The Emergency Alert System will be tested at 3.00pm on 7 September
The first one was wild for me. I knew it was happening, but it happened that it happened at the very moment I was on holiday in Welsh Wales, busy navigating my way around a small town. My phone is bluetoothed to my hearing aids, so very abruptly I had a voice shouting inside my head in Welsh. The message was repeated in English, but by that time I’d died of my heart attack, lol.
Here’s hoping the UK does a better job with this than the US.
- Our emergency alerts go off far too often about things that aren’t emergencies.
- And when there is an emergency (like the floods in Texas this week) they don’t bother sending out an alert.
- And if they do bother, people don’t receive an alert because they’ve disabled them due to point 1.
The UK does already use them, and they’re pretty rare and have proven to be effective. Especially during a recent storm Éowyn in Northern Ireland where nobody died. I genuinely believe that it did actually save lives. Before the alert people were like “oh, it’s just a bit of wind”. But after the alert was sent out and their phone screamed at them, they seemed to realise it actually was pretty serious.
Here is every emergency alert ever issued in the UK
I know some conspiracy nuts disable them because they think the government is tracking you or something really stupid
Please don’t disable the alerts just because they’re irritating. They have saved so many lives, even though they fuck up sometimes.
Just, instead of panicking, do a quick internet check if you don’t have other evidence of the danger. You might find that you’re not in the danger zone yet but might be soon if the wind changes or whatever. Then you can monitor the situation.
You can also consider them a message from the Universe to check up on your emergency stuff: How much drinking water and food do you have and is it expired? Do you have a bug-out bag and do the pants in it still fit? What would you use to carry all your regular meds? (Don’t store just a few pills, scoop up all the bottles of what you’re normally using, because it might be awhile before you get refills) Do you have a litterbox and food for your cat, as well as a carrier? What about any important documents, know where they are? And where would you go?
