Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. 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 love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: this is only a podcast about a test. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is a classic episode of tech Stuff where Chris Poulett
Speaker 1: and I talk about the emergency broadcast system. It's that
Speaker 1: wonderful system that is it's truly valuable, but I remember
Speaker 1: vividly as a child being startled every single time it
Speaker 1: would come on television. If you don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, you gotta listen to this episode. Have a
Speaker 1: little trip back in time. Originally, this episode aired on
Speaker 1: August first, two thousand twelve, so I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: this classic episode. Tech Stuff tests the emergency broadcast system.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to do an episode about the emergency
Speaker 1: broadcast system. This was actually a request that was sent
Speaker 1: in by a couple of different listeners, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because it doesn't really technically exist anymore. Now we have
Speaker 1: a new system in the United States called the Emergency
Speaker 1: Alert System. Also, I should apologize to all of our
Speaker 1: listeners from places other than the United States. This is
Speaker 1: a very United States centric podcast, but it's interesting anyway,
Speaker 1: trust me. Well, it's it's become something that's uh that's
Speaker 1: important in most situations too. I mean they're they're uh
Speaker 1: tragedies and big events that happen in places all over
Speaker 1: the world, so that the question is you've got a country, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't have to necessarily be the United States.
Speaker 1: We have a country, have millions of people living there,
Speaker 1: and something is happening, there's an earthquake or a tsunami
Speaker 1: or uh some other kind of accident, um, or another
Speaker 1: country is invading or something like that. You know, something
Speaker 1: 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 rests 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 wasn't a system
Speaker 1: and its subsequently the Cold War. Yeah yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: mean the the whole uh, the end of the the
Speaker 1: Second World War and it 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 what we did in World War Two,
Speaker 1: that was fairly effective. But we need a system. We
Speaker 1: need we need to plan, we need to figure out
Speaker 1: how we can do this effectively and let everybody know
Speaker 1: in a short period of time because we're not going
Speaker 1: to have long we need to have a short period
Speaker 1: of time a message in place. How can we reach
Speaker 1: out to people? And that was basically the birth of UM.
Speaker 1: What now is the Emergency Alert System. But at that
Speaker 1: point UH was known as Connell rad Yes, UH in fact,
Speaker 1: which wasn't by the way, kind of sort of an
Speaker 1: acronym for a control of electromagnetic radiation, which is that's
Speaker 1: kind of terrifying, right, But that was established in one
Speaker 1: 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. No, that's not right. Nothing.
Speaker 1: He just wanted it. He liked it sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: like Michael J. Fox. So you don't say like the
Speaker 1: S stands for nothing, Like nothing isn't spelled with S.
Speaker 1: I 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 nine teen fifty one, these alerts went out over
Speaker 1: radio stations. They would get like an emergency bulletin, and
Speaker 1: it was pretty much up to the station whether or
Speaker 1: not they read it. Um conal Red kind of established
Speaker 1: a specific protocol that needed to be followed in the
Speaker 1: event of an emergency, and originally the idea was that
Speaker 1: it would alert citizens of the United States of an
Speaker 1: impending attack from the Soviet Union. In those days, we're
Speaker 1: talking about before intercontinental ballistic missiles, So these attacks would
Speaker 1: take the form of bombers flying overhead, and so conal
Speaker 1: Red had two main purposes. Really, one was to issue
Speaker 1: alerts to citizens to try and get them to safety
Speaker 1: as soon as possible in the case of the attack,
Speaker 1: and the second was to minimize the ability of the
Speaker 1: Soviets to target uh specific areas based on radio frequencies.
Speaker 1: So part of the connal Red protocol was that radio
Speaker 1: stations would shut down and they would only uh broadcast
Speaker 1: in a certain amount of time and under certain frequencies.
Speaker 1: So under the Comrade protocol you essentially had this. This
Speaker 1: is what would happen if if someone were to issue
Speaker 1: an alert. By the way, no alert was ever issued.
Speaker 1: It was originally called a key station system, and the
Speaker 1: idea was that you had these dedicated telephone circuits that
Speaker 1: connected the air defense control centers to certain key radio
Speaker 1: stations called basic key stations. If there were an appending attack,
Speaker 1: the Air Defense Control center would issue the alert to
Speaker 1: the key radio stations, these basic key stations that would
Speaker 1: then issue that same alert to relay key stations. These
Speaker 1: would be smaller regional radio stations, uh so they it
Speaker 1: was sort of a hierarchy, right, It went from Air
Speaker 1: defense control centers to a certain number of basic radio
Speaker 1: stations to every other radio station. Once they received the alert,
Speaker 1: the radio stations would then broadcast a predetermined message out
Speaker 1: to the listeners. And the way it would work is
Speaker 1: that the stations would turn off for five seconds, so
Speaker 1: they'd 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 they killer Hurts frequency and the
Speaker 1: twelve forty kill Hurts frequency. Now, these two frequencies were
Speaker 1: the only two that were authorized to broadcast during one
Speaker 1: of these emergencies, and uh, on radios at the time,
Speaker 1: you would see this little symbol over those those frequencies,
Speaker 1: and it was a triangle inside a circle, and that's
Speaker 1: the Civil Defense mark. Yeah, you might remember the symbol
Speaker 1: sort of red, white and blue if you've seen it
Speaker 1: around and uh it's still not terribly uncommon to see
Speaker 1: it every once in a while someplace. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: that was that was saying like, these are the two frequencies.
Speaker 1: If you if your favorite radio station is an 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 electromagnetism, radio waves and electricity because I can't go
Speaker 1: into it here. But the the lightning strikes could cause
Speaker 1: false alarms, which is, you know, a bad thing if
Speaker 1: if you've been told that this alert system means that
Speaker 1: there's an impending attack from Soviet planes, it might cause
Speaker 1: a little stress. Also, the switching mechanism, because it would
Speaker 1: make transmitters switch on and off in this this um
Speaker 1: the sequence could cause transmitters to fail over time, just
Speaker 1: from powering up and powering down so frequently within a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time. And then of course, uh, this
Speaker 1: whole system, this idea of cutting off radio contact so
Speaker 1: that you could minimize the ability for Soviets to target
Speaker 1: in on specific regions. It became meaningless once intercontinental ballistic
Speaker 1: missiles became a real thing, right because now you're not
Speaker 1: talking about planes anymore. You're talking about guided missiles and
Speaker 1: um 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
Speaker 1: nine EBS made its debut um and uh again it
Speaker 1: it never was used, of course, to uh, to communicate
Speaker 1: the threat of war, not on purpose. We'll get there,
Speaker 1: but I'm assuming that you listened to the Wow that
Speaker 1: was fun. 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 tone,
Speaker 1: which it's hard to explain it if you've never heard it.
Speaker 1: You're splitting other than e're splitting and annoying between but
Speaker 1: it does get your attention. Apparently it's the combined as
Speaker 1: sign waves of eight hundred and fifty three hurts and
Speaker 1: nine sixty hurts specifically chosen because it does grab your
Speaker 1: attention because it's very jarring to hear it. It's just
Speaker 1: you you can't ignore it. If you can hear you
Speaker 1: 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 yeah, they
Speaker 1: would say they would come on and say, well, this
Speaker 1: is a test of the emergency broadcast system, and for
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 of the emergency broadcast system. If this had been
Speaker 1: a real emergency, you would have received more information at
Speaker 1: this point alerting you to blah blah blah, blah blah,
Speaker 1: we now return you to your regularly scheduled programming type stuff.
Speaker 1: And they were required to do this test once in
Speaker 1: a week. Yeah, regular, on a regular basis. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it was quite that frequently. It was once a
Speaker 1: week unless you had actually had to issue a real alert.
Speaker 1: If you had to issue a real alert, you could
Speaker 1: skip over some time. But it was once a week
Speaker 1: at essentially a random time between eight thirty in the
Speaker 1: morning and sunset at night, uh sometime during the week.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that we'll get into this too. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a time where every single station had to do
Speaker 1: it at the same time. It was unique to various stations,
Speaker 1: and like you were saying, Chris, you know these alerts
Speaker 1: went out not just for a national emergency. In fact,
Speaker 1: they never went out on purpose for a national emergency instead,
Speaker 1: uh so so never it was never used purposefully for
Speaker 1: that reason, even though that was the genesis of this system,
Speaker 1: it was used more than oh, I don't know, several
Speaker 1: thousand times to alert for civil emergencies, sometimes an alert
Speaker 1: about to be on the lookout for a suspect in
Speaker 1: a 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 can remember that happening
Speaker 1: so many times. Deep this is just a test of
Speaker 1: the fact that we're gonna go listen to a sponsor now.
Speaker 1: The way the emergency broadcast system worked was that the
Speaker 1: only message that no station could ignore or was supposed
Speaker 1: to ignore, was a national one. Right, So, if you
Speaker 1: are a radio station in the middle of nowhere and
Speaker 1: the national alert goes out, you were supposed to to
Speaker 1: broadcast it just like every other station in the country,
Speaker 1: Whereas if it were a local or regional you may
Speaker 1: or may not have been able to ignore that message.
Speaker 1: And not broadcast it. The way it worked was that,
Speaker 1: again like the Connel red system, where you had the
Speaker 1: key stations, the basic key stations, and the relay key stations,
Speaker 1: there was a similar setup for the emergency broadcast system.
Speaker 1: You had these primary points of contact, which would be
Speaker 1: major broadcast stations usually, but these primary points of contact
Speaker 1: had to issue all broadcast all the alerts they got.
Speaker 1: They had no choice because they were a primary point
Speaker 1: of contact. But if you were further down the chain,
Speaker 1: like you are a secondary point or further down, then
Speaker 1: you could elect whether or not to broadcast that alert,
Speaker 1: assuming it wasn't a national alert that was the only one.
Speaker 1: Of course, everyone had to broadcast. So um, you know
Speaker 1: there were 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 it.
Speaker 1: Maybe that that other channels not a primary point and
Speaker 1: therefore was not required to broadcast it. Um. Now, the
Speaker 1: the incident that Jonathan mentioned, famous incident, Now I read
Speaker 1: an account of this from a person who was working
Speaker 1: at a radio station in St. Louis at the time.
Speaker 1: It happened. Um. At the time it happened, by the way,
Speaker 1: is February nine, yep. 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 and 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 coming 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, here's the 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 went out. So
Speaker 1: what happened was actually very telling in a way because
Speaker 1: some radio, radio and television stations, actually a lot of
Speaker 1: them didn't do anything at all, so they did not
Speaker 1: broadcast this message, and that, in a way is a
Speaker 1: problem because the whole purpose of the system is to
Speaker 1: relay a national emergency to everybody. Now. Now, in many
Speaker 1: of these cases, it may be that the people in
Speaker 1: charge said, there's no information here, we have no real
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a confirmed code, but there's no confirmed information.
Speaker 1: And we have nothing to share with people, So why
Speaker 1: would we go ahead and do this when we don't
Speaker 1: have any information we could give them. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: standing by to broadcast whatever the major announcement was about
Speaker 1: the attack. Right. Some of them hadn't even signaled the alert, right,
Speaker 1: They just the programming just kept on going, But other
Speaker 1: stations did. Some of them didn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: so some of them weren't doing it on purpose. Some
Speaker 1: of them weren't doing it because they didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to do. And a few actually broke
Speaker 1: into programming and said, we've received an alert from the
Speaker 1: Emergency Broadcast System. We know that there is a national emergency.
Speaker 1: We're awaiting for more information. Please stand by. And what
Speaker 1: Chris was talking about earlier was there are there a
Speaker 1: couple of recordings on the internet you can listen to
Speaker 1: that we're taken from that day, and one of them
Speaker 1: is um AND radio station from Fort Wayne, Indiana called
Speaker 1: w O w OH, and you can listen to that
Speaker 1: and you can find it on the internet. The actual
Speaker 1: it's snippets from that. Yeah, it's 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, right, keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: that whole window was more like forty minutes. So this
Speaker 1: is six minutes of footage footage from six minutes of
Speaker 1: content from that forty minute window. Yeah. So basically what
Speaker 1: it 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, it would have been terrifying. It
Speaker 1: would have been terrifying because he's the person who was
Speaker 1: 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 UH scans of his
Speaker 1: copies of these messages, was saying, excuse the burn marks.
Speaker 1: I was smoking pretty heavily through this instance, because I
Speaker 1: think it was kind of stressed out. If you listen
Speaker 1: to the recording from the w O w O U incident,
Speaker 1: you actually hear the the newscaster kind of chuckling once
Speaker 1: the once the order was sent out about this was
Speaker 1: a mistake, and you know, kind of kind of because
Speaker 1: you know, clearly it was one of those stressful things
Speaker 1: and the chuckling is him releasing that stress, and it
Speaker 1: is an interesting moment in history to kind of pick
Speaker 1: up on that. Um. So yeah, not that was the
Speaker 1: only time that a national alert went out across the system,
Speaker 1: and again 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 i'd 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
Speaker 1: uh sparticularly in the nineties because you started to have
Speaker 1: other 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: nt 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 uh six or six
Speaker 1: to ten stations in big big markets. UM. Then you
Speaker 1: go to dozens or even hundreds of stations now with
Speaker 1: cable and satellite, UM, you know, plus uh you know
Speaker 1: the radio stations which have exploded in number, UM, satellite
Speaker 1: radio 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. We've
Speaker 1: got a little bit more to say about the emergency
Speaker 1: broadcast system. Don't worry, there's no emergency going on. We're
Speaker 1: just taking a quick break to thank our sponsor. 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 there if the National
Speaker 1: Weather Service detects that there's going to be you know,
Speaker 1: a massive hurricane hitting the panhandle of Florida, it and
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 is 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 would have affected even
Speaker 1: more had not the flight in Pennsylvania gone down. So
Speaker 1: just just sort of an interesting footnote there. Um. But yes,
Speaker 1: on November nine, Uh, the e a S made its debut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the system had been in place. But what happened
Speaker 1: was because the system was was the e A S
Speaker 1: was actually what would have been used in September eleven.
Speaker 1: So on November, what happened was it was tested nationally.
Speaker 1: This was the first time any of these systems had
Speaker 1: ever been tested on a national level, meaning that every
Speaker 1: participating station was going to display the test at the
Speaker 1: same time, and that time was going to be um
Speaker 1: It was two pm Eastern for on November, which means
Speaker 1: that if you didn't know about it ahead of time
Speaker 1: and he turned on your television, you would see this
Speaker 1: alert and you think, oh, this is irritating. This that
Speaker 1: one of those stupid tests, and change the channel and
Speaker 1: that alert is still going and it's going on the ocean. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is something. And so there were a lot of
Speaker 1: messages that were sent out before two pm November to
Speaker 1: let people know, Hey, this is gonna happen. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: The zombies aren't here yet, right, or whatever other national
Speaker 1: emergency you might be able to conjure up in your mind.
Speaker 1: I just cannot imagine a national emergency at this point
Speaker 1: that does not involve zombies, right, right, well there are
Speaker 1: According to the Christian Science Monitor, UM, there were fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand and more podcast stations both for TV and radio,
Speaker 1: plus more than uh ten thousand cable TV stations. So
Speaker 1: 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: But I can imagine that it's going to do things
Speaker 1: like promoted tweets. Yeah, yeah, well there you laugh. But
Speaker 1: I can easily imagine that it's just you know, and
Speaker 1: I absolutely see it. Um and it Uh. It's also
Speaker 1: important to to realize that this does more than just
Speaker 1: announced state an attack like connal rad would. Um. There
Speaker 1: are more and I believe eighty different kinds of messages
Speaker 1: they can use the e A s for, including things
Speaker 1: like 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, and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: times 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 appear that that
Speaker 1: happened in my head, and I want to know why
Speaker 1: do you drive on a parkway in 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 the chair look like? What if there were no
Speaker 1: hypothetical questions? That's terrible, all right, So now now that
Speaker 1: we've totally killed that, but yeah, the the ass is
Speaker 1: supposed to be able to turn on certain types of
Speaker 1: radios and TVs and other devices to allow people to
Speaker 1: receive these emergency messages, which of course will inspire many
Speaker 1: people to go you know, the government is trying to
Speaker 1: take over our world, um, which is all right for
Speaker 1: them to say, I suppose, but UM yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're ways for for them to reach us in
Speaker 1: to let us know if there's something important that we
Speaker 1: should be aware of. Um. So you know, it really
Speaker 1: has involved quite a bit since the nineteen fifties when
Speaker 1: the first system was put into place, and similar systems
Speaker 1: to this are in place in other countries around the world.
Speaker 1: We specifically focus on this one because it's the country
Speaker 1: we live in. So again, apologies to all of our
Speaker 1: listeners overseas. Hopefully this was interesting to you, just on
Speaker 1: on the level of how do you take something as
Speaker 1: simple in in concept as getting a message out? How
Speaker 1: do you take that and then apply it to a
Speaker 1: very complex world. And uh, it's an interesting approach. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the best one either. There may be other
Speaker 1: approaches that would be um that would be more efficient
Speaker 1: and more effective than the emergency alert system, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's what we have. So if you guys live in
Speaker 1: a country that has a similar system but it works
Speaker 1: on a different way, let us know, tell us, tell
Speaker 1: us about it, you know, if you're familiar with that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, because I find it really interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a very important concept and it's, like I said,
Speaker 1: this is not the only way to get it to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a challenge to reach that many people,
Speaker 1: UM in a in a very short time, to let
Speaker 1: them know that there's something big and important that they
Speaker 1: need to know it's a matter of public safety or
Speaker 1: a public concern. We've definitely come a long way for
Speaker 1: um A guy on horseback writing yelling out the British
Speaker 1: are coming, The British are coming. Well, guys, I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this classic episode of tech Stuff. It was
Speaker 1: fun to go back and revisit this, uh, this, this
Speaker 1: system that again. It's very important, kind of scary, kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. And let me know if it hit any
Speaker 1: nostalgia buttons for you. Let me know what you guys thought,
Speaker 1: and if you have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company, a person
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