radio, and I'm sure Apple et al. are working hard to reduce the numbers. And people who are working are unlikely to be watching/listening to either. IMHO, cell phone emergency alerts are a must, as it's highly probably someone around you will always have one, and they work at night.

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, even in 1990 they were already starting to not play much music. The 80's where really all there was as far as the M meaning Music. But yeah, in the 90's they did do stuff like unplugged, Head Banger's Ball, etc. So they at least had some music, unlike today.

You must not have looked very hard because that special is everywhere I looked. It's even on YouTube. The entire episode is available from other easily accessible sources.

Re:Spotty

[pjbgravely]

It literately took me 5 seconds to find it.

Aerosmith - MTV Unplugged Video

Re:Spotty

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hilarious... I agree 100%. At 1:59pm my outlook reminder popped up to remind me to stream the local radio station over the web. I dont have an AM/FM radio. The broadcast was the initial tone, then static, then silence. I closed Windows Media Player and un-paused Pandora One.

Re:Spotty

[Huge_UID]

I work for the military. I was at my computer when the AtHoc notification popped-up. Then my desk and cell phones rang. The same emergency test message was delivered to both.

Re:Spotty

[bennomatic]

Seriously. And maybe have Twitter and Facebook and similar systems with significant reach partner with the Gov't to display breaking important news.

Re:Spotty

[bennomatic]

See, that's more like it. I'm thinking SMS and maybe alert banners at the top 100 web sites (Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Amazon, Apple, Google, YouTube, Wikipedea, Craigslist, Yahoo, Wordpress, Tumblr, you get the idea). And maybe also partner with big video streaming sites (Netflix, Hulu) so that even people viewing full-screen video through Roku-type boxes will get some sort of warning.

Heck, I'd suggest that with the top 50 sites + SMS, you'd probably deliver out to a wider portion of the public than you would with a TV/radio based service these days.

Re:Spotty

[tehcyder]

I dunno..I remember an OLD special on MTV (back when they actually played music)...with Aerosmith Unplugged...one of the first unplugged specials.
Those guys rocked in acoustic!!

So how come they were so rubbish when they plugged their instrument in? Plus whatsisname sang like a girl anyway, electricity or not.

Re:Spotty

[tehcyder]

my Outlook reminder popped up and told me it was time for lunch.

Who needs a reminder that it's lunch time? Does your computer have the clock deleted or something? Do you seriously ever get to 3pm and think "gosh, I'm sure there was something I was supposed to do around lunchtime?"

Re:Spotty

[cayenne8]

So how come they were so rubbish when they plugged their instrument in? Plus whatsisname sang like a girl anyway, electricity or not.

Yet...even as old as they are, they still blow away about 99% of what passes for music talent in todays world and generation of bands.

Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a long time Comcast subscriber and my box has always turned to QVC or HSN for a few seconds around the EBN alerts but we still get the alerts themselves. So it's not as much a failure as a bit of goofiness before and after the alert.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

Emergencies are hard, let's go shopping!

Re:Comcast

[riverat1]

Is that you George (W. Bush)?

Failures, what a surprise...

[dstyle5]

... because that is exactly what you would expect in a test of such a large system. The real surprise is if it would have worked without any issues on the first go round.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain the "Why?" behind this system, as more and more people are doing away with any sort of cable, satellite or OTA viewing? This is the first time in many years that I've lived in a house with one of those options, and I had completely forgotten about emergency broadcasting system tests among the many annoyances of having cable rather than sticking with internet-based viewing. Six months of cable has taught me that the only value in cable is that a few networks are dragging their feet on making things available on the internet -- and most of those networks aren't worth any particular effort to watch (see: Bravo).

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[PRMan]

They didn't use the last system on 9/11, which was the largest emergency in most of our lives, so who cares?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because 9/11 in all actuality was only a threat to a ludicrously, miniscule number of people compared to say... the rest of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if 98% of the country wasn't even slightly, remotely affected by it (ignoring the after side-effects of the shredding of the constitution and soforth).

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[hedwards]

Because there's still enough people who listen to the radio and watch TV that it's still worthwhile. If they can conveniently reach even a third of the population in one go that's way too many people to ignore because the other 2/3 of the people don't see the message. In a case like that it would mean that they would want to add other attempts on top of those attempts.

Also, the chances are good of being able to reach enough people in urban areas to have word start to spread from many sources via word of mouth. Not ideal, but the more people that have access to accurate information.

As for the rural folks, lets be honest, they're less likely to need the information immediately if it's not already obvious that there's a zombie apocalypse on the way.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[aiken_d]

Wait, walk me through the logic there. Why doesn't such a system matter in the future if a previous system wasn't used in the past?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, I can certainly imagine things much worse than 9/11 to deal with which the president might want to address the nation.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a system designed for particular kinds of national emergencies. You have the PRECISE type of national emergency that the system is designed to be used for, but you don't use it.

Why build a new higher-tech system, for the exact same purposes, if it's not going to be used?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

His point is...Why DOES such a system matter? Please list one case where this system would be needed. If you say nuclear war then it's too late and your already dead.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

The purpose of EAS is to alert people to take action that can save their lives, not to act as a source of breaking news.

"Incoming missiles! Get to a bomb shelter!" is a valid alert.

"Planes Hijacked!" is worthless. What action that could have been broadcast on EAS would have saved a single life?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[joebok]

It is very easy. First, Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense! Second, let me ask you - what do you do with witches?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[joebok]

Logic? Logic is little tweeting bird chirping in meadow. Logic is wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

How about this: Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Now, tell me, what do you do with witches?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

No, 9/11 was absolutely NOT the kind of emergency that the system was designed for. The purpose of the system is to save lives. What alert could have possibly been broadcast that would have saved a single life?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

The implication is that a new system will remain equally disused so why bother with it in the first place.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[ColdWetDog]

His point is...Why DOES such a system matter? Please list one case where this system would be needed. If you say nuclear war then it's too late and your already dead.

Zombies.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[unkiereamus]

What, pray tell, would you have had them broadcast for 9/11?

The EAS isn't a news service, it isn't meant for "OMG SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED!". The EAS is a method for rapidly disseminating instructions for the safety of the populace, so more along the lines of, "OMG SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED, and this is what you need to do to stay safe."

The only time I can recall the EAS being activated (And I heard it at the time), was when a tanker car had derailed and was leaking some HazMat, so the EAS was "If you're not in this area, stay away, if you are in this area and inside a building, close your windows and stay put, if you're in this area and not inside a building, either get inside a building or GTFO. Call this number if you experience these symptoms, you will be evacuated as possible."

What should they have said for 9/11? "If you're in the twin towers, get out"? "Don't let someone hijack your plane"?

As a final note, 9/11 was in no way shape or form an emergency for me, I was living on the other side of the country, it was a tragedy certainly, but not an emergency.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[mjr167]

In your example, incoming missiles, wouldn't that be a local event, not a national event because only the people in the city being targeted would need shelter? To everyone else, it is not time critical, life saving information.

I think a lot of people are having trouble thinking up a scenario in which the entire country needs to be notified of an event right this second. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters are all local/regional events. They only immediately impact people in the area.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[dkleinsc]

There was no point in issuing an alert over the alert system. If you were endangered by 9/11, that was because you were (A) in one of the planes, (B) in the Pentagon or (C) in lower Manhattan. Otherwise, you were in basically no more danger than you are on any other day.

For the people on the plane, they were dead already, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to save them. Emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.

For the Pentagon and lower Manhattan, everyone was already doing what they needed to do: If you were a firefighter, you were trying to put out the fire, and rescue people. If you were a policeman, you were trying to rescue people and keep everyone else away. And if you were anyone else, you were getting as far away as you could. Again, emergency alerts wouldn't have helped.

Also relevant to this situation: One common reaction to a disaster scenario that makes things worse is that a huge number of people call their loved ones in the affected areas. It's completely understandable, but it uses communications resources that might be useful for people who can actually do something to help.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[demonbug]

The purpose of EAS is to alert people to take action that can save their lives, not to act as a source of breaking news.

"Incoming missiles! Get to a bomb shelter!" is a valid alert.

Well, assuming there are such things as "bomb shelters" to run to...
I just really don't see a need for a nation-wide alert system like this. Sorry, but there are simply no events that affect the entire nation the same way at the same time that would make such an alert system useful. Seems far more likely to be used to get some politician's face/voice out to as many people as possible in the event of an advertising oppor-, er, I mean, disaster.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[dunezone]

First off, this emergency system should not be used for something like 9/11. The media in its current state could handle the movement of information such as what happened on 9/11. On 9/11 all of Ted Turners stations were switched to CNN. The FOX corporation changed all of their channels to FOX News. Even the shopping networks went off the air and left a message up telling viewers to switch to the news stations.

This type of system can be useful in something more grand. Such as nuclear explosions in several major cities, a major earthquake, major hurricane, or a major weather system that forms extremely quickly or any event that can take down large amounts of communication systems in a quick moment.. Yes these events are very unlikely to happen but this system is in place because of those scenarios.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

Yes, if there is only one missile (and not a MIRV), and your enemy was kind enough to inform you exactly where it is going to hit. And even if there is only one missile, and you know where it is going, there is going to be retaliation and a whole lot more missiles going back and forth.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Toonol]

You're using hindsight, while decisions need to be made real-time.

If you recall back to 9/11, it was not at all obvious that the attacks would be limited to one small area. We knew about the towers, then we found out about the Pentagon, then about the fourth, diverted attempt... As far as we knew, there could have been imminent attacks about to break out anywhere in the country. Why else ground the entire airfleet for days? A general alert was certainly called for.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Electricity Likes Me]

Conventional war starting. The supervolcano under Yellowstone possibly becoming active. Aliens landing. Asteroid threats.

Hell, even nuclear war matters: sure it sucks, but 10-20 minutes could be the difference between surviving and not.

Just because major catastrophes haven't happened yet, doesn't mean you shouldn't have a minimal fallback system to deal with them (and the national emergency broadcast system is pretty much the absolute minimum of "unknown threat" preparation you can do).

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? How many planes were in the sky that might have hit you after they figured out what was happening? How would it have helped other than spread fear?

After the couple plane crashes it was over for everyone except those in and around hit buildings. Why does someone say in IL need to know about a building falling over in NY? It's not a good thing, but it isn't a threat to the person in IL and that person has no control over it. The only thing that person could do is call NYC and help overload the phone systems. It was a localized attack, not a wide spread disaster.

If school buses in every state started driving into populated buildings or groups and were exploding, that should be on a national alert because it affects most people and there's something those people can do about it to keep themselves safe.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Bardwick]

Still don't buy it. Nuclear explosion? Yeah, that'll be noticed. Most likely by all the folks that immediately go with out power. Anyone it helped would be dead. Major earthquake? Unless there is a warning system that I'm unaware of, they best they can say is, "in case you haven't noticed, and are not dead, the ground is shaking". Not many hurricanes in Ohio, so good there. We have sirens for the local weather patterns. in short, it sounds good on it's face, but other than that, we're already covered.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Massive solar interference about to hit? Shutdown everything electronic.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[stubob]

I think that's kind of the point. Eight million people were affected by 9/11. What possible sort of disaster, natural or otherwise, could necessitate notifying everyone from Alaska to Hawaii, California, Texas, Florida, Maine and Minnesota? I can see maybe a huge earthquake needing notification of the entire West Coast, but at that scale, what are the odds that the radio station towers will still be operational?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell the same joke twice and fail at it?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

Again, what action was appropriate for an alert to urge? Especially an action that would not likely have resulted in more casualties than taking no action.

You are correct that no-one knew what was going on - which is precisely the reason no alert should be issued. What would you have had them say? Everyone get out of all buildings and stay away from all fields?

On 9/11 the only thing that was known was that planes were being used as weapons. Based on that, they took the reasonable position of getting the planes out of the sky. There was no need for an EAS to do that, because ATC and pilots are not watching TV and they could be (and were) contacted directly. What action would you have had ordinary citizens take on that day, given what was known then, and even what is known now?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[mjr167]

Ballistics tracking is actually fairly simple. You may have a fairly large area targeted by such an attack, but the ENTIRE country? We are talking about > 9 million sq km. The east coast doesn't need to take shelter because the west coast is being bombed.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear they now have these new-fangled 'guided missiles' and 'smart bombs'. Ballistics tracking my ass.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing any alert can do for us if any supervolcano anywhere decides to go off. Sorry. Same for aliens landing, or asteroid threats that are serious enough to warrant such a broadcast.

Basically, if it really is that important as to affect a whole nation, no alert is going to help us :(

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Zaphod The 42nd]

In the past, we didn't have X. So why do we need X?
You're right, America is absolutely flawless. Why would we try to improve the quality of our lives?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

...But what if those planes were being used as missiles? Perhaps a warning could have saved lives then by getting people to shelter and out of high value target buildings?

I mean, what if?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Executive Summary: When there's a real bad CME (coronal mass ejection), you don't worry about your electronics, you worry how you will survive many weeks without power. And that means worrying about food, water and shelter, not about any damn electronics.

So, umm, no, try again. There is NOTHING that consumers can do that relates to electronics when there is "massive solar interference", whatever the heck that means. Probably you mean a coronal mass ejection. Well, the only thing this will affect on the surface of Earth is long runs of wire in closed circuits. As in VERY long runs of wire. A CME will affect radio communications through the atmosphere, but that's pretty much inconsequential to our consumer electronics. They won't get damaged by it, they may merely stop working if they use satellite-based services (GPS, Sirius, Iridium, etc).

It will affect electric transmission lines. I'd think the electric distribution companies track this stuff on their own, and would be able to detect a slowly rising DC current in the transmission lines quickly enough to trip the breakers while it was still within the DC breaking range of the switchgear. The DC current interruption rating is usually much lower than the AC rating. Thus a breaker that can interrupt 100kA AC, might maybe interrupt, say, 1kA DC. If there's any more DC current flowing when you open such a breaker, the current will keep on flowing through an arc that has just formed. And that would be very bad news, as you'll have a whole lot of wire, insulators, and switchgear that would just melt and catch fire. And that would be real, real bad :)

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[geekoid]

Large scale war, last minutes asteroid. Major shifting of certain water feature could impact all coasts.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[quetwo]

UFO attack. Nuclear attack targeting multiple cities. Canadian invasion...

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[IANAAC]

Probably because 9/11 in all actuality was only a threat to a ludicrously, miniscule number of people compared to say... the rest of the country. I wouldn't be surprised if 98% of the country wasn't even slightly, remotely affected by it (ignoring the after side-effects of the shredding of the constitution and soforth).

Really?

Is that why pretty much every major city in the US with a bridge or tall building peed themselves and put their respective cities in some sort of watch/lockdown combination?

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[geekoid]

no.

A) Missile can strike several cities and industrial areas, even water source
B) I missile attack could be followed by an invasion
C) We would not have any knowledge of the attackers intent, so anyplace may be at risk.

Example: Russia sending missiles over the caps to the east coasts, then then moving troops through Alaska.

Granted, the ONLY need is huge events. Massive attacks, incoming asteroid, major underwater landslide(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatsunami).

As I have been thinking about this some more, Pearl Harbor would have been a good use. In hindsight it was 'only' Hawaii. Could have been the west coast, could have been don't with a secondary attack from the Japanese allies on the east.

When 9/11 first happened, we didn't know f it was just the two events, or if shit was going to break out all over. Having a system telling people to stay home could have been helpful.
And this is just one feature of the system. It can also be used for local events.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[geekoid]

FYI: it's a local system as well. About missles.

Detected at launch, it will be 14 minutes until trajectory can BEGIN to be calculated with any accuracy. That leave about 14 minutes for a warning. And any missile launch on the scale is going to have multiple warheads.
The east goes needs to know that we are under attack, and they might be a target for the next one, or a land invasion. Also, it's a direct pipe of the facts as known.

I would rather have 28 minutes warning.
This isn't the movies.

Of course if it's nuclear, the east coast needs to start preparing for elevated radiatiom that will be carried

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[geekoid]

Yu're ignorant, read up.

First of all, country wide is a feature, it is also used for local events.

During 9/11 we had no idea what was going on. We didn't know is was four planes. Could have been 20 planes in several major city. Could have been a precursor to a wide scale ground terrorist act.

So the broadcast would have been to stay home. Stay off the roads until we gather more information. Stay tuned.

Same thing for Pearl Harbor.

A Mega Tsunami could impact both coasts. Asteroid, .

All very BIG things. As a feature of an integrated local system, it's a good thing.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[geekoid]

Hind sight is nice.

I mean, you're point is valid because the hijackers had told us there where only 4 planes~

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Chriscypher]

Not true.

On 9/11, no one knew how vast the problem was, just that the nation was somehow under attack.
This is why they grounded all planes in the entire US, not just over certain airspaces.

It would have been entirely appropriate to have sent out a national warning, and to urge everyone to a high alert status of a problem of unknown extent.

ie. "Nation under coordinated domestic terrorist attack of multiple targets. Observe caution and report suspicious activity to local police immediately. Tune into news and keep informed.", etc.

On 9/11 no one knew how big the problem was. We had not seen anything of this type in current generations.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

That was exactly the problem, no one knew anything including those who had control of EAS, so what would they say? Nothing that would help the situation.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[SnarfQuest]

French invasion, immediately followed by the French surrender.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[JohnFen]

Yes, really. 9/11 was a small threat and directly caused relatively little damage to this country. Our overreaction, however, was a huge threat and caused enormous damage. It's a very good thing that we didn't have a nationwide EAS at the time or that damage may have been magnified even more.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

when the planes hit the buildings there were still planes in the air. government and financial buildings were targeted. that would've been the time to use it... every major city could have been a target...

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[bws111]

Are you seriously claiming that there was anyone in the US in the vicinity of an operating TV or radio on the morning of 9/11 who was unaware of what was going on? By the time it was apparent that we were under attack it was already being widely covered, and the message you suggest should have been sent out in an alert was already loud and clear. Even the people on the last plane knew what was going on. An alert would have done absolutely nothing at all except possibly fuel even more panic.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Get away from the world trade center?

That message would have saved alot of lives.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[tehcyder]

The majority of people who are not handsome, witty and obsessed with the cunting internet like we are on slashdot still watch TV and listen to the radio.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[tehcyder]

UFO attack. Nuclear attack targeting multiple cities. Canadian invasion...

I can't work out if that is in increasing or decreasing order of likelihood.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[tehcyder]

Example: Russia sending missiles over the caps to the east coasts, then then moving troops through Alaska.

I think I saw that film.

*spoiler alert*

A bunch of lightly armed but plucky American teenagers fight off the entire Red Army (as was) and eventually find their hidden flaw by playing country music albums to the enemy until they kill themselves in a mass lemming like suicide in the Pacific ocean.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[tehcyder]

Are you seriously claiming that there was anyone in the US in the vicinity of an operating TV or radio on the morning of 9/11 who was unaware of what was going on? By the time it was apparent that we were under attack it was already being widely covered, and the message you suggest should have been sent out in an alert was already loud and clear. Even the people on the last plane knew what was going on. An alert would have done absolutely nothing at all except possibly fuel even more panic.

I know we're all in favour of small government and letting the free market decide, but in this instance, it would only be the government that would have a nation-wide idea of what was going on, the TV and other news outlets would just be guessing, based on partial information at best.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[IANAAC]

You and I remember 9/11 differently. At the time, nobody knew exactly how many planes were involved or where they were headed.

That said, the media coverage did a better job than any emergency alert system ever could have done.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note the GP didn't say we shouldn't, he merely questioned why we *should*.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[evilviper]

"Planes Hijacked!" is worthless. What action that could have been broadcast on EAS would have saved a single life?

In a perfect world, if an alert went out at 8:47am that a hijacked 767 had crashed into the world trade center, and someone on United Flight 175 had gotten the alert immediately, I'm willing to bet the message would have been loud and clear to any of the passengers (as it was on United Flight 93), and something would have happened in those 16 minutes which would have saved several hundred lives in the process.

And if we can't send out an alert that fast, or didn't recognize the need immediately, there was a window of just over a half hour after the SECOND jet was crashed, in which to notify the passengers of flight 77 and save over 100 lives in the Pentagon. And yes, possibly their own as well.

  And in either case, even if the message didn't get through to the passengers, a message about more hijacked planes flying around could have spurred life-saving evacuations as well.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[evilviper]

Is that why pretty much every major city in the US with a bridge or tall building peed themselves and put their respective cities in some sort of watch/lockdown combination?

No, actually that happened because all the major, upstanding news organizations started spewing complete crap about bombs blowing up the capitol building in DC, armed gunman outside of other landmarks picking off people, etc.

In the fog of that morning, for a few hours, public information made it sound convincingly like the we might be seeing the first in a series of military attacks on the US mainland from another major military power, leading up to a total war, or perhaps even an all-out invasion.

It's ridiculous in hindsight, now that we know it started and ended with 4 jumbo jets. But at the time, nobody knew the scope of the attacks, and anything seemed possible. So any plausible military target seemed apotential target. Imagine if, after hearing the WTC & Pentagon was attacked, the capitol was bombed, and more, it was followed-up with news of Chinese naval forces attacking Taiwan, Philipines, Hawaii, etc. Yes, people were preparing for good old WWIII, and not without cause.

Re:Failures, what a surprise...

[toddestan]

I suppose the message could be to turn on your magical hindsight machine to see if you're going to be safe. Seriously, at the time no one knew the extent of the attacks going on. A good message would be to tell people to stay home (many people would just be starting their day) and to avoid major landmarks and large buildings. If there were more attacks such a message could have saved many lives.

Doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

National Journal's Marc Ambinder tweets: FEMA official concedes "glitch"; says that it appears (maybe) to be related to how satellite and cable providers prepped their equipment.

If your emergency broadcast system requires all cable and satellite providers to "prep" their equipment beforehand, you are doing something fundamentally wrong.

Re:Doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, it's the trollbot! :D

Oblig

[2names]

I did not hear a test, but I did see a black cat walk by, then the same cat walked by again.

Re:Oblig

[Sez Zero]

I did see a black cat walk by, then the same cat walked by again.

Not me, man, I took that blue pill.

Re:Oblig

[blair1q]

You should have replaced cat 2 with a cat 6, if you have one.

Re:Oblig

[TheSpoom]

I took both at the same time. Oh man, that was a hell of a night.

FiOS in DC worked without any issues.

[gcnaddict]

and from what I heard, FiOS all over the place worked without a hitch. It might have to do with the fact that Verizon's infrastructure was built inside the last decade.

Re:FiOS in DC worked without any issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

It received no notification on FiOS in Philly.

Re:FiOS in DC worked without any issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Test worked perfect with OTA tv antenna

failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw "crawlers" before and after the scheduled test warning me that the test was not an actual emergency. Of course, I did not see any actual test message. It's a good thing they are testing this because it certainly does not work.

Re:failure

[ColdWetDog]

I saw "crawlers" before and after the scheduled test warning me that the test was not an actual emergency. Of course, I did not see any actual test message. It's a good thing they are testing this because it certainly does not work.

No, you're missing the logic here. If you DON'T see the crawlers, there IS an emergency.

Make sense?

Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

The local cable broadcaster here lost approx 10 channels after the test, including CNN, FOX, and DISCOVERY. They all switched to the NAT GEO channel without audio for upwards of an hour after the test ran.

In addition, the test video was jumpy, kept blacking out, audio kept dropping out, etc.

All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile. ;)

Re:Lost Channels

[NevarMore]

All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile. ;)

If your mags aren't already loaded and your bug-out-buggy isn't gassed up, you're already doomed.

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving your magazines loaded for extended periods of time could cause fatigue of the spring, leading to misfeeds when you least want them. Treat them like back up tapes, keeping a set "active" and rotating through the stack is your safest bet, assuming you're paranoid enough in the first place.

Re:Lost Channels

[SleazyRidr]

And gas goes bad if you leave it sitting for too long.

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

News FOX - you're kidding, right?

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, someone reads Lee Child. And that someone is you. I love it when you slobs try to pass off stuff you learned in a novel as if it were real-world experience you gleaned through your "cool" life.

Re:Lost Channels

[lucifuge31337]

That is not how springs wear out. Please repeat high school physics.

Re:Lost Channels

[ColdWetDog]

So, the moral of the story for paranoid crazies is to drive around in your car shooting off ammunition all of the time?

Right?

Re:Lost Channels

[Bardwick]

Paranoid crazy here: Never let your tank go below half. I keep 20 gallons with Sta-bil in the garage. Avoiding spring lock in the magazine, you can half load. There is some debate, but I've not had any issues keeping 25 in a 30 round magazine. Strongly recommend not shooting from your car. Way too freaking loud.

Re:Lost Channels

[gknoy]

Let me reply in a manner less snarky and more constructive than the AC above me did.

According to people who know better than me:
http://www.ar15armory.com/forums/Magazine-Spring-fatigue-t94941.html
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-116436.html

Leaving a spring compressed won't do much harm; spring fatigue comes from the act of compressing it. So, as someone said in the first forum thread, "Load 'em up!".

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

> start loading ammo

So your solution to an emergency is to start murdering people? Let me guess. Your a Republican?

Re:Lost Channels

[tibit]

This is the silliest thing I keep hearing. There's nothing about gasoline that causes it to go bad over time, except if there is VERY significant evaporation going on. If you have a hermetically closed tank, you're good. Even with evaporation, I've had a 1993 Camry sit for about 3 years without being refueled, it'd be started up maybe twice a year but there was nothing bad about the gasoline in the tank. The engine ran, to my ear, as well as it ever did. It'd start right up. I had kept the battery hooked up, and a standby (maintenance) charger connected to keep it ready.

If you have two cycle engines that need oil mixed with gasoline, then all you have to do is make sure the tank is full when you put them away, and that the level hasn't gone down to more than 50% of tank full. I've found a lawnmower that was sitting in a shed somewhere long enough (at least 5 years) that it appeared that 2/3 of the gas has evaporated from the tank. It still started up after about a minute of working on it.

Re:Lost Channels

[jafiwam]

What causes fatigue on the magazine spring is tensioning and untensioning the spring. If it's not in motion, it's not wearing. Magazines will need to be replaced over time due to normal metal corrosion, but that's over a different time scale than "loaded with .223 for two years."

Re:Lost Channels

[tibit]

Oh, all the half-truths in those posts are just saddening. Why can't anyone get it completely right, at least in the realm of first-order effects?

Fatigue is, by definition, when you have cyclic loads. Obviously a spring left loaded and left alone doesn't experience any more cyclic loading than it would without being loaded at all. So it's nothing to do with fatigue.

What they may be talking about is creep -- the relaxation of stresses in material. This process is highly temperature dependent, so if you think you're dealing with creep, you immediately set up multiple specimens at different temperatures. If whatever effect you observe (here: loss of spring tension) accelerates with higher temperatures, then you can be 99% sure it's creep pretty much without having to do any other testing at all. If, though, there is no change with temperature, then you can safely exclude creep.

This gave me an idea: I've searched for the word temperature in the discussions you linked to. And hey, there was ONE post in all the misinformed noise that came from someone who had a bit of a clue. I'll cite it:

The phenomena you guys are talking about is called creep, where a material slowly loses strength while elastically deformed. Elastic deformation is when a material is under enough stress to deform it, but when the stress is removed the material returns to it's original shape. Springs compressed within their limits are elastically deformed. Creep is mostly a function of temperature, and typically isn't an issue in environments below half the melting point of the stressed material.

The person quoted wasn't fully correct either. Creep has got nothing to do with loss of strength, at least it's not a first-order effect during creep. A spring that experiences creep is not becoming any less strong, its internal stresses merely become relaxed (they go down), and thus the zero length of the spring is moving. This makes the spring act, over time, as if you had been squeezing it less and less: the force at the end of the spring goes down over time. That's all.

Re:Lost Channels

[tibit]

I have not heard of fatigue, nor any theories used to model it, in high school, and I think it's OK to leave it out. There's plenty of things more fundamental than that to learn about before you enter college. Fatigue is pretty much an engineering subject, and its detailed study would include theory of fracture, and that's not exactly an afternoon tea subject (nor a high school one).

Re:Lost Channels

[The Gaytriot]

Where in his post did he mention murdering people? Anti-gun much?

Re:Lost Channels

[lucifuge31337]

Then allow me to give you all the information you need to know on this topic so you know that leaving your torque wrench cranked up or a magazine loaded won't kill them: springs lose their form from use. Not from remaining compressed when stationary. This is why automobile springs don't sag based on how long a car has been on the ground and/or how much it weighs: they start to "sag" from mileage and rough roads.

Re:Lost Channels

[Obfuscant]

And gas goes bad if you leave it sitting for too long.

Yes, when I'm sitting too long my gas goes bad, too. That's why I recycle it as often as possible.

Re:Lost Channels

[SnarfQuest]

Where I'm at, we got nothing from this. Apparently it is being blamed on the "mountains", so if you have mountains, expect to be destroyed when the zombie apocalypse starts.

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like he's pro-safety. There's no such thing as anti-gun.

Re:Lost Channels

[gknoy]

Creep is mostly a function of temperature, and typically isn't an issue in environments below half the melting point of the stressed material

Would this imply that creep is unlikely to be a large factor in magazine spring tension, then?

Re:Lost Channels

[DrSlinky]

The local cable broadcaster here lost approx 10 channels after the test, including CNN, FOX, and DISCOVERY. They all switched to the NAT GEO channel without audio for upwards of an hour after the test ran.

In addition, the test video was jumpy, kept blacking out, audio kept dropping out, etc.

All in all, if it had been a real emergency, losing the 2 major news channels would have been real motivation to start loading ammo and supplies and gassing up the bug out mobile. ;)

Wait... Discovery is a news channel now?

Re:Lost Channels

[tibit]

I don't think it would be a factor, but it's easy to test for so it's silly not to. It would end all arguments. If you suspect creep, you take a couple samples (here: magazines loaded with mechanical blanks), and test them under different temperatures. It's then real easy to see if you have creep or not. I'd suspect that we're dealing with a folk tale here anyway (the loaded mag story). It's too far fetched.

Re:Lost Channels

[swalve]

I understand how the audio and video might not work right, but how in the world can such a test cause a cable operator to lose channels?

(Actually, now that I think about it, what they probably did was implement the mandatory message by changing the PSIP to tell the cable boxes that every channel is located at the same physical major/minor location. So when the test comes through, the cable boxes all see a "the frequency for this channel has changed to X, please adjust" message. Then, when it was over, the change back to normal didn't "take". If that's the case, it seems like a stupid way of doing it.The warning should be completely independent of regular programming, for two reasons:

1- So it doesn't mess up like this.

2- So it doesn't mess up things like time-shifting. (Not just because I want my "The Ellen Degeneris Show" recording to get messed up, but because it just isn't good practice to have time sensitive alerts inserted into time-shifted content. Viewers need to know that any alerts they get are in the here and now, for realsies, and to not have to do the math to figure out if the message is old, which could lead to delays when a real message comes through. They should send the "ALERT ALERT ALERT" packets on whatever the regular out-of-band communication link is, which should command the DISPLAY device to switch to the alert message. They could even insert the audio/video program into the existing streams as a sub-channel that the tuner would feed to the display device while letting the regular programming continue unmolested. Or at least, at a slightly higher compression rate.)

Re:Lost Channels

[The Gaytriot]

Really, there isn't? I gather from this post that you're a pedantic fool, don't bother replying with more useless garbage.

Re:Lost Channels

[Anonymous Coward]

> losing the 2 major news channels

Yes, losing CNN and DISCOVERY would've been unfortunate.

Seriously?

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

So Time Warner NY failed to implement the national emergency system that we use in the event of an *inbound ICBM attack*? When it had been announced for weeks in advance?

Curse their sudden but inevitable betrayal.

Re:Seriously?

[kheldan]

ICBM attack

Seriously: If that happens, you're better off not knowing anyway. At least you won't spend your last few minutes of life scared out of your mind because you know you're going to die in a nuclear firestorm.

Re:Seriously?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Fool! Without that alert, how on earth are you going to talk the closest girl to you into impending disaster sex?

Re:Seriously?

[bennomatic]

LOL. I wonder how many babies were born out of the War of the Worlds radio thing.

Re:Seriously?

[Leebert]

Nonsense. Thousands or tens of thousands could be spared secondary effects from the heat and blast wave. Just the simple act of not standing in front of a window can be the difference between a horrible death and surviving relatively unscathed. Surely you've seen this famous picture from Hiroshima: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_patient's_skin_is_burned_in_a_pattern_corresponding_to_the_dark_portions_of_a_kimono_-_NARA_-_519686.jpg

Yes, if you're sitting at or near the hypocenter, your opinion holds true.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 wash!

What are they going to recommend we do with an icbm headed our way? Duck and cover?

Re:Seriously?

[gknoy]

Hmm ... interesting :D

Babies conceived in October, 1938 would have been born in the middle of 1939.

According to this, it doesn't appear to have made much difference.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/us-births-1936-to-2000/versions/1

Re:Seriously?

[tibit]

You'd need to look for a spike in data that has granularity of months, not years.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what they taught us in elementary school...

Re:Seriously?

[tibit]

If this would be a nationwide attack, presumably all the infrastructure would be affected to such a degree that the society as we know it would collapse anyway. You're right that individual suffering may be reduced in the immediate aftermath (hours and days), but in the following months those same people who were initially spared would die due to disease and lack of food. The cities, with their high density of population, would become unsustainable pretty much overnight. Folks living out there in the farmland would have the best chances.

Re:Seriously?

[geekoid]

Since ther wasn't any real panic, I'm going with none.

Man that event has been blown way out of proportion.
There was a minor panic because some people tuned in after they announced it was fiction and thought the Germans where attacking.. Funny how stories about that 'panic' don't tell people that it was announced to be a fictional story at the beginning, and then again later.

Re:Seriously?

[Obfuscant]

Funny how stories about that 'panic' don't tell people that it was announced to be a fictional story at the beginning, and then again later.

Funny, but every account of that incident I've heard has been quite clear in saying that the announcements were made, and that extra announcements were being made specifically because there was a panic.

Re:Seriously?

[kheldan]

Fool! Without that alert, how on earth are you going to prove to the closest girl to you that you're a complete sociopath?

Fixed that for you. XD

Re:Seriously?

[adolf]

Yeah, you're right. Better to just not even try to let anyone know at all. Information wants to be squandered, etc.

(And, also: Please choke on a bucket of cocks.)

Re:Seriously?

[xhrit]

I was asleep on the sofa at my girlfriends house the morning of 9/11. Once my girlfriend learned of the news she turned on the television and attempted to wake me up.

Her : "Wake up, we are under attack!"
Me : "Attack?Who is attacking us?"
Her: "I don't know! There are explosions all over new york, they hit the trade center!"
Me: "Nukes?"
Her: "What?"
Me: "Are they using Nukes?"
Her: "No."
Me: "Wake me up when they start using nukes."

Re:Seriously?

[kheldan]

You must be a real laugh-riot to be around all the time, what with that wild sense of humor of yours. Keep being awesome!

Re:Seriously?

[adolf]

Keep being contrived!

Re:Seriously?

[tibit]

What I stated was hopefully an accurate reflection of reality. Our way of life is not really compatible with large scale disasters. Jost look at how bad it was in Japan, and that was just in one coastal area with the rest of the country being able to function more-or-less normally.

Don't watch TV

[sstamps]

So I would never see/hear an alert anyway. Likely would hear about it on /. or elsewhere online after the fact.

I guess I should plan to get one of those weather-alert radios sometime just to make sure I am not completely out of the loop. :P

Re:Don't watch TV

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't own a radio?

Re:Don't watch TV

[Enry]

Radi..what?

Re:Don't watch TV

[ThatsMyNick]

I don't (I used to have one in my car but it does not work anymore). I do use TuneIn Radio to listen to my favorite stations though, not sure if I would have received the emergency broadcasts.

Re:Don't watch TV

[Ephemeriis]

That's kind of what I was thinking when I heard about this test.

I consume less and less broadcast media - be it television or radio - every day.

Unless I just happened to be driving somewhere in a car at the time of the emergency, I simply wouldn't hear the warning.

Re:Don't watch TV

[pak9rabid]

Yes, but people you know probably would, and would hopefully inform you of the impending disaster.

Re:Don't watch TV

[jhealy1024]

I have one of those radios. For some reason, the Feds explicitly did not broadcast the test over NOAA emergency bands. Found that out afterwords, while trying to figure out why I didn't hear it.

Re:Don't watch TV

[Ephemeriis]

It would really depend on the situation.

If I were at work - sure. Plenty of folks around the building with radios or TVs on. I'm sure somebody would see the warning.

At home? Probably not. My wife is just as bad as I am, if not worse. Our neighbors all head South for the winter, and aren't terribly social at the best of times. My wife's side of the family is all dead. My side of the family is 1,500+ miles away.

Re:Don't watch TV

[sstamps]

That's both sad and hilarious at the same time.

Fodder for a Dilbert strip.

Re:Don't watch TV

[geekoid]

No one would call you? No one would email you? on one would say anything when you are online? Man, people really hate you~

Like all systems, it's not perfect, but the vast majority of [[people will hear, then there will be a secndary wave of epopel telling each other.

Re:Don't watch TV

[tehcyder]

Yes, but people you know probably would, and would hopefully inform you of the impending disaster.

The sort of person who is proud that they don't watch TV probably don't have any people they know very well, and the ones they do probably hate them and would lie to them.

I never heard it on my satellite provider...

[ToiletBomber]

I happened to have a weather radio handy, and "listened" to it on that... or at least tried to anyways. It sounded like three seperate alerts were all playing at once, overlapping by about 10 seconds... so throughout the entire test I could hear alert tones mixed in with speech, and it made the whole bloody thing incomprehensible.

Re:I never heard it on my satellite provider...

[wrathpwn]

I heard something like that listening to it on a car radio tuned to an NPR station. Sounded like a delayed feedback loop of the alert with amplified noise.

Re:I never heard it on my satellite provider...

[ToiletBomber]

That's precisely what it sounded like...

Maybe he meant marred?

[Anonymous Coward]

Subby should learn to speak english before posting on english forums.

Total gibberish locally...

[jaskelling]

Our local radio station group (and local Comcast cable TV as well) in parts of Colorado had the test run transmitted to us in almost complete gibberish. It sounded like someone had an open mic and it was recursive on itself, echoing and repeating in delay to the point of being unintelligible. Not surprised actually - most stations in my experience screw up the local/regional EAS test and have to redo it each month. Why should the national one be any different?

Re:Total gibberish locally...

[BenSchuarmer]

It sounds like you got the Lady Gaga song

Re:Total gibberish locally...

[jaskelling]

HA! Bravo, sir. ;-)

Complete waste

[bradgoodman]

Like probably 99.99% of america, I was neither watching TV or listening to the radio at 2pm on a weekday afternoon.

I do have a cell phone on me all the time, and received no alerts on it.

I can tell you from experience however, that if it were an Amber Alert, I would have been aware of it immediately.

CONCLUSION: EAS is another complete misguided federal program.

Re:Complete waste

[aiken_d]

Because any system with a test intentionally scheduled at a time of low disruption is necessarily misguided. I'll let the IT guys know the restore test they were planning for 2am is pointless because I won't be around to notice it.

Re:Complete waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't understand the testing methodology.

The purpose was not so that *you* see the test, it was to test if the system is working. 2PM on a weekday is ideal because there will be a good amount of people watching tv or listening to the radio that they can get feedback and not disturb the drooling masses during prime time TV.

Oh and with unemployment hanging around 9%, I think your 99.99% estimate is a bit off. ;-)

Re:Complete waste

[gstoddart]

Like probably 99.99% of america, I was neither watching TV or listening to the radio at 2pm on a weekday afternoon.

I would be absolutely shocked to hear that 99.99% of America wasn't watching TV at that time.

There's soap operas, Oprah, kids shows, and who knows what else.

Hell, I doubt there's ever a time when 99.99% of America isn't watching TV. Hell, I'd be surprised if there was ever less than 5% of the populace watching TV ... quite possibly even more.

Re:Complete waste

[bradgoodman]

I agree. So lets make sure the next natural disaster or nuclear attack happens during prime-time on Sweeps Week, so that way everyone will hear the announcement.

Re:Complete waste

[CannonballHead]

Yeah, any emergency alert thingy really should go through cell phones as well. Just (and as a relatively conservative free-market-ish libertarian-ish person, I can't believe I'm saying this) make the cell carriers not charge for the emergency call/text message (especially text message). If nothing else, you'll reach pretty much everyone aged 40 and below... and many above that since older people want to communicate with their families, too.

Re:Complete waste

[Lithdren]

While I understand what you mean, i'd point out that most soap operas are actually no longer on the air. May be some reruns on some stations, but they've virtually vanished compared to their hayday.

Re:Complete waste

[smbarbour]

I received an alert on my cell phone (from the local junior college that my wife goes to). However, we do receive all of the state EAS tests on TV (and I hear them on the radio occasionally. In actual emergencies, the EAS system has worked as well (specifically tornado warnings).

Re:Complete waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, need more unemployment to be safe!?

Re:Complete waste

[Quirkz]

Like 75% of America, 2 p.m. Eastern isn't actually 2 p.m. in other time zones.

In the Mountain time zone it was noon, and I was in my car and on the way to lunch.

Re:Complete waste

[gstoddart]

LOL ... that I didn't actually know that. I assumed the soap opera format would last forever.

Still, I stand by my assertion that there isn't likely to be a time when 99.99% of America isn't watching TV.

Re:Complete waste

[Jasonp55]

However, the infrastructure of "old media" is much more reliable than the infrastructure for the more popular 2-way communication systems that people advocate as alternatives (namely the cell network and the internet).

Radio and TV broadcast infrastructure is comparatively simple and has a proven track record. How frequently do minor emergencies cause cell networks to fail? How frequently are all the radio stations in town knocked off the air? In an absolute, worst-case scenario, AM broadcasts would probably the easiest thing to sustain. And they would reach enough people that the information would be disseminated.

Last night, I found out about Joe Paterno several minutes before I got any news alerts on my phone. Why? My roommate happened to be watching ESPN at the time and came and told me about it. News doesn't need total initial exposure to be widely spread.

Re:Complete waste

[geekoid]

"Like probably 99.99% of america, I was neither watching TV or listening to the radio at 2pm "
CONCLUSION: You should be avoided in any discussion involving percentages.

"CONCLUSION: EAS is another complete misguided federal program."
CONCLUSION: You are another clueless moron who thinks an uninformed opinion is as valuable as an informed one.

A) It's replace there EBS system
B) It is used for local event as well as federal.
C) Yes, there was an issue. It's why people would test things regularly.

You sound like the idiot Manager who declares that a failed QA test means no one has been doing their job.

Re:Complete waste

[Anonymous Coward]

The system only works if people are listening to radio or watching "live TV".

In the age when people watch Hulu and Netflix and TiVo and listen iPods -and spend 1/3rd of their lives asleep, and another 1/3rd at work where they typically aren't watching tv or listening to the radio, this may not be horribly effective most of he time. However, nearly all adults carry cell phones, or have land-lines, fromw which they can be alerted anytime, (nearly) anywhere, (even in their sleep).
If there was an emergency RIGHT THIS SECOND, would you hear about it? I am in a Cub Scout hall with 100 other people who wouldn't either. The amber alert system uses SMS, and the cell system has a provision for broadcasting such alerts. The FCC could very easily mandate them to comply with EAS, if they haven't already. I'll say it again - the system makes no sense.

AntiTrust

[Anonymous Coward]

They should watch the movie AntiTrust and figure out how to develop Synapse.

I rarely encounter broadcast media.

[Anonymous Coward]

DTV, Cable, Satellite, and Radio; I only see/hear these for tiny fractions occasionally in public places. Almost all my media is consumed on-demand or downloaded via the internet. I may be in the minority, but a minority that is growing.

Exactly what

[Anonymous Coward]

would constitute and "national emergency" that would require the government to alert everyone in this manner? Or is this more department of fear BS.

Re:Exactly what

[Anonymous Coward]

so edgy

Re:Exactly what

[PPH]

A nationwide broadcast of Lady Gaga? I can't think of anything worse at the moment.

Re:Exactly what

[Anonymous Coward]

I envy your two year lag of "Horrible shit to think about"

Oregon

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My wife was watching her soap, and it didn't happen. I heard almost none of the Western States got the alert.

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife was watching her soap,

Wow, we're getting reports from the 1970's!

Re:Oregon

[Quirkz]

My wife was watching her soap

And that's no lye!

Re:Oregon

[Anonymous Coward]

The western states (er, most of them) can take care of themselves... hence, no need to alert them. California, they left off intentionally, hoping the vast majority would perish.

Not. Working.

Re:Oregon

[BigT]

The western what-nows? You mean there's life outside the eastern time zone? When did that happen?

And since when has the gubermit or media cared about life west to the rockies?

I don't understand the purpose

[iriemon]

What kind of conceivable emergency would effect the entire country? Nuclear war?

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

You seemed to have answered you own question. Unless you think nuclear war somehow doesn't affect the entire country.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[0racle]

It is also capable of being used locally, NWS uses it like this. This test was simply the first top to bottom national test of the system, this does not mean national alerting is the only function of the system.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[0123456]

You seemed to have answered you own question. Unless you think nuclear war somehow doesn't affect the entire country.

You think a massive nuclear war (with whom?) is just suddenly going to happen without any prior warning? About the only possibility I could see would be some kind of computer failure that launched all Russia's remaining nukes, then you'll see it on TV just in time to realise that you're going to die.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[tmosley]

Media blackout.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[zigmeister]

The purpose is security theater. When something bad happens they activate the theater (or it doesn't need to be activated, as in a passive system or something that by its very nature is an always on system) and then they point at it and say "see we did something so you can't blame us." Instead of you know, actually improving security.

Honestly, the best thing for 99% individual normal citizens to do in the event of a threat to the nation, or attack on our borders, cities, military installations, what have you is don't call the police, don't speed, don't get into a car accident, don't rob a bank, don't murder your cheating spouse etc. In other words stay out of the hair of the people actually dealing with security till they sort it out. All this system would do in the event of an attack on NYC or LA is induce massive panic creating more damage...

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Shazback]

Hmm... Let's see...

  - Terrorists have managed to place a highly toxic substance (cyanide, sarin gas, anthrax...) in common household goods that have been distributed across the country.
  - Hackers have gained control of the entire network of computers that control prison facilities/judiciary records, and as a result an immense number of prisoners have escaped.
  - Widespread failure of dam control systems that risk flooding large parts of the country.

I'm pretty sure there are other cases, but hell, if I can think of three in a few minutes, I'm sure people who spend their waking hours dreaming of destroying the USA and all it stands for can think of emergencies that would effect the entire country.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[lgw]

Nobody has that many nukes any more. If everyone launched every remaining nuke, it would be a bad time to be living in a major city, near an airbase, or in a decommissioned nuclear silo, but for everyone else the disaster would be the EMP events, at worst.

For those in a major city, in theory you'd have time to bug out (assuming the alert was actually sent out ASAP, and the Russian subs weren't just off the coast). In practice, of course, evacuations cause gridlock and nobody really gets to leave (and of course no moderd car will run after a nuke goes off within the horizon), but if you started walking away from the city/base it would certainly help, even if you could only travel a mile.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Epidemics, alien invasions(both the extraterrestrial and terrestrial), another 9/11, imminent asteroid impact, imminent life altering CME, nuclear disaster, super volcanoes... just to name a few.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Culture20]

What kind of conceivable emergency would effect the entire country? Nuclear war?

Plague, OWS rioters in every city (or announcement of curfew because of said OWS rioters), Killer Bees!

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[sound vision]

I can think of several things:
Nuclear (or conventional) war,
Coordinated terrorist attacks across multiple states (like 9/11),
Threats from outer space (asteroids, gamma ray bursts, etc.),
The Large Hadron Collider causing a resonance cascade,
High-frequency trading machines develop sentience and take all our money,
The Republicans nominate a black man for the presidency.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[quetwo]

The IPAWS system not only works for a national emergency, but it is also setup to allow local authorities (state/county/city) to initiate events as well. This was a test to see if every system down the pipe was working -- which they were not.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[tibit]

- Widespread failure of dam control systems that risk flooding large parts of the country.

Maybe if you lived in a small alpine country or in the Netherlands. There is nothing you could do to the dams in large countries like U.S., China, Russia, India, Australia, etc. that would affect significant number of people.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[geekoid]

We're Killer bees, damn it!

Alternative:

It's ok to buzz off.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Shazback]

Sure of that?

Let's say that for X reason, all control over pumping and emptying mechanisms had been lost for 6,000 of the 8,100 "major dams" in the USA, with as a result the real risk of flooding due to catastrophic failure on all 6,000 concerned dams.

Instantly, people around the country would experience electricity problems, and electric rationing would likely need to be established. Second, flooding would be a major risk to more than just a few thousand people across the country. Towns like New Orleans would need to be prepared for immediate evacuation, and others like Havasu Lake City would need to be evacuated immediately, meaning the number of evacuees could be in the millions or tens of millions. Third, water supply and irrigation would be put on a very short countdown until water rationing would be necessary, as well as food rationing with the prospect of huge crop losses. If flooding happened, it could flood parts of the great plains and cause shortages in basic foodstuffs like wheat and corn, as well as massively increasing the risk of diseases spreading in their wake, with decaying wildlife and putrefying flora.

I'm sure there are other consequences I am unaware of or simply didn't consider, but I do think that the risk of imminent catastrophic failure to a large number of major dams would be an emergency that would effect the entire country.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[zigmeister]

And a TV or radio alert that nobody watches anymore that doesn't technically even work that couldn't possibly tell every individual what course of action to take and even if it could it will never be technically prepared to do so is going to do what? Jack all shit that's what. Look, this is pure unadulterated theater. Also, I admit that it's useful for alerting regions (states and cities) that they need to evacuate or whatever for some purpose. But short of a foreign land invasion across the entire US simultaneously there is absolutely no reason for a national alert system given this sole lonely reason: it can't tell anybody what to do! That at the very least would need to be done on a state (more likely city) basis. Basically in order for this federal boondoggle to ever be at all remotely useful it would need to be ripped out wholesale and redesigned from the ground up. Bonus points if the technology you design it with is even still relevant (unlike this one) by the time its designed, implemented, tested and fully working. Which is to say this one is a complete and utter waste of time.

That being said, the only part of this that really makes me sad is that people don't realize this is Security Theater(tm). The part about it wasting money: that kinda money is a rounding error for the Feds. The part about it being a non-functional security system: ya, we don't really need it anyways, and even if we did it would never be useful.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Shazback]

Whilst it wouldn't inform everyone, in the first two cases the emergency message could be sufficiently precise to give precise indications as to the procedure to follow. Even for the cases where information needs to vary depending on the local information, it would still be useful.

For instance, in the case of massive loss of control over dams there would be an immediate need to start electricity rationing. On a nation-wide basis. Hydro electricity represents 10% of total US electricity production, and it's not sure that the capacity is there to produce enough electricity for peak demand without hydro. Even if the emergency alert system only reaches 40% of all people, and only 60% of them reduce their current demand by 30% (people turning off the A/C, stopping dishwashers/washing machines, turning off stand-by electric appliances...), that's probably enough for immediate demand to be managed with the loss of hydro, without causing too many blackouts. The emergency message could likely also be used to mobilize people to help with evacuation and flooding, by reaching massive numbers of IRR and US National Guard members, even those for whom contact information was erroneous, and asking them to report to their base for active duty. For communities that know they are susceptible to flooding or those that live a short distance downstream from a large dam the emergency message alone wouldn't have information regarding evacuation, but it could encourage people who are dependant or don't have means of transportation to prepare for evacuation (assemble medicine, one 20lb bag of clothes, etc. and make your presence as well as your condition known to evacuation teams).

Of course, the initial nation-wide emergency alert would need to be followed by state-wide emergency alerts within seconds, so as to provide more detailed information on how the evacuation will proceed, and even then, it'd need to be completed by a method of county or even city/town-wide evacuation warnings so each town can be given precise information about how to prepare and evacuate, how to contact the authorities without overwhelming them, and so forth.

But I do think that the nation-wide alert system does have a use. To use the same example again, if at 1200h it's observed that all control over a large number of dams in the USA has been lost, the information about reducing electricity consumption, risk of widespread flooding and evacuation is "available" at 1203h. How long will it be until the specifics for which branch of the military will assist in evacuating which area, evacuating to where, how water will be distributed, food rationing and so forth are laid out? I'm pretty sure just to compile the several thousand evacuation plans that exist (supposing every at-risk town has a realistic and up-to-date evacuation plan) and assigning responsibility for overseeing each one will take at the very least until 1230h. So what to do in the mean time? Get each state to launch a plea to limit electricity consumption? Get the phones working at National Guard of the US call centre? If the president takes 5 minutes to lay down the specifics of the situation from 1210h to 1215h, those minutes each increase the chance of electricity consumption being managed and avoiding massive network failure that would worsen the situation, by slowing down information spread. They also make pretty much every member of the federal military reserve aware of the problem before 1230h, since it would be major news and chances are overwhelming either a family member, a co-worker or another member in the reserves would be in touch with reservists that didn't hear/see the nationwide emergency alert. By the times the states get their alerts going with evacuation plans it could be 1245h, and as late as 1300h by the time the last area/town/county has necessary evacuation information. That's a whole hour. In a situation where there is impending catastrophic failure, that's a long time. If the states also had to give information about rationing, reserve call-up was slower, and info

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[tibit]

I don't think that there is any concrete dam out there that's not designed to survive with passive safety only. That means it can get full and spill over the top and nothing bad will happen. Eventually, if you let it spill over for many years, the top would erode away, perhaps facilitating crack initiation, but this is nothing immediate. With earthen dams it's a different story, but there isn't too many of those that hold enough water to cause large scale damage. By large scale I mean, say, 10% of country's population would be affected.

I still hold that if you closed every flow control that can be closed on all of the U.S. dams, there'd be no major emergency resulting from that. Of course whatever secondary function the equipment on the dams may have would likely be compromised (say power generation), but that's, like, duh.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[surgen]

The purpose is security theater. When something bad happens they activate the theater (or it doesn't need to be activated, as in a passive system or something that by its very nature is an always on system) and then they point at it and say "see we did something so you can't blame us." Instead of you know, actually improving security.

The Emergency Alert System isn't a security system, it's a System to Alert citizens about Emergencies.

(Bad analogy) Its purpose isn't to reinforce water levees, it is to tell you when they're breached so you know to get the fuck out of town.

Re:I don't understand the purpose

[Shazback]

I was thinking about things more insidiously... Open the inlets to maximum, get the generator running as fast as it'll go, and then tell the transform equipment to shut down, stuff like that. Chances are, you could break the turbine and/or start a fire in the powerhouse. If the turbine breaks and blocks the water flow below the inlet, water will push the generator "out" into the powerhouse, changing the pressures the dam has to support. You could probably exacerbate problems by pushing other internal systems to their limits or stopping them (ventilation, repeated opening and closing of discharge valves...). If the reservoirs are already nearly full, then it might be "sufficient" to break small upstream dams in order to overflow major dams slightly downstream, despite their emergency spillways*.

Thank God things like dams are designed to be passively safe, but sadly, that doesn't mean they'll be safe if someone gains control over them, even if this control is only computerized.

*For instance : The Green River is dammed just south of La Barge, Wyoming by the Fontenelle Dam, which is an earth-filled dam built between '61 and '64. The Fontenelle Reservoir can hold up to a little over 0.4 cubic km of water. Downstream on the Green River is the Flaming Gorge Dam, with a reservoir that can hold also a little over 4,5 cubic km. Downstream, the Green River joins the Colorado River, which is dammed by the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead's capacity is just over 35 cubic km, 12 of which are in permanent use as inactive storage. Say all the reservoirs are above 85% full (not counting inactive storage). Fontenelle Dam suffers catastrophic failure (for whatever reason). That's about 0,35 cubic km that are going to hit the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and make it overflow much faster than the 820 cubic metre/second spillway will cope with. Chances are, the Flaming Gorge Dam will also suffer catastrophic failure. So now you've got roughly 4,5 cubic km heading the way of Lake Mead, collecting debris along the way. As the water enters the lake, it's going to put high pressure on the Hoover Dam, which could cause structural integrity to be compromised. If the Hoover Dam holds strong as Lake Mead fills up at an outrageous pace, it's still got to put 4,5 cubic km in where it already has at least 31,5 cubic km in it... That's going to put it above maximum capacity, and even with 11,000 cubic metre/second spillways it's unlikely the dam won't overflow massively, possibly causing huge erosion at the base of the dam and... You guessed it. I'm not a hydrological engineer, nor a specialist of dams, so it's very possible someone who knows more about the specifics will be able to point out elements I have missed that would stop a "cascade" event like this even without co-ordination on behalf of downstream dams. Thing is, I just can't shrug the idea that there is - something - hostile people with enough knowledge to take control of a large number of dams in a remote manner would be able to do with that control that could cause massive damage.

DirecTV

[Jordan (jman)]

I was eating lunch at the local Hooters when the test aired. All the TV's in the place went to the same test screen, when they were on different sports channels before. So it worked for DirecTV at least.

Take My Breath Away

[tepples]

Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test.

Are you sure it wasn't "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin? (Proof)

Re:Take My Breath Away

[blair1q]

I've never heard Paparazzi and thought it was Take My Breath Away. Some people are hateful about Lady Gaga, and I don't get why. Yeah, she's not a good singer, she's a lousy dancer, and her songs aren't all great. She's a pop star; that's the schtick. She brings the circus to it in a way nobody else has, though, which dare I say it actually makes it art.

Re:Take My Breath Away

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I don't think those songs are that similar. Besides with the large number of sample based songs on the radio now, why pick on Lady Gaga?

As a person who was alive when the movie Top Gun was out in the theaters and "Take My Breath Away" was played on the radio constantly, I can say that Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" doesn't cause me to almost vomit like "Take My Breath Away".

Not that I listen to Lady Gaga. I just assume she is aspiring to be like Bette Midler.

Re:Take My Breath Away

[tepples]

Besides with the large number of sample based songs on the radio now, why pick on Lady Gaga?

I pick on everyone. I chose Lady Gaga because the article mentioned Lady Gaga.

Re:Take My Breath Away

[geekoid]

Some people hate music they don't like or understand.
She is just an entertainer. If anything hate makes her more popular.

My daughter enjoys her music,and I eve have a track in my regular music rotation.. ...
I mean you kids and your music, it's all bad, horrid crap..whew almost lost me old geezer card.

and yet the weather alert systems works better

[Anonymous Coward]

then this!

Re:and yet the weather alert systems works better

[blair1q]

That's because it's a whole different system that's been tested frequently for 50 years.

This one is designed to be triggered from a single location, not a number of regional offices, and to ensure that all channels of communication get involved, using minimalist additional infrastructure, as modern budgets don't look like cold-war "do it all the way or we're speaking rooskie in a week" budgets.

Streamed It!

[MikeyC01]

I was streaming my favorite AM station from back home using iheartradio on my phone and they carried the test - New EAS data bursts, then the good old "the Russians are coming" EBS tone, then a recording with horrible background noise, echoes, and looping of some dude spieling the EAS spiel

Lady Gaga

[fortapocalypse]

That wasn't a mistake, that was just a targetted emergency call- part of some A/B testing.

What would Chuck do?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're Comcast too but we got Chuck Norris instead. We just thought it was part of the response instructions: Times will be hard. You're going to have to ask yourself "What would Chuck do?"

Why Not Just

[sexconker]

Why not just use whatever variety of pipes they used to shout about the upcoming test?
I heard about the upcoming test from at least a dozen different sources, but was completely unaware of it when it actually happened.

Sirius XM

[Anonymous Coward]

The first 2 seconds played, then silence on all XM stations.

My answer would be NO,

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I was sitting at my computer, not in front of a television set.

I also didn't hear any physical alerts such as our local storm siren or other means.

Didn't hear it here

[he-sk]

I spent all day in the library where there are no TVs or radios.

Also, I'm not in the US at the moment.

Re:Didn't hear it here

[cruff]

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sure, if you like, you could request a take over of your country by the US military and/or corporate overlords, which ever you desire. After that point, you too could share in the EAS goodness.

Re:Didn't hear it here

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you were tuned to any American broadcaster at the time, did the alert system reach you?"

Is there any particular reason you responded? I belive according to the question, no one gives a shit.

What alert?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was underground in my hardened bunker yesterday afternoon!

Re:What alert?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to disappoint you: there's still no zombie outbreak. You can come back up.

DirectTV did turn to Lady GaGa during emergency te

[Anonymous Coward]

On my DirectTV satellite connection we got a blue screen of text and stuff together with about 75% of the song papparazzi. It seemed an odd choice for national emergency...

test? what test?

[k6mfw]

I was aware of the upcoming test but haven't followed it much being at work which means not watching TV and not listening to radio. Our 2-ways at our facility are not Part 73 broadcast, and I don't think Part 90 business or public safety radio services were part of this (wasn't scanning at the time except media 2-ways that were chasing story of a downed airplane in SF bay but it turns out it was a unmanned large balloon). I don't know of any amateur radio groups were involved (I don't think so, wasn't listening to the N6NFI 9 AM Talk Net). And never got any emails or cellphone text (thankfully).

But lotsa debate here on slashdot! I'll throw in my opinion is this test was useful as actual demonstration of nationwide "simulcast" which exercised the feeds to the broadcasters. You can model it but at some point you gotta do some kind of real world test. Now, purpose of EAS is debatable..... disaster is either self alerting ( flood, earthquake, nuclear bomb denotation), there are already other means of alerts i.e. NWS tornado warnings, hurricane evacuations. Or local flashflood alerts but leave that to local authorities as they know (or should) have better knowledge how to get word to flood areas. There is no earthquake warning system except p-wave (or s-wave?) sensors. Inbound ICBM attack is very 20th century and not useful (WTF are you going to do with 15 min warning?).

Re:test? what test?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bone the neighbor's wife.

Re:test? what test?

[Ambvai]

Hop in your car, floor it out of town, get on the interstate, sit in traffic for 13 minutes. Alternatively, call up the SO, head towards the point of impact and attempt to join the Billion Particle club?

Re:test? what test?

[tibit]

You may have more luck on township/county roads. If I had to flee any large city, I'd head for those and stay the heck away from any popular, large thoroughfare.

Re:test? what test?

[geekoid]

EAS is also for local events. This test was the country wide feature.

15 minutes.

If you are in the immediate blast zone? drive for 13 minutes and get into the sewer. You will probablt die, but it's you best chance assuming you don't have an actual shelter

people farther away, get into an interior room with no windows.

farther away, beat the rush to the hardware store for duct tape, plastic and masks. Seal the vehicle and move away as quickly as you can up wind. if possible.

Farther way, take precautions against long term radiation and possible secondary attack. Near a boarder be on the look out for invasion.

Plague, biological attacks, and asteroid impacts are probably better realistic examples, but multiwarhead missiles a possibility.

  the system, will also give specific from the horses mouth information

Silence

[Anonymous Coward]

Listening to a syndicated radio show on AM radio.

Start tones, silence, end tones. Not very informative.

Comcast Cable Box

[Anonymous Coward]

Was watching Travel Channel when it was supposed to air the alert but I didn't get one until about 1:05 and after it finally aired my cable box restarted and the quality of my TV is now that of 240p and calling Comcast hasn't helped.

Damn straight!

[Anonymous Coward]

We should leave emergency notifications to the free markets! You want to know about disasters and what to do? Well, just subscribe to a disaster notification service. I'm AT&T or your cable companies will provide that service as part of a package of some sort. And we all know what superior service cable companies have over pathetic government!

Re:Damn straight!

[Zaphod The 42nd]

When was the last time you dealt with government "service" ?
I know AT&T customer support is crap, but people vote with their dollars. Apparently what we want in the modern wal-mart world is the cheapest products possible; services be damned. If you don't like that, go shop somewhere else that prioritizes differently. Me, I'm poor, so I'm okay with losing on service to save money. At least we get choice.

With government, it would be shitty service AND costly.

Re:Damn straight!

[Obfuscant]

We should leave emergency notifications to the free markets! You want to know about disasters and what to do? Well, just subscribe to a disaster notification service.

You may think you were being sarcastic, but this is exactly what many localities are doing. There are companies that exist to provide emergency notification services. They will happily call every phone in a municipality and deliver a recorded message. The city or whatever hires them and then makes a great deal of noise advertising how they are protecting the citizens. These are, however, not opt-in systems, and they have no opt-out.

Right after our local city crowed about how they could annoy everyone all at once at their whim, I called the company they said they had hired. The people there had absolutely no clue what I was talking about when I told them to remove my number from their system and never call it.

Re:Damn straight!

[sorak]

We should leave emergency notifications to the free markets! You want to know about disasters and what to do? Well, just subscribe to a disaster notification service. I'm AT&T or your cable companies will provide that service as part of a package of some sort. And we all know what superior service cable companies have over pathetic government!

We already do! There is no law preventing any organization from creating such a service. Our options are "free market and government" or "free market only"...Sorry for posting a serious reply to satirical comment, but one of my pet peeves is when the government steps in to solve a problem and conservatives reply "the free market would have done it faster/better/cheaper".

No, they wouldn't have, and they didn't. That's why the problem existed.

Re:Damn straight!

[Obfuscant]

You chose to opt-in when you didn't vote at the town hall meeting on the issue,

There was no vote. And even had there been, someone else voting 'yes' is not the same as me opting in.

I know, I know, you're one of the 99% who thinks lazy bitching works to change the world rather than actually participating in your governmental processes.

I know, I know, you are one of those people who thinks that jumping down someone else's throat is the correct response to any statement you don't like, and thinks they know everything there is to know about the other person and their involvement in "government process". Stop being an asshole.

You freaked out like they were ruining your life because they bothered you so much ...

No, asshole, I made a very calm and reasoned call to a company that thought it had the right to get paid to use my phone for their purposes. Kinda like telemarketers.

You're just a douche. What will be funny as shit ...

You're just an asshole. What will be funny as shit will be when the next disaster strikes and my phone will be busy receiving this useless and unwanted recorded message and the local emergency manager won't be able to get through to let me know my help is needed and where to report... see, my being on a first callout list for emergency services is just one of the things you don't know about me or this situation, but it sure didn't stop you from flapping your face like a moron.

Re:Damn straight!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where there's no opt-out? Moving to a new address won't unsubscribe your phone number from their telemarketing-from-hell list.

Re:Damn straight!

[tburkhol]

With government, it would be shitty service AND costly.

Down here in Atlanta, property taxes average ~$2000/year, $170/month, and about a third of that, call it $60/month, goes to public schools. Now, considering that I'd pay a baby sitter half that while I go to dinner and a movie, I'd have to say that government-provided education, no matter how poorly it compares to Exeter, is Cheap, Cheap, Cheap.

Re:Damn straight!

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Yes, because public schools are models of efficiency. >_' Maybe your local property tax isn't too bad, but there's federal grant money going to the schools as well, which comes from your income tax.

Re:Damn straight!

[riverat1]

Where's the mod for "Brilliantly sarcastic"?

Re:Damn straight!

[Anonymous Coward]

That we should. Have you watched TV/listened to radio in the last 20 years? Disaster sells...Katrina, 9/11, etc...the media was on it well before the antiquated EAS was. (and even included new media like our internets!) No altruism necessary...it just happens to fall into place for this particular need.

Re:Damn straight!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which problem is this? Whenever anything happens, I hear about it on the news, radio, internet, email, phone, word of mouth, local (private) alert systems...

Re:Damn straight!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the demand for solving the problem was high enough then it would surely be solved by someone interested in making money. You do not have a choice between gov and market because the government already took you money to "solve problems". Markets are based on voluntary cooperation, government is not. I dare you to not pay the tax needed for the alert system because you chose a market alternative.

Re:Damn straight!

[sorak]

Which problem is this? Whenever anything happens, I hear about it on the news, radio, internet, email, phone, word of mouth, local (private) alert systems...

So you keep all those things going at all times? Wow. You have problems that the government cannot solve.

Re:Damn straight!

[sorak]

If the demand for solving the problem was high enough then it would surely be solved by someone interested in making money.

Only if an individual has the money, authority, and insight to solve the problem.

You do not have a choice between gov and market because the government already took you money to "solve problems".

You never did have a choice. That's the whole point. The problem was created under a mostly free market (although I will grant that regulations cause some problems). The problem persisted long enough for people to realize that it was there, and citizens demanded a solution enough to vote for one. The free market had first crack at the problem and did nothing about it. So, yes, your free market solution that never existed before will have to compete with a government solution. Even in this worst case scenario, we have gone from "no solution" to "two competing solutions: one of them already paid for".

Markets are based on voluntary cooperation, government is not.

In a democracy, the government is based on voluntary cooperation, just as much as market forces. The government is held accountable via voting, while businesses are held accountable by profit margins. The primary differences are that the government is more transparent, and that their primary stated goal is to work for the tax payers, while the free market's goal is to aquire money by any means possible.

I dare you to not pay the tax needed for the alert system because you chose a market alternative.

And I dare you to not pay your cable bill because you don't want certain channels.

Comcast/TIVO

[WebSorcerer]

I am a Comcast subscriber using a TIVO box. At the appointed time, it switched to a movie in Spanish for about a minute and then displayed a text message about it being a test.

Re:Comcast/TIVO

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine switched to QVC then a cascading warning of "error: failed at interrupt 0x20 on device eth0", then switched back to QVC.

Dentist

[Oswald McWeany]

I was at the Dentists and one of my fillings started broardcasting the alert.

Yes, I heard it...

[jesseck]

and it interrupted a badass song. I was pissed. And, on top of that, the quality was crap. I heard about 3 different announces speaking through static at once.

Re:Yes, I heard it...

[geekoid]

I would be pissed to, because you can never, ever, find that song anyplace else.

How soft is your life when a song interruption pisses you off?

TiVo completely overridden

[kheldan]

I have a HD TiVo, and it was completely and totally on override during the test. Wouldn't respond to any of the buttons at all, not even the TiVo button itself. Somewhat unsettling.

Re:TiVo completely overridden

[spire3661]

Remember when we used to buy things and we actually owned them? I'm fine with broadcasting the message on all channels, but dont subvert control of my hardware.

Re:TiVo completely overridden

[silas_moeckel]

It's grand watching it slowly crawl across the screen it letters a blind person can see twice in English and twice in Spanish. I can see plenty of good uses or this I also see it being abused, can not wait till there is a threat level purple alert we think there might be somebody that might want to to something bad somewhere. Can see it happening more around election time.

Repeal this idiotic law. Have the fcc come up with a voluntary system that sends cryptographically signed messages through a variety of channels in a standardized format, and let individual stations and devices choose how and when to display them. No politician needs a podium that everybody is required to listen to.

What clause of the constitution does this stem from?

Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

This test is brought to you by the letter P. Why test now during civil unrest when the system went unused during 9/11, Katrina, etc.

I felt it was a decent test though...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am amazed that after 9/11 they hadn't tried to do such a thing sooner not 10 years later. I'm just gonna sit in my bunker with my tin hat.

Cox Communications

[ClayJar]

I was watching the test on a friend's Cox Communications cable service, and they also switch to a shopping channel (cable channel 8) for emergency alert activations. Their cable system apparently is incapable of showing the alert on all the (digital?) channels, so they simply show it over analog shopping channel 8 and have a system in place to switch everyone to that channel automatically whenever an alert is triggered. It's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game... er... episode of Mythbusters... whatever. On the other hand, it is even more jarring than the alert tones, so you'll certainly know something's afoot.

If you have one of their Motorola digital cable boxes, when it goes into emergency alert mode and auto-switches to analog shopping channel 8 for the message, the front clock display changes to "EAS" as well. If you're suddenly watching the shopping channel and "EAS" is displayed on the cable box *and* you have the wonderfully annoying (and intentionally so) alert tones, you *should* be able to figure out that now's the time to read or listen. At least, that seems to be the general idea.

I did notice that I didn't get the alert over cable until after I'd finished watching it on OTA TV (and chatting about it afterward), so chalk up a minute or two of additional latency to the cable company.

Re:Cox Communications

[Anonymous Coward]

"important football game"

Best oxymoron today.

Re:Cox Communications

[tlhIngan]

I was watching the test on a friend's Cox Communications cable service, and they also switch to a shopping channel (cable channel 8) for emergency alert activations. Their cable system apparently is incapable of showing the alert on all the (digital?) channels, so they simply show it over analog shopping channel 8 and have a system in place to switch everyone to that channel automatically whenever an alert is triggered. It's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game... er... episode of Mythbusters... whatever. On the other hand, it is even more jarring than the alert tones, so you'll certainly know something's afoot.

If you have one of their Motorola digital cable boxes, when it goes into emergency alert mode and auto-switches to analog shopping channel 8 for the message, the front clock display changes to "EAS" as well. If you're suddenly watching the shopping channel and "EAS" is displayed on the cable box *and* you have the wonderfully annoying (and intentionally so) alert tones, you *should* be able to figure out that now's the time to read or listen. At least, that seems to be the general idea.

I did notice that I didn't get the alert over cable until after I'd finished watching it on OTA TV (and chatting about it afterward), so chalk up a minute or two of additional latency to the cable company.

All cableboxes must work this way.

If it's a newer "digital EAS", then the cablebox can decode it and display it, overlaying the programming in the background with the alert.

If it's the ancient analog system, then when the cablebox gets the signal, it MUST switch to the channel indicated to display the EAS alert.

This happens regardless of what cablebox you use - be it cable DVR, TiVo, Moxi, etc. It's part of the regulations that they have to do it, depending on the system in use.

Which one is in use depends on your provider and area (some providers have areas where one is predominant).

The analog ones suck though as they cancel recordings in most cases (dumb DVRs may continue recording the EAS channel...), whilst the digital ones only show up in the live output and never in the recorded video.

Re:Cox Communications

[Anonymous Coward]

"important football game"

Best oxymoron today.

Best moron today.

Re:Cox Communications

[tehcyder]

t's a bit annoying if a test is scheduled during, say, an important football game...

Yet more government interference in the free market.

Your conclusion does not fit the facts.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Millions heard it.
2. Using all communication methods to broadcast a message of national urgency is hardly misguided. It's a common sense idea.
3. They'll add other methods soon enough.

Re:Your conclusion does not fit the facts.

[Bardwick]

Your facts do not fit scenerio. There is really only one scenerio that this will be remotely usefull. Incoming Nuclear attack. 9-11, Katrina were both localized events. Millions heard it because millions were listening for it having it drilled into thier head for the last several months. They will add another method soon. They want the president to have the authority to take over phone, internet, cable and every other form of communication that it's citizens use. Biggest question is, why?

Cox CNBC Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Cox Cable in San Diego knocked CNBC (business channel) off the air for over 30 minutes. I saw a nice black screen instead of an alert. I think they should waive everyone's cable modem data cap for the month...

Is the internet planned to be involved someday?

[mrshermanoaks]

I was browsing Google News when I happened to hear the tone from next door. For some (unexplained) reason, I kind of expected to see a notification on there.

Considering I sit in my office all day with no radio and no TV, it would be nice to get that kind of alert webified.

Re:Is the internet planned to be involved someday?

[omnichad]

It's my understanding that the broadcasters subscribe to a CAP feed for EAS over TCP/IP. I'd love to have a URL for that to make my own notification, and I'm sure Google would too.

Re:Is the internet planned to be involved someday?

[geekoid]

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/personal-localized-alerting-network-plan

also, providers have the capability to get emergence text. Most are implementing it, but it wouldn't hurt for you to inquire.

People still watch TV?

[Anonymous Coward]

People still watch TV?

SMS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt know about it. I get emails and texts though, why not alert me that way? Every American I know would have received the alert immediately if they'd done that.

Why?

[Bardwick]

Why does this exist? I've seen the party line about katrina, 9-11, etc.. As I recall, every news channel, radio station, news site was flooded with real time. Why would we need to hear from the president? There are like 200 microphones in the white house, all he/she has to do is let the networks know he's talking in 5 minutes... This has already been accomplished by the free market, what possible purpose could it serve?

Re:Why?

[geekoid]

Because it would provide specific information, not just to the area, but surrounding areas that will be getting an influx of people.

Of course, they wouldn't use the nation wide feature in that case, just area specific features; the system dies both.

And there are many other large scale disasters that the media wouldn't be very good at reporting accurately.
Biological dispersal, plague, asteroid, underground avalanche that is causing a mega tsunami, massive volcanic eruption.

  Several astronomical event come to mind now. Massive particle eruption from the Sun, near by xray burst.

Mass neutrino emitting for the earth core.. HA!

I noticed a failure on G4TV at the time

[WillAffleckUW]

I was watching a podcast of G4TV at the time, and I noticed that all of Sarah Underwood's clothes jumped a meter to the left.

Does that count?

They need the data, duh!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the gov't! First they need to spend a bunch of money to test a known deficient system, then a bunch more money to document that they tested a known defunct system, then waste a bunch of time [ var time = 'money'; ] debating inanities before they can propose spending a bunch more money on studying whether building a new system is cost beneficial.... all this before taking the initiative to just create a new system which may or may not be technologically deprecated by the time it is deployed.

Still?

[stygian]

People still use broadcast TV? Huh.

Emergency Radio Failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a weather/emergency radio oustide my office door which never went off at all. You would think that system would be failproof. It lets us know when storms are coming or tornado alerts are issued....

Terrible news

[uncanny]

Some DirectTV customers reported hearing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" play during the test.

The terrorists have won

Re:Terrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

this story makes for hundreds of beautiful 2012 parodies... watch out for them on youtube :D

Re:Terrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

I herd this! also said that something had happened in D.C.

What does this help?

[LoudNoiseElitist]

I'm not sure I understand the point of all of this. Why do we need a national alert system?

I'm sorry, but planes flying into buildings isn't a valid reason to send out a national alert. Sure, it will have a lasting effect on the country as a whole, but we don't all need to run and hide. Furthermore, I doubt it will have any effect on the people actually involved, as the alert probably won't make it out until something has already happened. Natural disasters I can understand, but it seems like the news stations already have that handled fairly well.

If anything, this is only going to cause more paranoia, especially if every little thing that happens is broadcast as an alert.

I heard no alerts

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

Therefore, the test of my new tinfoil hat design was a resounding success!

How Much????

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

How much of a fine did the failure have to pay. bu dum bum. I will be here all week.

Facebook and Gmail and others...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even both with this broadcast system? Send out the alert via Facebook, Gmail, and a few other well selected systems (Angry Birds, Farmville??) and reach more people quicker.

Test

[Anonymous Coward]

Test came through for me in Sheffield Lake, OH (between Cleveland and Sandusky) using Time Warner.

kinda worked

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in Romania watching slingbox from Phoenix, AZ (Cox Comm). It worked fine but didnt turn the channel back to Hbo on demand.

What about those that adandoned broadcast media?

[AlphaBit]

I haven't had a cable subscription for years and now get all my television from Hulu or Netflix. I also listen to Pandora Radio at home, work, and in the car. I guess I just don't get to know about the emergency evacuation plans that will save my life. Hopefully, streaming media over IP is just a fad and they won't have to rethink the relevance of a broadcast based Emergency Alert System.

My program was interupted.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some guy that said he was the President of the United States told me that it was a test. Did I believe him? No!

Just passing the rumor along.

Not the Broadcasters Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

IANABE (I am not a broadcast engineer), but I was at a meeting recently with some, and this whole project has been a typical government screwup from day 1. Out local "Regional Entry Point" station is receiving the "transmission" over a POTS converter. That means that an autodialer calls in to the radio station, and plays an alert. I happened to be listening to that station during the alert, and the sound quality was horrible. The alert message played twice, and both times it was covered in awful echos and other noise. I can only imagine that the other stations in the market, who were supposed to pick up the message from that station must have sounded even worse. So no, I disagree with other commenters who say the private broadcasters are to blame for a poor showing. DHS and FCC have made this into a boondoggle of national size. There are supposed to be some kind of satellite uplinks coming online to distribute the alerts, and the current POTS based system will just be backup in major markets, but of course that was not ready in time for the "big test."

Feedback

[devnullkac]

I heard the announcement cut in the middle of the top-of-the-hour news on NPR (but there'd been plenty of discussion about it up to that point). After a few seconds I heard what sounded like random comms chatter in the background, but as it got closer to the end I could make it out and realized it was the same message playing on top of itself 3 or 4 times with a half second or so delay between them. The distribution network must have allowed some subtle feedback. Fine for a 15 second test message, but if there were serious instructions being passed on, it could get annoying real quick.

complete failure

[Anonymous Coward]

since some of us are not tuned to a tv or radio 24/7
Until they link it up with a audio warning like tornado sirens I doubt I'll ever see/hear the warning.
Kill your tv and tune off mainstream radio!

Wait, we weren't supposed to load ammo?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of weak ass test is this if we don't load some ammo and supplies, gas up the bug out mobile and fucking go nuts?

I take these very seriously. I sure as hell did all of the above.

Good Luck I Am NOT North American!

[plerner]

All I keep thinking is what's next to build fear amongst your own citizens. So now the alert will be triggered every now and them and everyone in the hole country will be afraid of dying and ask the president to invade another country. Is it so hard to see that no other country in the whole world has so many security issues? None else in earth is so afraid of bad things that may happen to them. You never wondered how come? Never thought of what is that you did to get into this situation? Just change what you are doing that provokes other to be so angry at you, and you will never need to be afraid again. But instead of that you just accept to get paranoid and keep fucking the rest of the world.

Re:Good Luck I Am NOT North American!

[xquercus]

Is it so hard to see that no other country in the whole world has so many security issues?

You may misunderstand the EAS. While the EAS (and the old EBS) have a theoretical role in national defense, the few times I've actually seen it activated have never involved a security issue. In fact, this test is the first time EVER that the EAS has been used nationally -- though I've heard stories of national EBS (the predecessor) activations decades ago. The few times I've seen EAS activated it has been on a local level to announce extremely unusual severe weather events that pose an imminent threat to life -- hurricanes and tornadoes. It's an easy method to reach a large number of people in a very short period of time.

Saw it here

[Erbo]

The company I work for has a TV in the break room, which is fed by DirecTV. I was in there at the time of the test, and the TV (which was displaying the Discovery Channel at the time, I think) displayed a DirecTV "Emergency Broadcast System Test" card, and I saw the scrolling letters across the screen announcing an EAN for the District of Columbia, which is one of the things that was expected. When it was over, the TV displayed its previous program.

So it looked fine to me, although apparently there were a bunch of problems elsewhere. Ah well, that's why they call it a "test"...

Semi-failure...

[coastal984]

The alert came across the local access cable station we were tuned to. The video was successful, but the audio was horrible. You could tell he was talking, but the audio was garbled, almost like other stations audio was breaking into it.

DVR

[Anonymous Coward]

I just hope my day time shows got recorded.

nothing here either

[Anonymous Coward]

was watching Fox News channel via ATT Uverse . Fox news lead right into when the test was to start but nothing happened. They went right on with their normal programming. Kinda makes one wonder if the old CONELRAD or Emergency Broadcast System would have ever worked Nationally or not. I had actually tuned in to listen to the test, the nerd in me I guess.

Was that the best EBS soundtrack they could find?

[itsdapead]

I don't think those songs are that similar. Besides with the large number of sample based songs on the radio now, why pick on Lady Gaga?

Actually, I can see the vague similarity in the tune - but thats all it is, a vague similarity. She should do a proper cover version: she could wear a replica of a fighter jet made out of live badgers.

Meanwhile, more suitable soundtracks for the EBS would be "Ninety Nine Red Baloons" by Nina, "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, "Enola Gay" by OMD or, on a different tack, you can't go wrong with "Always Look On The Bright Side" (although theyd have to bleep out the s-word for US National Radio)

OTA DTV worked fine

[linebackn]

With the stories I have heard about this kind of thing potentially doing funny things with cable boxes or Tivio and such, I was curious if my little over-the-air DTV converter box would do anything unwanted. Fortunately it did not. Each station simply went to broadcasting their own custom themed video warning message on their channel and sub channels. I flipped through the channels to see all the different ones. The only odd thing was some channels went back to their normal programming sooner than others.

It was kind of interesting seeing how each station had a different looking message and some had different information. I had assumed they would have all been using more or less the same systems.

KCRA - Sacramento area broadcast

[djl4570]

KCRA (Channel 3 and 58) aired the test about two minutes after the top of the hour. The audio message was severely degraded. Keep in mind it was a test. You cannot fix it if you don't know what's broken.

Preparing for "Have you voted yet Citizen alerts"

[Anonymous Coward]

In the upcoming election cycle, they may feel the need to remind good citizens to vote.

EAS Shows Linux Login Prompt

[xquercus]

Time Warner analog broadcast the alert about a minute after it completed on our local NPR affiliates. For about 5 seconds before the alert the TV displayed a Linux command prompt at login. I used to see this screen appear late at night occasionally when using the set top box on the other TV. The set top box would display "EAS" instead of a channel number and a login screen would be displayed for a couple minutes. There was some sort of identifiable brand name on the login screen and at one time I looked it up on google. Sure enough, it's a company that sells computer hardware and software for interfacing with EAS -- apparently linux based. Just kind of interesting.

CORRECTION

[tepples]

Stupid Firefox 7 and 8 stripping the http:// out of the location bar. Here's the correct link

Re:CORRECTION

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn you're off today.

Facebook

[bobjr94]

All they have to do it post an alert to facebook, it will get shared and reposed around the world in minutes. I was not effected as I was listening on a online radio station. Maybe I better not say that, they govt. will try to require a backdoor to online stations in the name of safety and homeland security.

good music on the radio?

[bigtrike]

It's great to hear that clearchannel hasn't dominated every station in every market yet.

Duck and Cover

[Tokolosh]

I forgot - fail

Commencing emergency testing in 3 ... 2 ... 1

[Anonymous Coward]

zbZa(&@Q(@# 21.......

However, thanks to Emergency Testing Protocols, testing can continue. These pre-recorded messages will provide instructional and motivational support, so that science can still be done, even in the event of environmental, social, economic, or structural collapse.

Bad for the genome

[Anonymous Coward]

There was test? Who watches TV or listens to the radio? If this were a real emergency and the TV watchers lived whilst the computer users melted, it would be all kinds of bad for the genome.

Well it kinda worked

[Stan92057]

Well it kinda worked,the voice sounded like some kinda alien, totally not understandable. But the text part was OK

Oregon

[certsoft]

OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) had video for the test on their TV station but no audio. Here's what they said on their Facebook page: "As the hub of the emergency broadcast system for the region, OPB is responsible for sending signals out to all other regional broadcasters. We received the test signal as planned, but a software problem prevented the signal from being sent out to the statewide network of broadcasters."

Decades?

[publiclurker]

this linking of all of the systems is new, not decades old. I know that yo want to try to chalk this up as a failure for some self serving political reason, but it''s not. Please listen to those of us who know how engineering works and stop trying to decrease our intelligence by listening to your uninformed whining.

Re:Decades?

[Obfuscant]

this linking of all of the systems is new, not decades old.

You are wrong. There is no other way to put it.

I know that yo want to try to chalk this up as a failure for some self serving political reason,

Wrong again. A failure is a failure. It wasn't a success because it was a test.

Please listen to those of us who know how engineering works ...

I'm sure you think you are the only person who knows how such a complicated system could possibly work, but you are wrong yet again.

The federal EAS (and earlier EBS) has been around for decades. I don't care what politician you think this is tied to, it wasn't a political failure. As for "knowing how engineering works", well, that's just puffery.

Re:Decades?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course! The fact that the test was not successful is not a failure unless there is a Democrat in the whitehouse, and the only people who criticise it are, of course, just haters who can't stand a powerful black man. That's right, if you think of this failed test as a failure, you too are a racist and are unintelligent to boot.

Re:Decades?

[flosofl]

Please listen to those of us who know how engineering works and stop trying to decrease our intelligence by listening to your uninformed whining.

Well, that wouldn't be you.

No matter *which* stage a test is performed, if it doesn't perform as expected, THEN THAT IS A FAILURE. Period. Full Stop. I don't care if it's in Development, UA, QA, or Pre Prod. If you don't pass that's called a FAIL. You then regroup, analyze the data you collected and determine why the failure occurred. Which is what happened here. The EAS did NOT perform as expected and as such was a FAILURE.

Even better

[publiclurker]

the could have different warning tiers. for the Platinum level, you get a full 30 minutes warning. For the common folk, we have bronze with 30 seconds.

Re:Even better

[WeatherGod]

My kingdom for a +1 Insightful!

Re:Even better

[Sloppy]

Can I get the 30-day plan? "They've launched a nuclear attack with their Monthman missiles!"

Re:Even better

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'll take the 30 second warning. That's just about enough time to walk into the next room and tell your significant other that you love them before it's all over.

I'll take that over post-apocalypse wasteland any day of the week.

Re:Even better

[Deliveranc3]

I agree, this is entirely designed to try and stave off a rebellion. U.S. just tested a facism toool. Nasty.

Stupid old technology ought to die.

[slashfoxi]

Why isn't this built in to mobile phones? You'd reach a lot more people quicker through SMS than TV.

Another Unfinanced Government Mandate?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sorta worked here, if interrupting a recording on my DVR was the intent. I haven't watched live TV at home in years.

On the DVR playback, there was a spash screen with some words. No audio.
A few minutes later, an unreadable EBS message was displayed in the upper left corner of the TV. It had WWWxxxxWWWxxxxx where the 'x' characters were some high ASCII characters. There was no audio in that part either besides those annoying BEEP/Honks.

Sorry, not a fan of the EBS or any automatic dialer to cell phones, home phones or email messages. That's what tornado sirens are for. Sadly, the county uses those sirens if any part of the county (20 miles square) is impacted. When I hear those tornado sirens, if it looks threatening outside, I'll turn on an AM radio.

Otherwise, get off my lawn.

QVC

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Comcast subscribers saw their cable boxes turn to QVC before the alert

That happens on Comcast during every weekly test of the emergency alerts. Really.

Re:Was that the best EBS soundtrack they could fin

[NJRoadfan]

99 LuftBallons would word too. People aren't used to hearing German on the radio in the US.

Re:Was that the best EBS soundtrack they could fin

[NJRoadfan]

gah... thats "Would work too"

I Saw It On The Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

I was on the web and saw detailed coverage of the upcoming test and detailed coverage and analysis of the aftereffects on about 300 different web sites. Twitter's jammed to bursting with test info. I can't click the mouse more than twice without encountering more information about this test.

The thing that puzzles me is why the test is restricted to these arcane and obsolete mediums. AM radio stations.. television... broadcast media... is FEMA trying to connect with people who wear false teeth or something?

Tune? Broadcaster? Seriously?

[ukemike]

If you were tuned to any American broadcaster at the time, did the alert system reach you?

Tune? Broadcaster? Seriously? What is this the 20th century? I think the failure here is not that there were glitches, but that the new state of the art Emergency Alert System relies on ancient media technologies. To be fair I do listen to the radio in my car, but I haven't had a TV in my home or workplace for 8 years. A really useful emergency alert would send text messages to every phone in the country, and would use the major ISPs to pop up alerts on everyone's browser.

/. EMERGENCY SYSTEM

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bill Gates Agrees To Do a Cameo As a Hobbit."

That's just what we need.

It worked for me (comcast, CA)

[JoeCommodore]

Maybe it's your OS; did you try restarting your cable box?

It worked fine in the air

[larwe]

I was on a JetBlue flight from JFK to PHX at the time. Came through on their DirectTV service just fine :)

Not the first national test

[DragonHawk]

Apparently, the system has been tested like this at least once before, albeit accidentally. (And it was so long ago that the system's changed completely, so the results aren't valid today anyway, but work with me here.)

The story is, on 20 Feb 1971, some operator at NORAD loaded the wrong tape, and instead of the desired test message, an actual Kiss Your Ass Goodbye message was sent out. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the stations dropped the ball and didn't act on it until after a cancellation had been sent.

http://stlradio.net/pages/ebsaccident.htm

Above web page contains scans of the old-school Teletype messages.

Re:Not the first national test

[bws111]

The system did not exist until 1997, so it is highly unlikely it was tested (intentionally or not) in 1971.

DirectTV

[Anonymous Coward]

No, this is a failure. It just isn't your usual run of the mill failure. It's an epic, galactic-sized failure.

I'm watching a recording on my DirectTV DVR now which was made apparently during the EAS test. it has at the top "THIS IS A TEST OF THE EMERGENCY ALERT SYSTEM" then in the middle "HAD THIS BEEN AN ACTUAL EMERGENCY, THE ATTENTION SIGNAL YOU JUST HEARD WOULD HAVE BEEN FOLLOWED BY EMERGENCY INFORMATION, NEWS, OR INSTRUCTIONS." then "THIS IS ONLY A TEST." Then under that is the DirectTV logo.

The problem is that they're playing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi," and scrolling across the top half of the screen is some banner occluding part of the message. Before it changes to Spanish, it's scrolling: "A primary entry point system has issued an Emergency Action Notification for the following counties: District of Columbia DC. Effective Until 11/09/11 11:18:00 PST. "

I'm in Texas.

Fail.

A TEST, not a failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Since this was a TEST of the system, it did exactly what tests are for: find weaknesses so that they can be fixed. This test was, in fact, a *success*.

FEMA... Those were the people f* up the Louisiana

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Surprised..

FEMA... Those were the people f* up the Louisiana Katrina response? Things like this make you wonder about some of the other Federal agencies that are supposed to be protecting us from these things... (FAA/FCC/FDA).....

I'm a dead man walking

[grimsnaggle]

My only radio is in my car, and my television isn't plugged in to a cable network or an antenna. As it stands, I think Slashdot would be my best chance for hearing about a real emergency. Maybe I should check it more than once a day...

Fios

[SuperTechnoNerd]

I have 2 Set top boxes from Verizon. One worked fine during the test, the other would not come out of the test mode and needed to be cold rebooted.

no internet emergence alert system?

[issicus]

I dont even own a tv or radio . an internet alert system does seem problematic. i guess thats what facebook is for.

Alert system in LA

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have cable, but as far as I know only only the major networks showed the alert (twice on one channel, once with sound, once without) but lesser channels were still showing their regular schedule.

On a side note, three minutes prior to 11:00 AM PST one or several military jets flew over the basin shaking us to the ground in what felt like a 1.0 earthquake. Really low, really fast. I was prepared for zombies...but none arrived unless you count me without my coffee.

"If this had been an actual emergency"...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we would have all been screwed! ;)

Sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but I work unlike 9% of the population.

Strange

[Anonymous Coward]

All I got was a hummer..... nice

Government Failure

[OpiumEd]

I turned across the channels. 2 of the three network stations aired the slide (with the black background) but I don't remember hearing any audio. The other only had a crawl of teeny-tiny white letters at the top (over "Ellen") which made no sense. A local college station that had mentioned it would happen a couple days prior did not break programming at all. Overall, it appeared to be a FAIL.

Thank you Captain Obvious

[DragonHawk]

The system did not exist until 1997, so it is highly unlikely it was tested (intentionally or not) in 1971.

I guess you missed this part, which I'll repeat here for your benefit: "It was so long ago that the system's changed completely, so the results aren't valid today anyway."

And it's worth pointing out that human factors play a large role in most failures, and we're still using the same Mark I Human, as far as I know.

Forgot to listen for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If an alert falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?

Re:Was that the best EBS soundtrack they could fin

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Don't forget "It's the end of the world as we know it" by R.E.M.