Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to check stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland me. This was a test of the tech Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast system. If this were not a test, you would
Speaker 1: have heard a pun by Now. That's so, we wanted
Speaker 1: to do an episode about the emergency broadcast system. This
Speaker 1: was actually a request that was sent in by a
Speaker 1: couple of different listeners, which is interesting because it doesn't
Speaker 1: really technically exist anymore. Now we have a new system
Speaker 1: in the United States called the Emergency Alert System. Also,
Speaker 1: I should apologize to all of our listeners from places
Speaker 1: other than the United States. This is a very United
Speaker 1: States centric podcast. But it's interesting anyway, trust me. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's becomes something that's uh that's important in most
Speaker 1: situations too. I mean they're they're uh tragedies and big
Speaker 1: events that happen in places all over the world, so
Speaker 1: that the question is you've got a country. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to necessarily be the United States, but
Speaker 1: we have a country, you have millions of people living
Speaker 1: there and something is happening. There's an earthquake or a
Speaker 1: tsunami or uh, some other kind of accident, um, or
Speaker 1: another country is invading or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: something big where you need to tell people, Hey, look out,
Speaker 1: there's something you need to evacuate. You need to get
Speaker 1: out of there. How do you address so many people
Speaker 1: in a short time. Now, for the United States, what
Speaker 1: inspired this was the need to reach out to people
Speaker 1: during World War two, um, and there there wasn't a
Speaker 1: system and its subsequently the Cold War. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean the the whole uh, the end of the
Speaker 1: the Second World War ended, of course with the dropping
Speaker 1: of two atomic bombs on Japan, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it was apparent because other countries had that technology pretty
Speaker 1: much right away and that that The Cold War between
Speaker 1: the United States and the Soviet Union began shortly after that,
Speaker 1: and then there was a um, there was a big
Speaker 1: fear in the United States. But about um, what would
Speaker 1: happen if the Soviet Union launched a nuclear attack on
Speaker 1: the United States. How do you warn people, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, judging by UH what we did in World
Speaker 1: War Two, that was fairly effective. But we need a system,
Speaker 1: we need we need to plan, we need to figure
Speaker 1: out how we can do this effectively and let everybody
Speaker 1: know in a short period of time because we're not
Speaker 1: going to have long we need to have a short
Speaker 1: period of time, a message in place, how can we
Speaker 1: reach out to people? And that was basically the birth
Speaker 1: of UM what now is the Emergency Alert System. But
Speaker 1: at that point UH was known as Connell rad UH
Speaker 1: in fact, which wasn't by the way, kind of sort
Speaker 1: of an acronym for a control of electromagnetic radiation. Kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying, right, But that was established in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one by under the administration of Harry S. Truman, Quick quick,
Speaker 1: quick trivia was the S stand for nothing, that's right,
Speaker 1: Harry S. Truman stood for nothing. Wait, no, that's not right,
Speaker 1: stood for nothing. He just wanted it, you know, like
Speaker 1: Michael J. Yes. 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 nineteen fifty one, these alerts went out over radio stations.
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 Connel 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 Comerade had two
Speaker 1: main purposes really. One was to issue alerts to citizens
Speaker 1: to try and get them to safety as soon as
Speaker 1: possible in the case of the attack, and the second
Speaker 1: was to minimize the ability of the Soviets to target
Speaker 1: UH specific areas based on radio frequencies. So part of
Speaker 1: the Conrad protocol was that radio stations would shut down
Speaker 1: and they would only UH broadcast in a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time and under certain frequencies. So under the Comrade
Speaker 1: protocol you essentially had this This is what would happen
Speaker 1: if if someone were to issue alert. By the way,
Speaker 1: no alert was ever issued. It was originally called a
Speaker 1: key station system, and the idea was that you had
Speaker 1: these dedicated telephone circuits that connected the Air Defense control
Speaker 1: centers to certain key radio stations called basic key stations.
Speaker 1: If there were an adependent attack, the air Defense Control
Speaker 1: center would issue the alert to the key radio stations,
Speaker 1: these basic key stations that would then issue that same
Speaker 1: alert to relay key stations. These would be smaller regional
Speaker 1: radio stations. Uh so they It was sort of a hierarchy, right.
Speaker 1: It went from Air Defense control centers to a certain
Speaker 1: number of basic radio stations to every other radio station.
Speaker 1: Once they received the alert, the radio stations would then
Speaker 1: broadcast a predetermined message out to the listeners. And the
Speaker 1: way it would work is that the stations would turn
Speaker 1: off for five seconds, so they've stopped transmitting for five seconds,
Speaker 1: Come back on for five seconds, go off for five
Speaker 1: more seconds, then come on and transmit a tone for
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds. Now, this was the the audible alert saying
Speaker 1: something is up. You get the predetermined message, uh, actually
Speaker 1: we're really What you had to do was tuned to
Speaker 1: one of two frequencies. There was a frequency killer Hurts
Speaker 1: frequency and the twelve forty killer hurts frequency. Now, these
Speaker 1: two frequencies were the only two that were authorized to
Speaker 1: broadcast during one of these emergencies, and uh, on radios
Speaker 1: at the time, you would see this little symbol over
Speaker 1: those those frequencies and it was a triangle inside a circle,
Speaker 1: and that's the civil Defense mark. Yeah, you might remember
Speaker 1: the symbol sort of red, white and blue if you've
Speaker 1: seen it around and uh it's still not terribly uncommon
Speaker 1: to see it every once in a while someplace. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was that was saying like, these are the
Speaker 1: two frequencies. If you if your favorite radio station isn't on,
Speaker 1: tune into this station because this is where the information
Speaker 1: is going to come from. Uh. It was not the
Speaker 1: best system for a couple of different reasons. One was
Speaker 1: that it was prone to false alarms if like an
Speaker 1: electrical storm could set off a false alarm. Because you're
Speaker 1: talking about electricity and radio frequencies, there is a relationship
Speaker 1: there and we have talked about that extensively on this podcast.
Speaker 1: So listen to our episodes about radio to learn more
Speaker 1: about electro magnetism, radio waves, and electricity. Because I can't
Speaker 1: go into it here, but the the lightning strikes could
Speaker 1: cause false alarms, which is, you know, a bad thing
Speaker 1: if if you've been told that this alert system means
Speaker 1: that there's an impending attack from Soviet planes, it might
Speaker 1: cause a little stress. Also, the switching mechanism, because it
Speaker 1: would make transmitters switch on and off in this this
Speaker 1: um the sequence could cause transmitters to fail over time.
Speaker 1: It just from powering up and powering down so frequently
Speaker 1: within a certain amount of time. And then, of course, UH,
Speaker 1: this whole system, this idea of cutting off radio contact
Speaker 1: so that you could minimize the ability for Soviets to
Speaker 1: target in on specific regions, it became meaningless once intercontinental
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles became a real thing, because now you're not
Speaker 1: talking about planes anymore, you're talking about guided missiles and
Speaker 1: UH or at least targeted missiles. So it became clear
Speaker 1: that connal red was starting to no longer be very relevant.
Speaker 1: So they the government started to think, well, what can
Speaker 1: we do that will provide a similar method for us
Speaker 1: to message out emergency notices, but use a different approach,
Speaker 1: And that was what sort of led into the development
Speaker 1: of the Emergency Broadcast System e B S YEP. In nine,
Speaker 1: EBS made its debut um and uh again it it
Speaker 1: never was used, of course to uh, to communicate the
Speaker 1: threat of war, not on purpose. We'll get but I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that you listened to the w O w um.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. But yeah, I mean it was
Speaker 1: a much more robust system. Um. And it's during the
Speaker 1: Kennedy administration for those of you keeping track, yep, yep
Speaker 1: and um. One of the nice things about it is
Speaker 1: uh here again, well you could kind of tell kind
Speaker 1: of judge the mood to UM. If you had heard
Speaker 1: something come over Conald Rad, you probably immediately would have
Speaker 1: thought war. But EBS was actually used for other things too.
Speaker 1: I remember weather alerts coming in using the exact same thing,
Speaker 1: and so you would hear and this was used on
Speaker 1: multiple radio stations. You didn't necessarily have to tune into
Speaker 1: one radio station to get your information. It would be
Speaker 1: broadcast over TV and radio because you no longer had
Speaker 1: to worry about that targeting issue. Then meant that all
Speaker 1: the stations could be used instead of having to tune
Speaker 1: into a specific one while everything else is turned off.
Speaker 1: And hey, that's more effective anyway to reach people. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you would hear this, this tone which it's
Speaker 1: hard to explain it. If you've never heard it, you're
Speaker 1: splitting other than you're splitting and annoying. But it does
Speaker 1: get your attention. Apparently it's the combined sign waves of
Speaker 1: eight hundred and fifty three hurts and nine sixty hurts
Speaker 1: specifically cho and because it does grab your attention, because
Speaker 1: it's very jarring, yes to hear it. It's just you
Speaker 1: can't ignore it. If you can hear, you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1: That's that's true. Um. And of course, uh, those of
Speaker 1: us who are familiar with it other than you know,
Speaker 1: being living somewhere where they're multiple weather uh situations like
Speaker 1: tornadoes or tornadoes. Um, you would probably have heard this
Speaker 1: through the the alerts which Jonathan and I grew up with,
Speaker 1: which was the testing. Yeah, they would say they would
Speaker 1: come on and say, well, this is a test of
Speaker 1: the emergency broadcast system and for the next sixty seconds,
Speaker 1: we will be testing out the emergency broadcast system. It
Speaker 1: would there was actually a very specific script that would fall,
Speaker 1: and then there would be after they would tell you
Speaker 1: there's a test coming, they would play this tone and
Speaker 1: then there'd be another message that would appear at the
Speaker 1: end saying this was a test of the emergency broadcast system.
Speaker 1: If this had been a real emergency, you would have
Speaker 1: received more information at this point alerting you to blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, blah blah, we now return you to your
Speaker 1: regularly scheduled programming type stuff. And they were required to
Speaker 1: do this test once in a week. Yeah, regular, on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. I didn't think it was quite that frequently.
Speaker 1: And it was once a week unless you had actually
Speaker 1: had to issue a real alert. If you had to
Speaker 1: issue a real alert, could skip over some time. But
Speaker 1: it was once a week at essentially a random time
Speaker 1: between eight thirty in the morning and sunset at night.
Speaker 1: Uh sometime during the week. So it wasn't that we'll
Speaker 1: get into this too. There wasn't a time where every
Speaker 1: single station had to do it at the same time.
Speaker 1: It was unique to the various stations. And like you
Speaker 1: were saying, Chris, you know these alerts went out not
Speaker 1: just for a national emergency. In fact, they never went
Speaker 1: out on purpose for a national emergency instead. Uh so,
Speaker 1: so never it was never used purposefully for that reason,
Speaker 1: even though that was the genesis of this system. It
Speaker 1: was used more than Oh I don't know several thousand
Speaker 1: times to alert for civil emergencies, sometimes an alert about
Speaker 1: to be on the lookout for a suspect in a
Speaker 1: in a particularly nasty crime that could be an alert,
Speaker 1: or for the weather alerts like the ones that Chris
Speaker 1: and I grew up with. I I can remember that
Speaker 1: happening so many times. Well. The uh, The way the
Speaker 1: emergency broadcast system worked was that the only message that
Speaker 1: no station could ignore or was supposed to ignore, was
Speaker 1: a national one. Right, So if you are a radio
Speaker 1: station in the middle of nowhere and the national alert
Speaker 1: goes out, you were supposed to to broadcast it just
Speaker 1: like every other station in the country, whereas if it
Speaker 1: were a local or regional you may or may not
Speaker 1: have been able to ignore that message and not broadcast it.
Speaker 1: The way it worked was that, again like the connal
Speaker 1: red system, where you had the key stations, the basic
Speaker 1: key stations, and the relay key stations, there was a
Speaker 1: similar setup for the emergency broadcast system. You had had
Speaker 1: these primary points of contact, which would be major broadcast
Speaker 1: stations usually, but these primary points of contact had to
Speaker 1: issue all broadcast all the alerts they got. They had
Speaker 1: no choice because they were a primary point of contact.
Speaker 1: But if you were further down the chain, like you
Speaker 1: were a secondary point or further down, then you could
Speaker 1: elect whether or not to broadcast that alert, assuming it
Speaker 1: wasn't a national alert that was the only one. Of
Speaker 1: course everyone had to broadcast. So um, you know there
Speaker 1: were that That explains why you might be in an
Speaker 1: area where a weather service alert is being broadcast and
Speaker 1: you saw it on one channel, but you switched to
Speaker 1: another local channel, and there's nothing that could be why.
Speaker 1: It may be that that other channels not a primary
Speaker 1: point and therefore was not required to broadcast it. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the the incident that Jonathan mentioned, famous incident. Now, I
Speaker 1: read an account of this from a person who was
Speaker 1: working at a radio station in St. Louis at the
Speaker 1: time it happened. Um, at the time it happened, by
Speaker 1: the way his February. And what he had said was
Speaker 1: that every Saturday at ten thirty three, the radio stations
Speaker 1: would receive a test message from Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and so basically it would say and there was a
Speaker 1: code word that it would include that would let you
Speaker 1: know that it was was genuine. And so at ten
Speaker 1: thirty three, UM, there there was a teletype machine in
Speaker 1: the other room, and he heard it and and typically
Speaker 1: it would it would dig a couple of times to
Speaker 1: let you know, hey, there's something something on the wire,
Speaker 1: you know, a news story on the wire. But this
Speaker 1: one rang ten times, which he knew was a big deal. Um,
Speaker 1: And so he ran into the other room and got
Speaker 1: a message that said he needed to broadcast a warning
Speaker 1: that there was an announcement come from the national you know,
Speaker 1: from 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 messages coming up,
Speaker 1: there's an attack coming up, but more details will follow.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and initiate the alert system. And it was
Speaker 1: a mistake that was made by a teletype operator who
Speaker 1: sent this authenticated code out to the system, which meant
Speaker 1: it went to all those those primary points of contact,
Speaker 1: and it didn't say it didn't say a minute later, Oops,
Speaker 1: my bad. No no, it took a while, and in fact,
Speaker 1: the first time they tried to resend it, they sent
Speaker 1: the wrong code, so it didn't resend the message. It
Speaker 1: was only forty minutes after the initial message was sent
Speaker 1: out that the cancelation the correct cancelation and 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. Some of them hadn't even signaled
Speaker 1: the alert, right, They just the programming just kept on going,
Speaker 1: But other stations did. Some of them didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do, so some of them weren't doing it. On purpose.
Speaker 1: Some of them weren't doing it because they didn't know
Speaker 1: what they were supposed to do, and a few actually
Speaker 1: broke into programming and said, we've received an alert from
Speaker 1: the Emergency Broadcast System. We know that there is a
Speaker 1: national emergency. We're a waiting for more information. Please stand by.
Speaker 1: And what Chris was talking about earlier was there are
Speaker 1: there a couple of recordings on the internet you can
Speaker 1: listen to that we're taken from that day, and one
Speaker 1: of them is from an radio station from Fort Wayne,
Speaker 1: Indiana called w O w OH, and you can listen
Speaker 1: to that and you can find it on the internet.
Speaker 1: The actual it's snippets from that. It's been edited. It's sorry,
Speaker 1: it's been edited down so that you get, uh sections,
Speaker 1: the important sections of of the broadcast. It's about what
Speaker 1: six minutes or so long, keeping in mind that that
Speaker 1: whole window was more like forty minutes, So this is
Speaker 1: six minutes of footage footage from six minutes of content
Speaker 1: from that forty minute window. Yeah, So basically what it
Speaker 1: said was, you know, hey, there there's something coming up.
Speaker 1: It's it's um. It's one of those things that would
Speaker 1: be funny if it weren't. If you don't put yourself
Speaker 1: back at that time had been terrifying. It would have
Speaker 1: been terrifying because he's the person who was on the air.
Speaker 1: Was a you could tell, was that uh seasoned newsperson. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he Uh, he was very serious and said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's been a message. We're waiting word for what's
Speaker 1: going on. Uh, if you are listening and you are
Speaker 1: one of our reporters, come here immediately. We need you
Speaker 1: here right now. And and basically was talking, uh, not
Speaker 1: only to the audience but to the the other reporters
Speaker 1: who might be listening. The message itself actually said, UM,
Speaker 1: message authenticator, hatefulness, hatefulness. This is an emergency action notification
Speaker 1: directed by the President. Normal broadcasting will cease immediately. All
Speaker 1: stations will broadcast e A N message one preceded by
Speaker 1: the attention signal. Per FCC rules, only stations holding nd
Speaker 1: N D e A may stay on the air and
Speaker 1: according and accord with State E B S plan. And uh,
Speaker 1: that would have scared the pants off of me. Um.
Speaker 1: And it took a while. As Jonathan said, 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 incidence. I think he
Speaker 1: was kind of stressed out. If you listen to the
Speaker 1: recording from the w O w O UH incident, you
Speaker 1: actually hear the the newscaster kind of chuckling once the
Speaker 1: once the order was sent out about this was a mistake,
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of kind of because you know
Speaker 1: clearly it was one of the stressful things, and the
Speaker 1: chuckling is him releasing that stress. And it is an
Speaker 1: interesting moment in history to kind of pick up on that. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, not that was the only time that at
Speaker 1: a national alert went out across the system, and again
Speaker 1: it wasn't a real one. It was a mistake. UM.
Speaker 1: And then what was supposed to happen is that, depending
Speaker 1: upon the nature of the emergency, UH stations are supposed
Speaker 1: to read from a predetermined script like it's it's they're
Speaker 1: not supposed to just you know, kind of provide commentary
Speaker 1: on it. There's a specific message that needs to be relayed.
Speaker 1: And so that was the general purpose of the emergency
Speaker 1: Broadcast system, but it was starting to show its age, uh,
Speaker 1: particularly in the nineties, because you started to have other
Speaker 1: methods of getting content on your television besides broadcast TV,
Speaker 1: and 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 city, something in the ultra high
Speaker 1: frequency yeah, you know, maybe uh, six or six to
Speaker 1: ten stations in big big markets. UM. Then you to
Speaker 1: dozens or even hundreds of stations now with cable and satellite, um,
Speaker 1: you know, plus uh you know the radio stations which
Speaker 1: have exploded in number, um, satellite radio and all the
Speaker 1: other media that we listen to now. So yeah, the system,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people. You know, the system needed
Speaker 1: to evolve with that development. And of course even now
Speaker 1: we're still we're already seeing a need for that too,
Speaker 1: find another way of reaching people because as people start
Speaker 1: to use the Internet to get content, now there's yet
Speaker 1: another avenue for information to get to them. But you know,
Speaker 1: this system was not designed with that in mind, so
Speaker 1: there's already another need coming out. But at anyway, the
Speaker 1: way it works now, the National Weather Service actually has
Speaker 1: specific codes that they can attached to notices so that
Speaker 1: those digital codes will send the message just to the
Speaker 1: relevant regions. So that way, if they're if the net
Speaker 1: and 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 eleven. Yeah. Um, there is one sort
Speaker 1: of interesting footnote um to the the e B S
Speaker 1: ERA passing from to the E A S ERA. UM.
Speaker 1: E B S was not activated during the September eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one attacks, um, which is kind of
Speaker 1: interesting that they chose not to do uh to use
Speaker 1: the alert at that time, particularly since the attacks affected
Speaker 1: multiple targets in multiple cities, so it is would have
Speaker 1: affected 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 uh, the e A S made
Speaker 1: its debut. Yeah, and the system had been in place.
Speaker 1: But what happened was because the system was was the
Speaker 1: e A S was actually what would have been used
Speaker 1: in September eleven, so so on no member. 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 n which means that if you
Speaker 1: didn't know about it ahead of time and 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: and change the channel, and that alert is still going
Speaker 1: and it's going on this ocean. Oh, this is something.
Speaker 1: And so there were a lot of messages that were
Speaker 1: sent 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: or whatever other national emergency you might be able to
Speaker 1: conjure up in your mind. I just cannot imagine a
Speaker 1: national emergency at this point that does not involve zombies. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: there are according to the Christian Science Monitor, UM, there
Speaker 1: were fourteen thousand and more broadcast stations both for TV
Speaker 1: and radio, plus more than uh ten thous cable TV stations.
Speaker 1: So this is all being done at the same time. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's able to reach a lot more people.
Speaker 1: But they're already talking about, um, how they can reach
Speaker 1: people via text message and in other locations. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're already talking again about how they can improve
Speaker 1: this this system to make it reach more people. UM,
Speaker 1: which is uh, you know, kind of funny since it
Speaker 1: probably reaches more now than it ever has before. UM,
Speaker 1: I can imagine that it's going to do things like
Speaker 1: promoted tweets. Yeah yeah, well there you laugh. But I
Speaker 1: can easily imagine that it's just you know, and I
Speaker 1: absolutely see it. Um and it Uh. It's also important
Speaker 1: to to realize that this does more than just announced
Speaker 1: stay an attack like connald rad would. UM. There are
Speaker 1: more than I believe eighty different kinds of messages they
Speaker 1: can use the e A s for, including things like
Speaker 1: childhood abduction alerts. Yes and uh. Here here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: we have a highway that goes around the outside of
Speaker 1: the city known as the Perimeter obvious reasons, Yeah highway
Speaker 1: or Interstate eighty five, and there are electronic signs that
Speaker 1: they can use a lot of a lot of times
Speaker 1: you'll see stuff like, well there's a traffic up ahead
Speaker 1: or be you know, be aware there's an accident. Um.
Speaker 1: But they also use this messaging on those signs as well.
Speaker 1: So that's a way for people to uh, for the
Speaker 1: authorities to reach us with these kinds of messages. On
Speaker 1: the side, note, how can a highway that encircles a
Speaker 1: city that's all within one state be an interstate? Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I'm just asking these are questions that appeared that that
Speaker 1: happened in my head. And I want to know why
Speaker 1: do you drive in the parkway and parking and driveway?
Speaker 1: I also want to know that I don't name these things,
Speaker 1: I just report them. If our legs bent backwards, what
Speaker 1: would a chair look like? What if there were no
Speaker 1: hypothetical questions? That's terrible, all right, So, um, now now
Speaker 1: that we've totally killed that. But yeah, the the ASSID
Speaker 1: is supposed to be able to turn on certain types
Speaker 1: of radios and TVs and other devices to allow people
Speaker 1: to receive these emergency messages, which of course will inspire
Speaker 1: many people to go, you know, the government is trying
Speaker 1: to take over our world, um, which is all right
Speaker 1: for them to say, I suppose, but um yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they're they're ways for for them to reach us
Speaker 1: in to let us know if there's something important that
Speaker 1: we should be aware of. Um. So you know, it
Speaker 1: really has involved quite a bit since the nine fifties
Speaker 1: when the first system was put into place, and similar
Speaker 1: systems to this are in place in other countries around
Speaker 1: the world. We specifically focus on this one because it's
Speaker 1: the country we live in. So again, apologies to all
Speaker 1: of our listeners overseas. Hopefully this was interesting to you,
Speaker 1: just on on the level of how do you take
Speaker 1: something as simple in in concept as getting a message out?
Speaker 1: How do you take that and then apply it to
Speaker 1: a very complex world. And uh, it's an interesting approach.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily the best one either. There may be
Speaker 1: other approaches that would be UM that would be more
Speaker 1: efficient and more effective than the emergency alert system, but
Speaker 1: you know, that's what we have. So if you guys
Speaker 1: live in a country that has a similar system but
Speaker 1: it works on a different way, let us know, tell
Speaker 1: us tell us about it, you know, if you're familiar
Speaker 1: with that kind of thing, because I find it really interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very important concept and it's, like
Speaker 1: I said, this is not the only way to get
Speaker 1: it to work, and it's it's a challenge to reach
Speaker 1: that many people UM in a in a very short
Speaker 1: time to let them know that there's something big and
Speaker 1: important that they need to know it's a matter of
Speaker 1: public safety or a public concern. We've definitely come a
Speaker 1: long way from a guy on horseback riding yelling out
Speaker 1: the British are coming, the British are coming or or fidipities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: could you run these twenty six miles right? You know? Anyway,
Speaker 1: come on a couple of between marathonors. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you are interested in uh and hearing the bits about
Speaker 1: the the e B S accident, um, search for w
Speaker 1: O w O U e B S and you'll probably
Speaker 1: come up with it pretty quickly. Um. The website I
Speaker 1: mentioned before is actually s t L radio dot net
Speaker 1: slash pages slash e B S accident dot htm um,
Speaker 1: and that will show you what somebody he was actually
Speaker 1: working at a radio station in Texas. Um. Just a visual,
Speaker 1: you know, just uh something you can read about how
Speaker 1: he was feeling at the time. He was a former
Speaker 1: former member of the military, so you know, the idea
Speaker 1: of attack I'm sure would have uh you know, he
Speaker 1: would have been especially on his toes show our broadcast
Speaker 1: this message. UM. So yeah, it's uh both sort of
Speaker 1: semi amusing and semi chilling at the same time. Interesting
Speaker 1: to read, definitely, yep. So if you guys have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future topics that we should tackle here on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, please send us a message. You can let
Speaker 1: us know an email that addresses tex Stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com, or send us a message on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can find us there with a handled text stuff
Speaker 1: HSW and Chris and I will talk to you again
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