Emergency Alert System Fails. It’s only funny because there wasn’t an emergency.

Human Events ^ | 11-9-11 | John Hayward

[Driftwood1]

Today was the first test of the new Emergency Alert System, which is a centrally controlled version of the Emergency Broadcast System whose tests have been annoying the hell out of people for the better part of fifty years. The idea is to give the President a way to alert the entire populace to a national emergency instantly, by seizing control of all TV and radio communications.

In the event of a nuclear war, large-scale civil unrest, a massive cyber-attack, or a zombie apocalypse, you’ll hear a headache-inducing tone, followed by emergency instructions. Unless we get attacked by an electromagnetic pulse weapon. Then you’ll be alerted to disaster by the collective howl of millions of enraged cell phone users. The EAS tone is less alarming.

The test was a… well, “failure” is such an ugly word. Let’s just say it was a “conditional success.”

[smokingfrog]

[corbe]

Another Trillion or so should fix this /s

[donna]

There is no reason for Washington DC to to speak to individual citizens ever. The job belongs to each state.

[Driftwood1]

lol... that’s cute!!

[DonaldC]

I don’t really see the point with this myself.

[panaxanax]

0bama = Failure at every level!

[bigbob]

Biggest EBS fail since 1971:

http://ebstest.stlmedia.net/

[PLMerite]

This is why tests exist. Rockets, planes, cars, etc. You push the button and see what happens. Then you fix it.

[EGPWS]

The idea is to give the President a way to alert the entire populace to a national emergency instantly, by seizing control of all TV and radio communications.

A requirement now that we have a narcissist in chief.

[Paladin2]

Zere0 needs to be able to impose martial law just before he is swept out’a orifice.

[JimSEA]

Yeah, what is the need? Unless, of course, you want to be able to cut in and control all communications at some future point in time.

[boomop1]

Obama FAILS.

[ixtl]

They were no doubt relying on computers, and as Murphy* says, “To err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer.”

*Of Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

[ml/nj]

I hope this this doesn't turn out the way my town's emergency call system has. The police here can call every land-line at once with a broadcast message. There's at least one message every week. I already recognize when one of these calls is coming in because it's always two calls as I still have two land-lines here and they ring simultaneously. With the recent storm we probably had eight or ten messages last week. I think the last one was about having a Halloween Party at the town pool for the little crumb-crunchers who got cheated out of Halloween this year. There were at least two messages telling us what a great job the town maintenance crew was doing clearing the roads. No more than one in ten of these messages could even remotely be considered emergency information.

ML/NJ

[Paladin2]

Cool. Who knew?

Computers allow one to generate mistakes at a prodigious rate these days.

[Vlad The Inhaler]

The current National Emergency is that there is an undocumented socialist squatting in the White House.

[Driftwood1]

Yeah, like did we really expect it to work???? Lol!!

[mardi59]

At some point in time Odummy will take over everything and now he can let us all know at one time that he intends to be Dictator-N-Chief for life.

He is helping muslims and weakening our country for some reason. I have a nasty feeling we will be finding out why...soon.

[Berlin_Freeper]

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