
The personal SOS messages the BBC used to send - edward
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35815747
======
lb1lf
Years ago, I found myself in an exceedingly remote backwater of Central Africa
for work; it was fairly safe to state that I was the only person within a
hundred mile radius who wasn’t born there.

As I stop at an intersection, some guy I’ve never seen before walks up to the
car and excitedly tells me «Mr. $MY_NAME, you must phone home immediately!»

Puzzled (and worried!) I asked him how he knew my name - turned out the local
radio station had announced that if anyone saw the tall, white guy - tell him
to phone home!

No less worried, I thanked him and drove off to find a phone.

Turned out my grandmother (bless her!) had decided to give me a call just to
chat; she’d rung up my employer asking how to get hold of me; he’d called the
local contractor, they had realized I was out and about and after a few more
delegations, all involved assumed it was urgent and pushed the big, red
button.

When I finally got someone at home on the line, half panicked, it felt absurd
when my father just said «Oh, your grandmother wondered how you were doing
down there; I’ll fetch her...»

My grandmother? To her dying day, she couldn’t make up her mind whether this
was the most embarrassing or most hilarious experience of her life - the day
she made all of Owando look out for her grandson...

Probably both.

~~~
bobochan
Awesome! I lived in Bangui, Central African Republic, for a few years and used
to listen to "Radio Rural" every day (mostly for the music, but also to
improve my Sango). One of the highlights of daily programming were the lists
of messages that people were trying to get to relatives in distant villages.
It was a pretty steady stream about the health of family members and requests
for different things.

Asking someone to find the "tall, white guy" would not have been out of place!

------
CaliforniaKarl
That's awesome! We kindof have a more targeted system (for example, Amber
Alerts), but it seems like something very similar.

This makes me wonder if the mobile carriers and phone OS manufacturers could
collaborate on a similar type of targeted system. Let's assume that an
accredited healthcare provider has an emergent patient. The patient has been
identified, and a name of a friend/relative/etc. has been provided, but no
contact information is available[0].

In a situation like this, the healthcare provider would provide to the mobile
carriers & OS manufacturers the patient's name, the relative's name (with an
indicator if spelling is correct or guessed), and the provider's contact info.
The carriers/manufacturers could then check their user/subscriber lists for
anyone with either a matching or a similar (using something like SOUNDEX)
name, building a list of candidate recipients.

The candidate recipients would be notified via a free SMS, push message, or
similar. The patient would give explicit permission for this action to be
performed, knowing that a limited number of random people would get notified.
Finally—and importantly—the provider (and the patient) would not get any
information on who (if anyone) was notified. Each candidate recipient would
get a unique verification code, which they would provide if they chose to call
in. That would reveal the name and contact info of the recipient who is
calling in. It may also help prevent multiple unrelated people from calling in
(by detecting code reuse).

~~~
systemtest
I have emergency contacts on my phone. You can access them, together with my
medical information, without having to unlock my phone. A simple system that
works.

~~~
davchana
Please elaborate more. Phone OS, method, phone lock type? Thanks, I also want
to set it up on my phone, Android.

The easiest I found is to write in info on an image & set it up as my lock
screen wallpaper.

~~~
dewey
Not sure about Android but iOS has all this built in:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207021](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT207021)

[https://www.imore.com/how-add-emergency-contacts-iphone-
appl...](https://www.imore.com/how-add-emergency-contacts-iphone-apple-watch)

------
bumholio
The stranger memorizing the license plate from a single announcement on the
radio and then finding that car on the street to deliver news of a sick kid is
a fantastic story.

It's hard to imagine for someone brought up in the age of the information
overload just how starved people were back then for entertainment and news. I
remember the anxiety with which I waited a whole week for my favorite (and
only) cartoon I could watch on the national television (the only TV station
available). It was a Japanese show called Spaceship Sagittarius and the
episodes are forever burned into my memory down to the planet names the
protagonists were visiting, minor characters and plot twists. Back in the 50s,
I could imagine thousands of people memorizing a license plate announced on
the radio, and the story of the SOSes becoming talking subjects in the local
pub.

~~~
phkamp
Back then the first three letters of the license plate identified the city
council where the car was registered.

There wouldn't have been a lot of cars in London with that particular three-
leter code which increases the chance of recognition a lot.

~~~
rwmj
Still does (the first two letters anyway).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_the_United_Kingdom#Characters)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It used to encode the town or part of a city, now it gives a region that could
be anywhere in several counties based on the nearest DVLA local office (now
all closed).

------
kitd
I remember a few of those being read out when I was young. I thought it was
funny at the time, but it must have been terrifying to have someone personally
address you over national radio.

~~~
timthorn
The same person who would address the nation with instructions in case of
nuclear war...

------
rwmj
The Eddie Mair documentary would be here, but as is usual the BBC never makes
old archive programs available:
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mdf9r](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mdf9r)

I'm like 99% sure I listened to it, but unfortunately I didn't make a copy
probably because I listened to it on the broadcast radio rather than download.

~~~
chrisseaton
> as is usual the BBC never makes old archive programs available

What are you on about?

 _Two thousand_ episodes of Desert Island Discs
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player)

 _Nearly a thousand_ episodes of In Our Time
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/guide](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/guide)

 _Two hundred_ episodes of the Moral Maze
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11/episodes/player](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qk11/episodes/player)

~~~
rwmj
That's 3200 episodes, versus how many radio programmes has the BBC broadcast
in all?

