this is not a test this is an actual Techquickie episode and for your own
safety I recommend you do not leave your computer for the next 5 minutes of
course real emergency alerts are designed to warn you of things that are
somehow even more important than new YouTube videos but they've always been
kind of mystifying with their weird combination of robotic voices and
disconcerting sounds wouldn't it just be
easier for a human announcer to get on the air and warn us of an impending
pandemic hurricane or Godzilla attack
well no the emergency alert system or
EAS used in the United States is designed to get messages out as quickly
as possible and this is difficult to do without automation I mean in certain
kinds of emergencies like an approaching tornado you might only have a couple of
minutes to prepare so there isn't necessarily time for a human being to
scoot off to the recording studio do a few takes apply some autotune then sort
out where the message should go by then
you'll probably be a couple miles off the ground chatting it up with the
Wicked Witch of the West and speaking of where the message should go those three
extremely harsh sounding tones you hear at the beginning of a warning work kind
of like those annoying sounds that you'd hear from a dialup modem they sound like
random screeches but they actually contain critical information about where
the warning needs to go they are called same headers and when they reach a TV or
radio station from whichever government Authority issued the warning special EAS
equipment at the station can decode them and automatically forward information to
listeners about what the emergency is which area it's affecting and what time
the warning expires and since same code
specifies specific geographic regions you won't have to worry about getting
that super important show you're watching interrupted by an e warning for
Los Angeles if you're living in New York
the next thing you'll hear is an attention
tone which as you can probably guess is
there to annoy you to get your attention
so hopefully you'll look up from your 3DS for long enough to learn there's a
serial killer on the loose so although many have complained about how harsh the
tone sounds I doubt they're going to be changing that anytime
soon finally comes the voice that sounds
like something out of your nightmares matter of factly delivering all the Gory
details of your impending doom or maybe
it's just a minor flood 20 mil away it can be kind of hard to understand for
some people again the automated EAS
voices were designed to make message dissemination quicker even if that comes
at a creepy cost with that in mind the US's National Weather Service has tried
to improve proed the voice over the years going from something that sounded
suspiciously like old school Microsoft Sam a slow moving storm system will move
across the Northern Great Lakes Region today and tonight to a voice that
actually isn't that terrible anymore
Zone forecast for Central and Southeast Montgomery County for the rest of the
overnight mostly clear well that's cool in all lus but TV
radio please I stream everything why is
the EAS relying on such ancient technology well there are advantages to
using radio to warn people it's a simpler technology than the internet and
is likely to be more reliable if a major
emergency knocks out power and internet service with it you're going to be
pretty happy you've still got that battery powered radio in fact you can
buy same compatible radios that pick up special frequencies that will
automatically broadcast EAS alerts but stay quietly in the corner otherwise but
if you don't want to do that many cellular carriers are now broadcasting
EAS messages directly to smartphones anyway so you won't be left in the dark
if you're just not a TV or radio person
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