Which country's Emergency Alert System siren is the most alarming?

boing
1

Originally published at: Which country's Emergency Alert System siren is the most alarming? | Boing Boing

…

4 Likes
2

Our local alert system had sirens followed by a person reading the alert text - until someone pointed out to them that no one indoors could understand the person speaking and it was really stupid to make people go outside to hear the text of the weather alert message.

2 Likes
3

Technically the U.S. tone listed in the video is the Specific Area Message Encoding (S.A.M.E.) header. It encodes the locale for the message, the nature of the message, and other information. The local station has equipment listening for the header tone and will activate if appropriate. The “attention tone” follows it and is the sustained two-note tone. You wouldn’t necessarily hear the S.A.M.E. tones in an actual emergency.

1 Like
4

I carried on to part 2 and part 3. Why is Finland sending CQ in Morse, are they expecting a reply?

4 Likes
5

Now this is crying for a mashup

1 Like
6

Saudi Arabia’s is the THX intro sound? South Korea includes some modem sounds? I’m not sure about some of these…

3 Likes
7

Japan’s just sounds like I’m getting a polite phone call. Greece’s makes me wet myself.

3 Likes
8

Pah. Back to the classics, I say.

3 Likes
9

Here in The Netherlands we have the standard slow whoop. It works well enough although in the beginning it sounds to me a lot like a power sander or other power tool revving up in the distance.

On the other hand, it is international and standard. Nobody could hear the full whoop and not understand some kind of alarm is going off and you might want to take care.

But I was wondering: How often do other countries test this system? We still test the actual sirens every month (scaring the crap out of visitors :smiley: ) and the EAS phone system once a year.

1 Like
10
5 Likes
11

Once long ago I tried setting my alarm to the scariest emergency tone I could find to dismantle my habit of hitting the Snooze Bar.

The only result was scaring someone with whom I was sharing a room on a business trip half to death, and conditioning myself to want to roll over, hug a pillow, and take a nap when there’s a tornado.

7 Likes
12

None of these are as bad as the buzzer on my egg cooker. That thing goes off like it thinks there are Russian nukes inbound.

3 Likes
13

Did someone mention the Chicago tornado siren?
Everything about this video gives me the creeps.

4 Likes
14

Well, I’m alert now.

1 Like
15

75bb9dd0cd7522b4c1d2e72c79e89fd4

9 Likes
16

That is horrifying, NGL.

Here are the Warning Siren signals for Germany:

  1. General warning for the Population (terrorist attack, natural desasters like high water, storms, amok run, pollutet water, Bomb from the war, etc…)
  2. Nuclear Chemical and Biological Alert (Russian/chinese/british nukes incoming, meltdown in a Nuclear power station, attack with chemical or bio weapons, accident in a chemical factory, Fallout…)
  3. All clear signal
  4. Fire alert
  5. Test
2 Likes
17

the begining of this report will give you an idea of what tornado sirens sound like in ohio

1 Like
18

Different parts of Ohio use different sirens. Here in Lakewood this is ours https://youtu.be/qa810-nJdgk Everyone in the city is very familiar with that sound because of the unusually frequent testing schedule. They do a chirp test weekly, a minute long test monthly, and a midweek test timed to match tornado drills at the school annually.

19

Entwarnung? You have an ent attack warning?

(I can read German, but let me have my imagination)

4 Likes
20

I decided to save time and just start them all playing at once… Yeah, bad idea.

How we do it in Switzerland:

2 Likes