Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I Heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. Today, it's time for another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. This one originally aired on August one,
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, and it is titled tech Stuff Tests
Speaker 1: the Emergency Broadcast System. Chris Pilette and I decided to
Speaker 1: sit down and really learn about the history of the
Speaker 1: emergency broadcast system. What does it really mean? And maybe
Speaker 1: you've actually turned on the TV when one of those
Speaker 1: tests were going on and wondered what the heck is happening.
Speaker 1: This show should answer all those questions, So take it away,
Speaker 1: Chris and younger me. So, we wanted to do an
Speaker 1: episode about the emergence see broadcast system. This was actually
Speaker 1: a request that was sent in by a couple of
Speaker 1: different listeners, which is interesting because it doesn't really technically
Speaker 1: exist anymore. Now we have a new system in the
Speaker 1: United States called the Emergency Alert System. Also, I should
Speaker 1: apologize to all of our listeners from places other than
Speaker 1: the United States. This is a very United States centric podcast.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting anyway, trust me. Well it's it's become
Speaker 1: something that's, uh, that's important in most situations too. I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're uh tragedies and big events that happen
Speaker 1: in places all over the world, so that the question
Speaker 1: is you've got a country, um, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to necessarily be the United States. We have a country,
Speaker 1: have millions of people living there, and something is happening,
Speaker 1: there's an earthquake or a tsunami or uh, some other
Speaker 1: kind of accident um or another country is invading or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, something big where you need
Speaker 1: to tell people, Hey, look out, there's something you need
Speaker 1: to evacuate, you need to get out of there. How
Speaker 1: do you address so many people in a short time? Now,
Speaker 1: for the United States, what inspired this was the need
Speaker 1: to reach out to people during World War two, um,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't a system and subsequently the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, I mean the the whole uh, the
Speaker 1: end of the the Second World War and it of
Speaker 1: course with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan
Speaker 1: and um, you know, it was apparent because other countries
Speaker 1: had that technology pretty much right away, and that that
Speaker 1: The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union began shortly after that, and then there was a
Speaker 1: UM there was a big fear in the United States,
Speaker 1: but about um, what would happen if the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: launched a nuclear attack on the United States? How do
Speaker 1: you warn people? And they said, well, you know, judging
Speaker 1: by what we did in World War Two, that was
Speaker 1: fairly effective. But we need a system, we need we
Speaker 1: need to plan, we need to figure out how we
Speaker 1: can do this effectively and let everybody know in a
Speaker 1: short period of time because we're not going to have
Speaker 1: long we need to have a short period of time,
Speaker 1: a message in place. How can we reach out to people?
Speaker 1: And that was basically the birth of UM what now
Speaker 1: is the Emergency Alert System, but at that point was
Speaker 1: known as connal rad yes uh in fact, which wasn't
Speaker 1: by the way, kind of sort of an acronym for
Speaker 1: a control of electromagnetic radiation which is kind of terrifying, right,
Speaker 1: But that was established in ninety one by under the
Speaker 1: administration of Harry S. Truman. Quick Quick Quick Trivia was
Speaker 1: the S stand for nothing. That's right, Harry S. Truman
Speaker 1: stood for nothing. Wait, no, that's not right. Nothing. He
Speaker 1: just wanted it. He liked it sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: like Michael J. So you don't say like the S
Speaker 1: stands for nothing, like nothing isn't spelled with S. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to confuse you. The S doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1: So control of electromagnetic radiation getting back on track. Prior
Speaker 1: to ninety one, these alerts went out over radio station.
Speaker 1: They would get like an emergency bulletin, and it was
Speaker 1: pretty much up to the station whether or not they
Speaker 1: read it. Um conal Red kind of established a specific
Speaker 1: protocol that needed to be followed in the event of
Speaker 1: an emergency, and originally the idea was that it would
Speaker 1: alert citizens of the United States of an impending attack
Speaker 1: from the Soviet Union. In those days, we're talking about
Speaker 1: before intercontinental ballistic missiles, so these attacks would take the
Speaker 1: form of bombers flying overhead, and so conal Red had
Speaker 1: two main purposes. Really, one was to issue alerts to
Speaker 1: citizens to try and get them to safety as soon
Speaker 1: as possible in the case of the attack, and the
Speaker 1: second was to minimize the ability of the Soviets to
Speaker 1: target UH specific areas based on radio frequencies. So part
Speaker 1: of the connal Red protocol was that radio stations would
Speaker 1: shut down and they would only uh broadcast in a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time and under certain frequencies. So under
Speaker 1: the Comrade protocol you essentially had this. This is what
Speaker 1: would happen if if someone were to issue alert. By
Speaker 1: the way, no alert was ever issued. It was originally
Speaker 1: called a key station system, and the idea was that
Speaker 1: you had these dedicated telephone circuits that connected the Air
Speaker 1: Defense control centers to certain key radio stations called basic
Speaker 1: key stations. If there were an appending attack, the Air
Speaker 1: Defense Control center would issue the alert to the key
Speaker 1: radio stations, these basic key stations that would then issue
Speaker 1: that same alert to relay key stations. These would be
Speaker 1: smaller regional radio stations. Uh so they it was sort
Speaker 1: of a hierarchy, right, It went from Air Defense Control
Speaker 1: centers to a certain number of basic radio stations to
Speaker 1: every other radio station. Once they received the alert, the
Speaker 1: radio stations would then broadcast a predetermined message out to
Speaker 1: the listeners. And the way it would work is that
Speaker 1: the stations would turn off for five seconds, so they
Speaker 1: had stopped transmitting for five seconds, come back on for
Speaker 1: five seconds, go off for five more seconds, then come
Speaker 1: on and transmit a tone for fifteen seconds. Now, this
Speaker 1: was the the audible alert saying something is up. You
Speaker 1: get the predetermined message. Uh, actually we're really What you
Speaker 1: had to do was tuned to one of two frequencies.
Speaker 1: There was a frequency kill hurts frequency and the forty
Speaker 1: kill hurts frequency. Now, these two frequencies were the only
Speaker 1: two that were authorized to broadcast during one of these emergencies.
Speaker 1: And uh, on radios at the time, you would see
Speaker 1: this little symbol over those those frequencies and it was
Speaker 1: a triangle inside a circle, and that's the Civil Defense mark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might remember the symbol sort of red, white and
Speaker 1: blue if you've seen it around and uh it's still
Speaker 1: not terribly uncommon to see it every once in a
Speaker 1: while someplace. So yeah, but that was that was saying like,
Speaker 1: these are the two frequencies. If you if your favorite
Speaker 1: radio station isn't on, tune into this station because this
Speaker 1: is where the information is going to come from. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was not the best system for a couple of
Speaker 1: different reasons. One was that it was prone to false
Speaker 1: alarms if like an electrical storm could set off a
Speaker 1: false alarm, because you're talking about electricity and radio frequencies.
Speaker 1: There is a relationship there and we have talked about
Speaker 1: that extensively on this podcast. So listen to our episodes
Speaker 1: about radio to learn more about electromagnetism, radio waves, and
Speaker 1: electricity because I can't go into it here. But the
Speaker 1: the lightning strikes could cause false alarms, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a bad thing if if you've been told that this
Speaker 1: alert system means that there's an impending attack from Soviet planes,
Speaker 1: it might cause a little stress. Also, the switching mechanism,
Speaker 1: because it would make transmitters switch on and off in
Speaker 1: this this UH, the sequence could cause transmitters to fail
Speaker 1: over time, just from powering up and powering down so
Speaker 1: frequently within a certain amount of time. And then of
Speaker 1: course UH this whole system, this idea of cutting off
Speaker 1: radio contact so that you could minimize the ability for
Speaker 1: Soviets to target in on specific regions. It became meaningless
Speaker 1: once intercontinental ballistic missiles became a real thing, right because
Speaker 1: now you're not talking about planes anymore. You're talking about
Speaker 1: guided missiles and uh or at least targeted missiles. So
Speaker 1: it became clear that connal red was starting to no
Speaker 1: longer be very relevant. So they the government started to think, well,
Speaker 1: what can we do that will provide a similar method
Speaker 1: for us to message out emergency notices, but use a
Speaker 1: different approach, and that was what sort of led into
Speaker 1: the development of the Emergency Broadcast System e B S.
Speaker 1: YEP in ne EBS made its debut um and uh
Speaker 1: again it it never was used, of course, to uh,
Speaker 1: to communicate the threat of war. Not on purpose. We'll
Speaker 1: get but I'm assuming that you listened to the w
Speaker 1: O w Um. We'll get to that. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was a much more robust system. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's during the Kennedy administration for those of you keeping track, yep,
Speaker 1: yep and um. One of the nice things about it
Speaker 1: is uh here again, well you could kind of tell
Speaker 1: kind of judge the mood too. Um. If you had
Speaker 1: heard something come over conald Rad, you probably immediately would
Speaker 1: have thought war. But EBS was actually used for other
Speaker 1: things too. I remember weather alerts coming in using the
Speaker 1: exact same thing, and so you would hear and this
Speaker 1: was used on multiple radio stations. You didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: to tune into one radio station to get your information.
Speaker 1: It would be broadcast over TV and radio. Because you
Speaker 1: no longer had to worry about that targeting issue. Then
Speaker 1: meant that all the stations could be used instead of
Speaker 1: having to tune into a specific one while everything else
Speaker 1: is turned off. And hey, that's more effective anyway to
Speaker 1: reach people. Um. But yeah, you would hear this this
Speaker 1: tone which it's hard to explain it if you've never
Speaker 1: heard it. You're splitting other than you're splitting and annoying
Speaker 1: between it does get your attention. Apparently, it's the combined
Speaker 1: the sign waves of eight hundred and fifty three hurts
Speaker 1: and nine sixty hurts specifically chosen because it does grab
Speaker 1: your attention because it's very jarring to hear it. It's
Speaker 1: just you you can't ignore it. If you can hear
Speaker 1: you can't ignore it. That's that's true. Um. And of course, uh,
Speaker 1: those of us who are familiar with it other than
Speaker 1: you know, being living somewhere where they're multiple weather uh
Speaker 1: situations like tornadoes or tornadoes. Yeah, no kidding, Um, you
Speaker 1: would probably have heard this through the the alerts which
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I grew up with, which was testing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would say they would come on and say, well,
Speaker 1: this is a test of the emergency broadcast system and
Speaker 1: the next sixty seconds, we will be testing out the
Speaker 1: emergency broadcast system. It would there was actually a very
Speaker 1: specific script that would fall and then there would be
Speaker 1: after they would tell you there's a test coming. They
Speaker 1: would play this tone, and then there'd be another message
Speaker 1: that would appear at the end saying this was a
Speaker 1: test the emergency broadcast system. If this had been a
Speaker 1: real emergency, you would have received more information at this
Speaker 1: point alerting you to blah blah blah, blah blah, we
Speaker 1: now return you to your regularly scheduled programming type stuff.
Speaker 1: And they were required to do this test once a week. Yeah, regular,
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. I didn't think it was quite
Speaker 1: that frequently. It was once a week unless you had
Speaker 1: actually had to issue a real alert. If you had
Speaker 1: to issue a real alert, could skip over some time.
Speaker 1: But it was once a week at essentially a random
Speaker 1: time between eight thirty in the morning and sunset at night, uh,
Speaker 1: sometime during the week. So it wasn't that we'll get
Speaker 1: into this too. There wasn't a time where every single
Speaker 1: station had to do it at the same time. It
Speaker 1: was unique to the various stations. And like you were saying, us,
Speaker 1: you know these alerts went out not just for a
Speaker 1: national emergency. In fact, they never went out on purpose
Speaker 1: for a national emergency instead. Uh so so never it
Speaker 1: was never used purposefully For that reason, even though that
Speaker 1: was the genesis of this system, it was used more
Speaker 1: than oh, I don't know, several thousand times to alert
Speaker 1: for civil emergencies, sometimes an alert about to be on
Speaker 1: the lookout for a suspect in a in a particularly
Speaker 1: nasty crime that could be an alert, or for the
Speaker 1: weather alerts like the ones that Chris and I grew
Speaker 1: up with. I can remember that happening so many times. Well.
Speaker 1: The uh the way the emergency broadcast system worked was
Speaker 1: that the only message that no station could ignore or
Speaker 1: was supposed to ignore, was a national one. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you are a radio station in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and the national alert goes out, you were supposed
Speaker 1: to to broadcast it just like every other station in
Speaker 1: the country, whereas if it were a local or regional
Speaker 1: you may or may not have been able to ignore
Speaker 1: that message and not broadcast it. The way it worked
Speaker 1: was that, again like the Connell red system, where you
Speaker 1: had the key stations, the basic key stations, and the
Speaker 1: relay key stations. There was a similar setup for the
Speaker 1: emergency broadcast system. You had these primary points of contact,
Speaker 1: which would be major broadcast stations usually, but these primary
Speaker 1: points of contact had to issue all broadcast all the
Speaker 1: alerts they got. They had no choice because they were
Speaker 1: a primary point of contact. But if you were further
Speaker 1: down the chain, like you are a secondary point or
Speaker 1: further down, then you could elect whether or not to
Speaker 1: broadcast that alert, assuming it wasn't a national alert that
Speaker 1: was the only one. Of course, everyone had to broadcast.
Speaker 1: So um, you know there were that That explains why
Speaker 1: you might be in an area where a weather service
Speaker 1: alert is being broadcast, asked, and you saw it on
Speaker 1: one channel, but you switched to another local channel, and
Speaker 1: there's nothing that could be why. It may be that
Speaker 1: that other channels not a primary point and therefore was
Speaker 1: not required to broadcast it. Beebe. This is not a test.
Speaker 1: This is actually us going into a commercial break. See
Speaker 1: you on the flip side. Now, the the incident that
Speaker 1: Jonathan mentioned, famous incident. Now I read an account of
Speaker 1: this from a person who was working at a radio
Speaker 1: station in St. Louis at the time it happened. Um,
Speaker 1: at the time it happened, by the way, is February.
Speaker 1: And what he had said was that every Saturday at
Speaker 1: ten thirty three, the radio stations would receive a test
Speaker 1: message from Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. And so basically it
Speaker 1: would say and there was a code word that it
Speaker 1: would include that would let you know that it was
Speaker 1: was genuine. And so at ten thirty three, um, there
Speaker 1: there was a teletype machine in the other room and
Speaker 1: he heard it and and typically it would it would
Speaker 1: dig a couple of times to let you know, hey,
Speaker 1: there's something something on the wire, you know, a news
Speaker 1: story on the wire. But this one rang ten times,
Speaker 1: which he knew was a big deal. Um. And so
Speaker 1: he ran into the other room and got a message
Speaker 1: that said he needed to broadcast a warning that there
Speaker 1: was an announcement coming from the national you know, from
Speaker 1: the federal government and it was something bad and impending,
Speaker 1: and be on the alert because it was time to
Speaker 1: broadcast a message. But they really weren't told what that
Speaker 1: message was. What it was. Well, see here's the thing. Hateful, hateful,
Speaker 1: the you know, which was a code word, meaning that
Speaker 1: the code that was actually a code word. The hateful
Speaker 1: was a code word that meant there's a message is
Speaker 1: coming up, there's an attack coming up, but more details
Speaker 1: will follow. Go ahead and initiate the alert system. And
Speaker 1: it was a mistake that was made by a teletype
Speaker 1: operator who sent this authenticated code out to the system,
Speaker 1: which meant it went to all those those primary points
Speaker 1: of contact, and it didn't say it didn't say a
Speaker 1: minute later, oops, my bad. No, no, it took a while,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the first time they tried to resend it,
Speaker 1: they sent the wrong code, so it didn't resend the message.
Speaker 1: It was only forty minutes after the initial message was
Speaker 1: sent out that the cancelation, the correct cancelation went out.
Speaker 1: So what happened was actually very telling in a way
Speaker 1: because some radio, radio and television stations, actually a lot
Speaker 1: of them, didn't do anything at all, so they did
Speaker 1: not broadcast this message, and that, in a way is
Speaker 1: a problem because the whole purpose of the system is
Speaker 1: to relay a national emergency to everybody. Now. Now, in
Speaker 1: many of these cases, it may be that the people
Speaker 1: in charge said, there's no information here, we have no
Speaker 1: real I mean, it's a confirmed code, but there's no
Speaker 1: confirmed information and we have nothing to share with people.
Speaker 1: So Why would we go ahead and do this when
Speaker 1: we don't have any information we could give them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were standing by to broadcast whatever the major announcement
Speaker 1: was about the attack. Right. Some of them hadn't even
Speaker 1: signaled the alert, right, They just the programming just kept
Speaker 1: on going. But other stations did. Some of them didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, so some of them weren't doing
Speaker 1: it on purpose. Some of them weren't doing it because
Speaker 1: they didn't know what they were supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: a few actually broke into programming and said, we've received
Speaker 1: an alert from the Emergency Broadcast System. We know that
Speaker 1: there is a national emergency. We're a waiting for more information.
Speaker 1: Please stand by. And what Chris was talking about earlier
Speaker 1: was there are a couple of recordings on the internet
Speaker 1: you can listen to that were taken from that day.
Speaker 1: And one of them is from an radio station from
Speaker 1: Fort Wayne, Indiana called w ow OH, and you can
Speaker 1: listen to that and you can find it on the internet.
Speaker 1: The actual it's snippets from that. It's it's been edited.
Speaker 1: It's sorry, it's been edited down so that you get
Speaker 1: uh sections, the important sections of of the broadcast. It's
Speaker 1: about what six minutes or so long, keeping in mind
Speaker 1: that that whole window was more like forty minutes. So
Speaker 1: this is six minutes of footage footage from six minutes
Speaker 1: of content from that forty minute window. Yeah. So basically
Speaker 1: what it said was, you know, hey, there there's something
Speaker 1: coming up. It's it's um. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that would be funny. If it weren't, if you don't
Speaker 1: put yourself back at that time, I would have been terrifying.
Speaker 1: It would have been terrifying because he's the person who
Speaker 1: was on the air. Was a you could tell, was it, uh,
Speaker 1: seasoned newsperson? Yeah, yeah, he Uh. He was very serious
Speaker 1: and said, you know, there's there's been a message. We're
Speaker 1: waiting word for what's going on. Uh. If you are
Speaker 1: listening and you are one of our reporters, come here immediately.
Speaker 1: We need you here right now. And and basically was talking, uh,
Speaker 1: not only to the audience, but to the the other
Speaker 1: reporters who might be listening. The message itself actually said,
Speaker 1: UM message authenticator, hatefulness, hatefulness. This is an emergency action
Speaker 1: notification directed by the President. Normal broadcasting will cease immediately.
Speaker 1: All stations will broadcast e A N message one preceded
Speaker 1: by the attention signal. Per FCC rules, only stations holding
Speaker 1: nd N D E A may stay on the air
Speaker 1: and according and accord with State E B S plan.
Speaker 1: And uh that would have scared the pants off of me. Um.
Speaker 1: And it took a while, as Jonathan said, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kill e A N message. It was sent in error
Speaker 1: and it took a while for it to uh to
Speaker 1: show up. But the person he the person who I was,
Speaker 1: I was reading, I should have gotten the the U
Speaker 1: R L if I can find it real quick for
Speaker 1: you guys, I will um. The the person who was,
Speaker 1: who has actually posted photos of scans of his copies
Speaker 1: of these messages, was saying, excuse the burn marks. I
Speaker 1: was smoking pretty heavily through this incidents. It was kind
Speaker 1: of stressed out. If you listen to the recording from
Speaker 1: the w O w oh incident, you actually hear the
Speaker 1: the newscaster kind of chuckling once the once the order
Speaker 1: was sent out about this was a mistake, and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of kind of because you know, clearly it was
Speaker 1: one of those stressful things and the chuckling is him
Speaker 1: releasing that stress, and it is an interesting moment in
Speaker 1: history to kind of pick up on that. Um So, yeah,
Speaker 1: not that was the only time that a national alert
Speaker 1: went out across the system. And again it wasn't a
Speaker 1: real one, it was a mistake. UM. And then what
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen is that, depending upon the nature
Speaker 1: of the emergency UH, stations are supposed to read from
Speaker 1: a predetermined script like it's it's They're not supposed to
Speaker 1: just you know, kind of provide commentary on it. There's
Speaker 1: a specific message that needs to be relayed and um.
Speaker 1: So that was the general purpose of the Emergency Broadcast System,
Speaker 1: but it was starting to show its age, UH, particularly
Speaker 1: in the nineties, because you started to have other methods
Speaker 1: of getting content on your television besides broadcast TV, and
Speaker 1: the Emergency Broadcast System really affected radio and broadcast television.
Speaker 1: So there needed to be an overhaul of the system,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened in the late nineties, and in
Speaker 1: ninety eight you had the Emergency Alert System take its place.
Speaker 1: And now you might say, well, what's the difference. Well,
Speaker 1: for one thing, it doesn't just include broadcast stations. It
Speaker 1: also includes cable and participating satellite systems. So now you've
Speaker 1: got other methods of broadcast or or you know, other
Speaker 1: methods of getting content over your television included in this.
Speaker 1: So that way, if a citizen is watching cable television
Speaker 1: or something on satellite TV, they could still have access
Speaker 1: to an emergency message because clearly, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to leave everybody out. As as people have more
Speaker 1: and more ways of watching stuff, it's harder to reach
Speaker 1: them in a centralized way. Yeah, these these systems were
Speaker 1: developed to run on AM and FM radio and the
Speaker 1: local broadcast stations. So now we've gone from in the
Speaker 1: United States, UM, let's say, on average, probably three or
Speaker 1: four regular network broadcast stations, maybe a couple independence in
Speaker 1: the larger you know, larger cities, something in the ultra
Speaker 1: high frequency. Yeah, you know, maybe six or six to
Speaker 1: ten stations in big big markets. Um. Then you go
Speaker 1: to dozens or even hundreds of stations now with cable
Speaker 1: and satellite UM, you know, plus uh, you know the
Speaker 1: radio stations which have exploded in number, um, satellite radio
Speaker 1: and all the other media that we listen to. Now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the system, there's a lot of people, know,
Speaker 1: the system needed to to evolve with that development, and
Speaker 1: of course even now we're still we're already seeing a
Speaker 1: need for that too, find another way of reaching people,
Speaker 1: because as people start to use the Internet to get content,
Speaker 1: now there's yet another avenue for information to get to them.
Speaker 1: But you know, this system was not designed with that
Speaker 1: in mind, so there's already another need coming out. Chris
Speaker 1: and I have a bit more to say about the
Speaker 1: emergency broadcast system, but first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: The way it works now, the National Weather Service actually
Speaker 1: has specific codes that they can attached to notices so
Speaker 1: that those digital codes will send the message just to
Speaker 1: the relevant regions. So that way, if there if the
Speaker 1: National Weather Service detects that there's going to be you know,
Speaker 1: a massive hurricane hitting the panhandle of Florida, it can
Speaker 1: send an alert to say, Texas and Florida and you know, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
Speaker 1: all those areas that could potentially be affected by heavy rains, winds,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, and the rest of the nation
Speaker 1: is unaffected, or even the rest you know, the rest
Speaker 1: of certain states, like the northern part of the state
Speaker 1: might not be affected because they're far enough away from
Speaker 1: the coast where at least it's not gonna be an
Speaker 1: immediate effect, they might not get the message either. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's so that the right information gets to the
Speaker 1: right people. And it makes sense, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to send out a message to the entire nation
Speaker 1: that for something it's just going to affect a relatively
Speaker 1: small um area of the nation as a whole. United
Speaker 1: States is big, so uh, yeah, it was. It's something
Speaker 1: that that has evolved over time. The and the other
Speaker 1: thing I was going to talk about was what happened
Speaker 1: on November nine. Yeah. Um, there is one sort of
Speaker 1: interesting footnote UM to the the e B S ERA
Speaker 1: passing from to the e A S era. UM. E
Speaker 1: B S was not activated during the September eleven, two
Speaker 1: thousand and one attacks. Um, which is kind of interesting
Speaker 1: that they chose not to do, uh to use the
Speaker 1: alert at that time, particularly since the attacks affected multiple
Speaker 1: targets in multiple cities. So it is would have affected
Speaker 1: even more had not the flight in Pennsylvania gone down.
Speaker 1: So just just sort of an interesting footnote there. Um.
Speaker 1: But Yes, on November nine, uh, the e A S
Speaker 1: made its debut. Yeah, and the system had been in place,
Speaker 1: but what happened was because the system was fail the
Speaker 1: E A S was actually what would have been used
Speaker 1: in September eleven, right, So, so on November what happened
Speaker 1: was it was tested nationally and this was the first
Speaker 1: time any of these systems had ever been tested on
Speaker 1: a national level, meaning that every participating station was going
Speaker 1: to display the test at the same time, and that
Speaker 1: time was going to be UM. It was two pm
Speaker 1: Eastern for on November, which means that if you didn't
Speaker 1: know about it ahead of time and you turned on
Speaker 1: your television, you would see this alert and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is irritating this that one of those stupid tests.
Speaker 1: Change the channel and that alert is still going and
Speaker 1: it's going on this ocean. Oh, this is something. And
Speaker 1: so there were a lot of messages that were sent
Speaker 1: out before two pm November to let people know, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is gonna happen. Don't worry, the zombies aren't here yet,
Speaker 1: right or whatever other national emergency you might be able
Speaker 1: to conjure up in your mind. I just cannot imagine
Speaker 1: a national emergency at this point that does not involve zombies,
Speaker 1: right right, Well, there are According to the Christian Science
Speaker 1: Monitor UM, there were fourteen thousand and more broadcast stations,
Speaker 1: both for TV and radio plus more than uh ten
Speaker 1: thousand cable TV station So this is all being done
Speaker 1: at the same time. UM. And uh, it's able to
Speaker 1: reach a lot more people. But they're already talking about
Speaker 1: how they can reach people via text message and in
Speaker 1: other locations. UM. You know, they're they're already talking again
Speaker 1: about how they can improve this this system to make
Speaker 1: it reach more people. UM, which is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of funny since it probably reaches more now than
Speaker 1: it ever has before. UM. But I can imagine that
Speaker 1: to improve it's going to do things like promoted tweets. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well there you laugh. But I can easily imagine that.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, and I absolutely see it. Um
Speaker 1: and it Uh. It's also important to to realize that
Speaker 1: this does more than just announced state an attack like
Speaker 1: connal rad would. Um. There are more than I believe
Speaker 1: eighty different kinds of messages they can use. The e
Speaker 1: A s were including things like childhood abduction alerts seen those, yes,
Speaker 1: And here here in Atlanta, we have a highway that
Speaker 1: goes around the outside of the city known as the
Speaker 1: Perimeter Obvious Reasons Highway or Interstate eighty five, and there
Speaker 1: are electronic signs that they can use a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of times you'll see stuff like, well, there's
Speaker 1: a traffic up ahead, or be you know, be aware
Speaker 1: there's an accident, um. But they also use this messaging
Speaker 1: on those signs as well. So that's a way for
Speaker 1: people to uh, for the authorities to reach us with
Speaker 1: these kinds of messages. On the side, note, how can
Speaker 1: a highway that encircles a city that's all within one
Speaker 1: state be an interstate? Jonathan, I'm just asking these are
Speaker 1: questions that have that that happened in my head, and
Speaker 1: I want to know why do you drive on a
Speaker 1: parkway and parking and driveway? I also want to know
Speaker 1: that I don't name these things, I just report them.
Speaker 1: If our legs bent backwards, what would a chair look like?
Speaker 1: What if there were no hypothetical questions? Oh that's terrible,
Speaker 1: all right, So now now that we've totally killed that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the ass is supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to turn on certain types of radios and TVs and
Speaker 1: other devices to allow people to receive these emergency messages,
Speaker 1: which of course will inspire many people to go you know,
Speaker 1: the government is trying to take over our world, um,
Speaker 1: which is all right for them to say, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, I mean they're they're ways for for
Speaker 1: them to reach us in to let us know if
Speaker 1: there's something important that we should be aware of. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, it really has involved quite a bit
Speaker 1: since the nine fifties when the first system was put
Speaker 1: into place, and similar systems to this are in place
Speaker 1: in other countries around the world. We specifically focus on
Speaker 1: this one because it's the country we live in. So again,
Speaker 1: apologies to all of our listeners overseas. Hopefully this was
Speaker 1: interesting to you, just on on the level of how
Speaker 1: do you take something as simple in in concept as
Speaker 1: getting a message out? How do you take that and
Speaker 1: then apply it to a very complex world. And Uh,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting approach. It's not necessarily the best one either.
Speaker 1: There may be other approaches that would be um that
Speaker 1: would be more efficient and more effective than the emergency
Speaker 1: alert system, but you know, that's what we have. So
Speaker 1: if you guys live in a country that has a
Speaker 1: similar system but it works on a different way, let
Speaker 1: us know, tell us tell us about it, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with that kind of thing, because I
Speaker 1: find it really interesting. I mean, it's a very important concept.
Speaker 1: And it's, like I said, this is not the only
Speaker 1: way to get it to work. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a challenge to reach that many people UM in a
Speaker 1: in a very short time to let them know that
Speaker 1: there's something big and important that they need to know
Speaker 1: it's a matter of public safety or a public concern.
Speaker 1: We've definitely come a long way from a guy on
Speaker 1: horseback writing yelling out the British are coming, the British
Speaker 1: are coming, or or fetivities. Yeah, could you run these
Speaker 1: twenty six miles right come on between marathonors? Yeah. And
Speaker 1: if you are interested in uh in hearing the bits
Speaker 1: about the the e B S accident um search for
Speaker 1: w O w O U e B S and you'll
Speaker 1: probably come up with it pretty quickly. Um. The website
Speaker 1: I mentioned before it is actually STL Radio dot net,
Speaker 1: slash pages slash e B S accident dot htm. Well
Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion about emergency broadcast system and
Speaker 1: this classic episode from two thousand twelve. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, send me an email. The address
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