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The most obvious example is the Hawaii Nuclear Scare that just happened in January [1]. Obviously it was a false alarm but I would like (or should I say dread)

The most obvious example is the Hawaii Nuclear Scare that just happened in January [1]. Obviously it was a false alarm but I would like (or should I say dread) to be alerted of a crisis of that magnitude the moment it occurs. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_alert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...

orev 8y ago
There are plenty of ways to be notified of breaking news if you so choose to use them. Why should an alert about something that happens in any state have to be broadcast to the whole country with no means of disabling it? What could possibly require every person in the US to need to know about some event immediately?
- fivefive55 8y ago
  Nukes? There are such a thing as nationwide emergencies.
  - gumby 8y ago
    Honestly how could that be actionable in a short timeframe?
    - danielvf 8y ago
      It's about a 30 minute travel time for land-based ICBMs to reach the US from Russia or China. Let's say 10 minutes to get through the chain of command, and 5 minutes to send out the alert, so you might have a 10-15 minute warning. As absolutely mind-boggling as nukes are, I think people today credit them with more destructive force than they really have. For one thing, blast force goes down with the inverse square of of the distance. There's very much a diminishing return to bigger nukes, and the area of total destruction will always be much smaller than the area of sorta-destruction. So if you have a 15 minute warning, you can get away from windows or perhaps go to a basement or subway, There are plenty of ways to drastically increase your odds of survival if you are in the middle-zone of a nuclear strike. Any all out nuclear war is going to have a lot of people die. The purpose of national warnings and preparedness is to just make that number be smaller than it otherwise would be.
      - gumby 8y ago
        There are 330M people in this country. How many of them have any idea what to do if an ICBM is on the way? I would be shocked if the number exceeded 330K. If anyone thought there were a credible thread of nuclear attack they would be taking steps of which a warning system like this would be a late step, not the first one. The local FEMA alert system is a good idea; the last time I personally found it useful was in 1989 (Loma Prieta earthquake) though I hear it works in more dangerous areas (e.g. tornado alley) and am not surprised by that. However here in the Bay Area its link to phones was ruined by spam (pointless interruptions sent to my phone) so I disabled it. This new system is worse. (BTW I wouldn't classify the false missile alert in Hawaii "spam". It was simply an error. But here I got messages that should have been on the news).
        danielvf 8y ago
        There are 20.4 million veterans in the US, so on that basis alone I'd guess a little higher for the number of people who had an idea about what to do.
- lurquer 8y ago
  Zombie Apocalypse. If people don't know to destroy their brains, their numbers can increase geometrically.

orev 8y ago

There are plenty of ways to be notified of breaking news if you so choose to use them. Why should an alert about something that happens in any state have to be broadcast to the whole country with no means of disabling it? What could possibly require every person in the US to need to know about some event immediately?

fivefive55 8y ago
Nukes? There are such a thing as nationwide emergencies.
- gumby 8y ago
  Honestly how could that be actionable in a short timeframe?
  - danielvf 8y ago
    It's about a 30 minute travel time for land-based ICBMs to reach the US from Russia or China. Let's say 10 minutes to get through the chain of command, and 5 minutes to send out the alert, so you might have a 10-15 minute warning. As absolutely mind-boggling as nukes are, I think people today credit them with more destructive force than they really have. For one thing, blast force goes down with the inverse square of of the distance. There's very much a diminishing return to bigger nukes, and the area of total destruction will always be much smaller than the area of sorta-destruction. So if you have a 15 minute warning, you can get away from windows or perhaps go to a basement or subway, There are plenty of ways to drastically increase your odds of survival if you are in the middle-zone of a nuclear strike. Any all out nuclear war is going to have a lot of people die. The purpose of national warnings and preparedness is to just make that number be smaller than it otherwise would be.
    - gumby 8y ago
      There are 330M people in this country. How many of them have any idea what to do if an ICBM is on the way? I would be shocked if the number exceeded 330K. If anyone thought there were a credible thread of nuclear attack they would be taking steps of which a warning system like this would be a late step, not the first one. The local FEMA alert system is a good idea; the last time I personally found it useful was in 1989 (Loma Prieta earthquake) though I hear it works in more dangerous areas (e.g. tornado alley) and am not surprised by that. However here in the Bay Area its link to phones was ruined by spam (pointless interruptions sent to my phone) so I disabled it. This new system is worse. (BTW I wouldn't classify the false missile alert in Hawaii "spam". It was simply an error. But here I got messages that should have been on the news).
      - danielvf 8y ago
        There are 20.4 million veterans in the US, so on that basis alone I'd guess a little higher for the number of people who had an idea about what to do.
lurquer 8y ago
Zombie Apocalypse. If people don't know to destroy their brains, their numbers can increase geometrically.