The first nationwide test of the U.S. Emergency Alert System occurs at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 9, 2011, and it will interrupt programming for a few minutes. Visit »www.comcast.com/nationaleastest/ for more information.
I'll hold off on support of this for now. If national alerts are used strictly for 9/11 type events, then fine. But what if it is used for amber alerts when a local amber alert fails to find child. There are probably a few of those per day around the country. Or a silver alert which are now being used by state authorities?
listen silver alerts are used to locate missing elderly people, but a silver alert is not part of the emergency alert system protocols currently in place. there has never been a national amber alert because its just too messy. I mean maybe a regional alert with bordering states would occur if local fails but who knows but the cops.
Anyway I look forward to the EAS national test and actually have been working hard making sure everything is going to work when it occurs. Hopefully all will be good and it lasts for like an hour each month.
The National system has always existed since back in the days of Conlrad, followed by EBS, and now EAS. A public National alert has never been sent on purpose up until this one comes in November. Provided the National system stays on target, if you were to receive a real National Alert, an EAN (Emergency Action Notification) , it pretty much means that WW3 had started and nukes are in the air inbound as well as outbound.
As a bit of history, there once was an accidental activation, that didn't propagate across the country as it should have but it did happen. One station that followed like it should is here...
What's also going on right now is that because of the national emergency alert test on November 9th Comcast is shifting some engineers and technicians and focusing on that because they want to make sure that it will completely work and not be embarassed by a failure. It's extremely complicated on the intricacies of how the emergency alert system works from the natlional level to the regional level to the state level to the county level and to the local level and anything can go wrong on something thats never been tested at this scale before so a careful manual inspection has to be done. »www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ ··· 21086706 »www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia ··· ide-test
what exactly is this test for? They haven't used the national emergency system in years. Was it even activated for pearl harbor or three mile island? I know it wasn't activated for 9-11 even though most of the country shut down (major airports and even amtrak/greyhound i do beleive).
"Prior to 1951, there was no method that the U.S. government could use to broadcast warnings to citizens in the event of an emergency. However, radio stations and networks could interrupt normal programming and issue a bulletin in the event of an emergency, as happened during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as well as the first successful tornado warning near Tinker Air Force Base in 1948. This type of broadcasting was the forerunner to CONELRAD.
CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack during the Cold War. It was intended to serve two purposes; to prevent Soviet bombers from homing in on American cities by using radio or TV stations as beacons, and to provide essential civil defense information. U.S. President Harry S. Truman established CONELRAD in 1951. After the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles reduced the likelihood of a bomber attack, CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System on August 5, 1963, which was later replaced with the Emergency Alert System in 1997; all were administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[1]"
During the September 11 attacks in 2001, "... the EAS was not activated nationally or regionally in New York or Washington during the terrorist attacks on the nation." Richard Rudman, then chairman of the EAS National Advisory Committee explained that near immediate coverage in the national media meant that the media itself provided the warning or alert of what had happened and what might happen as quickly as the information could be distributed. "Some events really do serve as their own alerts and warnings. With the immediate live media coverage, the need for an EAS warning was lessened." 34 PEP stations were kept on high alert for use if the President had decided to order an Emergency Action Notification. "PEP is really a last-ditch effort to get a message out if the president cannot get to the media."
The test is to make sure that the equipment actually CAN work properly if something were to happen to require it to be activated. Would you rather we find out during an emergency that something isnt working or would you rather it be tested and fixed before? »www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia ··· ide-test
A few other times thats happened, like, On June 26, 2007, the EAS in Illinois was activated at 7:35AM CDT and issued an Emergency Action Notification Message for the United States. This was followed by dead air and then WGN radio (the station designated to simulcast the alert message) being played on almost every television and radio station in the Chicago area and throughout much of Illinois. The accidental EAN activation was caused when a government contractor installing a new satellite receiver as part of a new national delivery path incorrectly left the receiver connected and wired to the state EOC's EAS transmitter before final closed circuit testing of the new delivery path had been completed and it never reached the rest of the nation.
I'm trying to find the .jpg's I have of the 1971 alert as it was transmitted via the AP's wire. Ahhh back in the days when the teletype was still the primary source for news.
"CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack during the Cold War. It was intended to serve two purposes; to prevent Soviet bombers from homing in on American cities by using radio or TV stations as beacons, and to provide essential civil defense information. U.S. President Harry S. Truman established CONELRAD in 1951. After the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles reduced the likelihood of a bomber attack, CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System on August 5, 1963, which was later replaced with the Emergency Alert System in 1997; all were administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[1]"
Many radios (AM) from this era have markers at the 2 frequencies that were set aside for the broadcasts. My parents still have an old (roughly '61-'62, with add-on FM demux) stereo with the marks on the AM dial.
"CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack during the Cold War. It was intended to serve two purposes; to prevent Soviet bombers from homing in on American cities by using radio or TV stations as beacons, and to provide essential civil defense information. U.S. President Harry S. Truman established CONELRAD in 1951. After the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles reduced the likelihood of a bomber attack, CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System on August 5, 1963, which was later replaced with the Emergency Alert System in 1997; all were administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[1]"
Many radios (AM) from this era have markers at the 2 frequencies that were set aside for the broadcasts. My parents still have an old (roughly '61-'62, with add-on FM demux) stereo with the marks on the AM dial.
There are people all over the place bitching about this test, and how it's just the government taking over all forms of communication and denying free specch. Look at the comments on this article: »www.theblaze.com/stories ··· n-nov-9/
listen silver alerts are used to locate missing elderly people, but a silver alert is not part of the emergency alert system protocols currently in place. there has never been a national amber alert because its just too messy. I mean maybe a regional alert with bordering states would occur if local fails but who knows but the cops.
Anyway I look forward to the EAS national test and actually have been working hard making sure everything is going to work when it occurs. Hopefully all will be good and it lasts for like an hour each month.
Never heard of a Silver alert, but there'd be one here everyday if it was an official alert.
And I was gonna make joke and say that it was for when a rich kid went missing.
Yeah I'm clueless as to the issue but whats nice is that basically all I get is a red banner with white text flashing across the top of my screen, the alert tones, but no voice on my SA8300 and Cisco RNG200N, a force tune to QVC with that blue screen with red border and white text on my DTA with the warning tone and no voice, and a red banner with white text scrolling across the top of my screen with no warning tone and voice on my Moxi because its optional.
It was black and white for me(black background, white text). There was EAS related text on the screen(I can't remember what it said), And a message about somebody requesting a test scrolled across the top of the screen. There were alert tones too.
It was force tuned to channel 4. QVC is channel 4 for you? Its CBS for me.
The interval between tests was actually decreasing before I fell asleep.
QVC is channel 3 for me. CBS is channel 2 for me. The alerts continued up until 4:50am for me, and I noticed my Moxi and the DTA would recieve and display the alert first, then approximately 3 minutes later my cableboxes alerted, so I was able to prepare myself for photos and video. This is essentially what happened
only the message script for all devices was "THE BROADCAST STATION OR CABLE SYSTEM HAS ISSUED A REQUIRED WEEKLY TEST FOR THE FOLLOWING COUNTIES/AREAS: Monmouth; Ocean, NJ; New Jersey; AT (a time) ON OCT 26, 2011 EFFECTIVE UNTIL (a time) MESSAGE FROM NJ34025
Whats odd is the use of the word "the" instead of "a" in the beginning of the message, it doesnt sound right, does it?
I googled NJ34025, it seems to be an locality identifier (at least for the US Census folks) for Monmouth County, NJ based on the search results that came back....