This[1] is how it sounds in Japan if anyone is interested. The author of the sou...

quartesixte · on Dec 23, 2021

Someone needs to tell the North American market to not make everything the same tone. The alerts in California are almost completely ignored now because they use it constantly for Amber Alerts/Silver Alerts.

jcrawfordor · on Dec 23, 2021

I have long complained that "amber alerts," "silver alerts," and in some states "blue alerts" have seriously degraded the value and functionality of these alerts through desensitization. The original design goal that lead, through many evolutions, to EAS/WEA/IPAWS/etc, was an alert system that would cause the public to take organized, pre-planned steps within 30 seconds of the issuance of the alert [1]. While we no longer worry about nuclear attack on such a short timeline, earthquake early warning has once again highlighted the requirement for a system that is immediately recognizable as requiring protective action. Overloading EAS with these types of messages, while politically appealing, has effectively eliminated the ability of the system to demand an immediate response. This will, ultimately, endanger lives.

Ultimately, nothing should be issued via EAS that does not require prompt and decisive action. This is not an exotic category: tornadoes, flash flooding, large hail, tsunamis, earthquakes, and civil and industrial emergencies are all reasonably frequent real-world events in which prompt and decisive action by the public saves lives and property. Unfortunately we have completely tangled them in with "a child was abducted, or a senior citizen wandered, or a cop was shot somewhere in the state," a scenario with no generally understood action for the public. That information should be disseminated using means other than the distinctive EAS attention tone which has always been intended to be reserved for those situation in which you must act immediately [2].

This doesn't mean a return to the old situation in which only POTUS was authorized to issue emergency messages, but it should mean that emergency message issuance is limited to scenarios that meet the same general criteria of requiring immediate action, regardless of their originator. The NWS and state governors (really their EOCs) do produce such alerts, but they should receive specific criteria to require.

[1] It had been determined in the 1950s that action within 30 seconds would produce substantial (e.g. 70%) reduction in fatalities in the case of an unanticipated nuclear attack, but that warning greater than 30 seconds was not always feasible. Improved early detection systems such as OTH radar have made this issue somewhat obsolete, although more recent developments such as HGVs and nuclear-armed "sea drones" like Kanyon have potentially brought it back to relevance even just in the case of nuclear war.

[2] Really the attention tone is a leftover technical detail from an earlier implementation, but its use has been specifically protected because it is so well recognized by the public as an indication of a national emergency. Unfortunately that protection is at the whims of legislators which frequently expand it to include whatever is politically appealing, regardless of actual outcomes.

Isthatablackgsd · on Dec 23, 2021

That's why I have them disabled in my phone. I once got Amber Alert in the airplane 35K feet above and flying over Colorado (LAX - DCA). Alerts are useful but over-abused unintentionally. The only I can't disable is the top one, I think it is Presidential Alert?