On Sunday 23 April at 3pm HM Gov will be sending a UK-wide Emergency Alerts test message to all compatible devices – i.e. all things 4G or 5G. When you receive the message, your phone or tablet may vibrate and make a loud siren-like sound for about ten seconds, even if it is set on ‘silent’. An inane message will appear on your screen, trying to stop you from panicking, should you be sufficiently disadvantaged to have missed all the prior hoo-hah ahead of Sunday, or to have paid it no heed for whatever reason.
As this is going to be just a test run ahead of any real emergency – Boris standing for PM again, Record Store Day being cancelled, 30 kilotons heading swiftly for your local area, that sort of thing, it’s just a royal PITA for most people.
Imagine being jolted from your post-prandial slumbers, comatose on your Parker-Knoll Recliner dreaming about Stevie Nicks and what might have been, if only. It might be enough to trigger that final, fatal, massive cardiac event, or at least spill that ill-advised second G&T the size of Wiltshire.
For my part, I’m just going to put my phone inside the microwave at the appointed time and take advantage of its Faraday Cage effect. If it still goes off I’ll just give the bugger 60 seconds at 650 watts. That ought to do it. Can’t be arsed with all this crap – if the big one is en route I am only interested in knowing ahead of time if I can be warned sufficiently far in advance to put some Zeppelin on my big fat Sennheisers at monster volume. What a waste of money! Duck & Cover! Protect & Survive!
How are all my Afterword UK compadres taking this – are you going to delve into the nightmare that is the icon marked ‘Settings’ and tell your phone to shut the f*ck up when the 3 minute warning sounds, or do you think it your civic duty to participate in this vital socially responsible test run? Do tell.
I’ve read that it’s common in other countries. Switching the phone to airplane mode for a short time around 3pm is an easier way of blocking the alarm if you’re that bothered.
I read somewhere that it ignores flight mode.
Which is a bit daft in the event of An Event…how many people in offices etc routinely have theirs on flight mode for meetings etc?
I have mine on “do not disturb” which would let it through. Anyway one person in a room will get it for sure
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/17/domestic-abuse-victims-turn-off-phones-uk-emergency-alert-test
Thanks, G,
Thanks, H,
If only there was some kind of alert to let you know a warning was coming so you could switch your phone off
Clearly I was misinformed.
Please try better next time. This is the INTERNET. You can’t just say “I heard someone say something” and not expect to get EATEN ALIVE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. 🙂
We have had this in Ontario for a while. Not just to be used for nuclear oblivion, but also extreme weather, earthquake warnings etc. We had a derecho (see below) last year and received a warning ahead of time, this may have saved a friend’s life as he sought shelter just before a large tree fell on the chair he had been sitting on outside. We also get “amber” alerts for things like killer on the loose or a child being absconded, so pretty useful I think. you probably should indeed check that your phone receives the alert.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derecho
Fucking state of the world!
It used to be that if there was a killer on the loose you only had to turn on the TV or radio to be instantly informed of the fact.
According to most movies & tv shows: you would get a phone call from a friend telling you to turn on your tv & at that exact moment the newsreader would tell you about the killer. Having heard the headline, you’d turn off the tv.
They didn’t use it in this case in 2020 and 22 people died. May not have changed anything, but who knows? Possibly worth a little inconvenience to people having their phones buzz for a few seconds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nova_Scotia_attacks
I saw a post how to turn it off from disturbing your sleep etc. However I don’t seem to find the method on my tablet, I shall just turn off my tablet as I shall hopefully at that time be relaxing in the sauna and I have no wish to be jolted from my reverie.
Here’s Bert the Turtle.
Should have done an Emergency Alert Test in April 2016…
“You do know that if we leave the E.U….”
Wouldn’t have done much good as the referendum didn’t take place until June 23rd
Would have done a lot of good as, in an election, people don’t get to know there’s an election on the “actual” day. Unless they’re thick.
That’s what all that campaigning is all about.
Please, please, please, tell me your don’t have a vote in the next election.
On St George’s Day? Shakespeare’s Birthday? Do the fools have no idea what martial uprising will stir from the shires of old England? Arthur will arise! The ley lines will align! Even the Brecon Beacons will burn forth with a Phoenix flame summoning all beating hearts to respond!
Stirring stuff, Sir Salwarpe.
But aren’t the (soon to be renamed) Brecon Beacons
actually in Wales?
Shhh! Need to know basis only.
Bannau Brycheiniog is Cymru Sal.
Dim ond unwaith y dywedaf hyn. Aros am yr arwyddion!
(They can be seen from the Malvern hills).
You are Rene Artois and I claim my five francs.
I can be René, si tu seras Edith Melba.
I do get the idea but I struggle to think of single occasion in the UK that it would have been of use.
I can. A few years ago, there was severe flooding near us in Somerset. A village nearby largely went under. Two of the roads out of our village were under water. We were keeping track of what was going on via multiple sources; an official one would have added to the total.
You can turn off these messages deep in the settings of your phone.
From my social media, I note that it might be a good idea if you are in a situation where you have hidden a phone in your house – perhaps you are subject to domestic abuse – that you turn it off, in case it sounds the alarm from where you’ve hidden it.
I saw an announcement about this and I assumed it was a prank!
I sympathise with your irritation about this, Vulpes, and was amused by your comments.
But I do think @Dai is right. This kind of use of technology can be a real life saver.
An example, which I’m sure you’ll be familiar with.
We hire a car in the summer and on our long journey to Öland listen to music or radio programmes. Sometimes there will be a sudden newsflash about a sudden event which can effect road safety. A multiple vehicle pile-up, icy road surfaces, moose rampaging on the E22. I’m certain you have this in the UK, Oz, NZ etc.
So basically, HM Gov have managed to present something useful in a way that has just pissed people off. Now there’s a surprise.
Dramatic reconstruction of the event that sparked Moose’s roadside rampage:
@Kaisfatdad not a surprise from this ‘government’
We have a strict MPED policy on the railway. Phones must be off when the cab is active. No fitbits. No tablets in receipt of signals. No distractions.
I’ve checked my shift for Sunday and, while I could leave my own phone in my locker, it won’t help much. Just as I am delicately drawing up to the buffers at Wigan North Western, every fucker on the train is going to have a phone screaming blue murder at me.
Thanks for that.
My other half has a shift at the hospital on Sunday. As it happens when she works on Sundays she’s in ‘the bunker’, as they call the central pharmacy, rather that out on the wards, but it could get noisy in there.
Lasts about 5 seconds
Sneakily, I managed to arrive early. Yes, that’s right, my train arrived early.
No doubt the aliens who have been monitoring us for several decades from behind a curtain of distorted light close to the Moon will be aware of this and launch their invasion at 2.58, so when the government triggers the alert no-one will take any notice and they will meet no resistance.
Take me to your leader; they must be better than the ones we currently have.
I experienced one in the USA a couple of years back. It as a weather warning – it was a bit of pain in the arse as it interrupted what so was listening to but I suppose does have som civic purpose.
I experienced one in the USA a couple of years back. It as a weather warning – it was a bit of a pain in the arse as it interrupted what I was listening to but I suppose does have some civic purpose.
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
@SteveT is posting double posts! Clear your browser cache!
Make your way to a safe space, turn off your device and log back in again.
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
A good idea in theory but it depends on how it’s used in practice.
Warnings of floods, tornados, toxic air/water incidents, nuclear attacks/accidents are obvious things it would be good to be warned about.
Use by a malevolent government to stir things up for their ends is obviously a thing to be guarded against.
Also over-use in trivial situations will lead to people ignoring warnings of real hazards when they occur.
Messages about floods, storms, traffic accidents etc are localised to the area affected. Here they are sent (I believe) by the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket). The police and emergency services probably also have the possibility to inform the public in the case of a major event.
The “government” shouldn’t be sending messages! They should be governing and taking care of the interests of the nation. Fat chance of that these days!
Does anyone know how to send them?
How about “The home secretary is about to introduce a migration bill which is incompatible with international law – protest!”, that sort of thing?
Now you’re talking. I’ve switched my phone back on and taken it out of the microwave. When’s the riot, and where’s the demo?
I doubt it. My phone is not ‘smart’ and lives in my underwear drawer when not in active service as a pocket public phone box. They can bugger off with their pointless Orwellian arsewitterations.
Pretty much my thoughts too, @Rob-C.
See you down the Faraday Cage Arms for a pint of Old Luddite on Sunday afternoon.
I’m with you 2 chaps.
I don’t subscribe to ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ malarkey holding everything the state does as bad – pretty fond of the NHS & education personally- but this crap strikes me as huge intrusive overreach.
I honestly can’t fathom a single way that it could be practically useful in the UK.
We’ve had 2 hurricanes in 500 years, nobody that freezes to death would be remotely served by such an alert & if Putin or the PRC opt to nuke us, it’s over.
It smacks of an arsehole minister being seduced by a slick presentation & concluding ‘we need this thing’.
We don’t.
The only positive I’ve taken is to glean how to disable the alerts on my phone, which I’ve done.
Wow. Massive overreaction. It may not ever be necessary to use it, but the fact it can be used and is of only minor inonvenience to everybody to test it is not necessarily a symptom of a fascist state or whatever you think you guys are living in. I hope none of you ever have a child absconded or an extreme weather event heading your way. Climate change means these things will happen way more often than every few hundred years
Horseshit.
Let’s not get into whether the UK is sliding towards Fascism, that’s another topic, the salient point is, it’s f*cking pointless.
There is NO conceivable weather event in the UK that merits the existence of such a system.
People with smart phones all have weather apps for floods & storms and if a child is abducted then localised amber & red police alerts that already exist may potentially assist, but this facility would be pointless & possibly counterproductive in such a scenario.
What isn’t required is some Westminster tool with delusions of grandeur giving the green light to such a system.
No Tsunami is going to occur, & Russian paras are not about to rain from the sky, but somewhere an official is getting a semi at the thought of being omnipotent.
Of course, if I’m swept up in a Twister or struck dead by an ice storm as a result of my personal negligence, I’ll happy eat my (presumably tinfoil) hat.
Charming. Not horseshit. Like I said, hopefully it will never be used. Those getting so worked up about it sound like the US conspiracy theorists who retreat from society, go off the grid and get heavily armed.
Maybe it is pointless but it is not affecting any anybody’s liberty as far as I can see
I’m dubious about it’s potential for misuse by politicians who want a distraction from their misbehaviour, but apart from that I think used as it’s intended it could be useful. Some of the more extreme negative reactions so far seen are rather ludicrous.
…and there it is – the assumption that if you deride it you’re a John Bircher, when in fact nobody advocating it has so far shown a single practical reason for its existence.
‘It might come in useful’ is not a reason for having anything, especially when you can’t cite what it actually might be *practically* used for, & I haven’t yet seen ONE realistic application put forward. We don’t even have decent fleets of snow ploughs in the UK although we know it *will* definitely crap down every few years because it’s not deemed worth it but a system for ‘warning’ the public that isn’t needed for some intangible threat is a sensible idea?
‘We’ve got the tech so we want to use it’ is as close as I’ve seen so far.
If anybody can actually suggest a concrete, practical use (in the UK) I’m happy to listen.
Major earthquake, Jurassic enclosure break out, or UFO invasion perhaps?
It’s dumb, but we’re lumbered with it & are doubtless paying for it ourselves, which could be a metaphor for lots of aspects of the UK these days.
Peace.
Am i the only AWer who hates terms like “extreme weather events” or, even more egregiously, “emergency situations”.
Used to replace easily understandable terms (e.g. heavy snowfall”), the former uses more words to give you less information.
Taking twice as long to say as good old vanilla “emergency”, the latter is just bureaucratese on steroids
I’ll agree that “extreme weather events” has a rather bureaucratic ring to it @jaygee, but if you want a generic term that refers to a variety of different forms of extreme weather: tidal waves, typhoons, drought, flooding, coldwaves etc, it could be quite useful.
The UK does not seem to experience so much extreme weather. By contrast, in Canada, I believe that the winter temperatures go down to minus 40 and in the summer it’s up to 40 degrees. Extreme weather events all year round!
But why not just say – for example – “extreme heat”, “torrential rain”, “blizzards” – gives you more information with which to prepare in fewer words
We have had 2 major power outages in last year, the “derecho” last May where some were without power for weeks and the an ice storm a couple of weeks ago. There was also a major weather event last Christmas Eve with snow and wind meaning many accidents and subsequent highway closures (and many flight cancellations) on one of the busiest days of travel. So even in Canada these things are happening more and more often. People in the UK may smugly think “it can’t happen here”, but times are changing
I have the sense that the UK has always been overly conservative when it comes to change, more so than other countries where things like these warning systems are commonplace. In Sweden you hear a siren if there is a crisis. You are to go indoors and shut the windows. Listen to the state radio or turn on TV to see what’s happening. Also you can get a text. It is often a local event like a big fire giving off harmful, toxic smoke. With the developments with Russia and also with climate change, these systems can be needed more than ever. In reality it’s just a test siren once a month at a set time.
“ Are we doing Stonehenge tonight?”
If Rupert Murdoch gets to be in control of this system, there’ll be an alert every time Jeremy Corbyn or Megan Markle leave their homes.
The technology for Emergency Alerts was built into the 4G and 5G phone systems when they came onstream and into the phones that use them. Other countries already use/misuse Emergency Alerts.
Yes, this is basically just a test of the 4G/5G version of what was already installed, in a less functional form, based upon the use of the SMS tech that came with GSM phones back in the day.
A few posters seem to think there’s been unecessary frothing over this, while the OP was just riffing on the nuisance of having to remember to switch the damn thing off in order to avoid getting an unwelcome surprise at 3pm – less than 2 hours away as I write – on a Sunday afternoon. Calm down folks.
Sunday afternoons are, after all, sacrosanct, or should be. Time for falling asleep on the sofa after a huge lunch, snoozing through another viewing of a John Wayne western, or slowly metabolising that half bottle of decent claret you managed to scarf down while gardening all morning.
Should have scheduled it for 8:05am Monday to catch out all the workers not quite getting into work on time.
And also the ones who’ve sneaked off to the office toilets to glug down a Red Bull and tame their hangovers.
Well mine didn’t go off anyway.
Am I doomed?
Are you on the network Three? Apparently there was some cock up with them, so I guess in the event of the apocalypse they will either be spared or not get the same notice of their imminent evaporation as the rest of us.
No, Vodafone, on a Google Pixel.
Never mind, I don’t feel I’m missing out.
That why they test it first. When they did it here not all got it initially
Well it arrived just as I was struggling my way through a labyrinthine diversion in Ashford, along with hundreds of trucks, because the M20 was closed. Didn’t improve my mood one bit. On the plus side, I didn’t turn into a triple-vaxxed zombie as predicted by Twitter fruitcakes. Or did I…?
Mine didn’t go off. Was it just 4G and 5G SIMs then? I only have a dumb phone with buttons that I use as my ‘actual phone’ (calls and texting and that), and I don’t have a SIM in my smartphone (I just connect to WiFi where available). I don’t have a data contract.
I’m like Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State. Offgrid, yo!
Ian McNabb thinks it’s a conspiracy. Or something. So there you go. What a shame.
He went through the looking glass over Covid, and it seems that once you accept one conspiracy theory you get a bunch of others free as a package deal.
There’s a term for that phenomenon, @Gatz:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crank_magnetism
Although no word from the bellend on when he’s actually going to release Head Like A Rock on vinyl. Priorities…
It’s a shame as i like the Icies and a decent chunk of his music but still and all.
Just received mine by semaphore.
That was your next-door neighbour, shaking his fists at you for playing your music too loud.
Turns out that the test contract was awarded via Fujitsu to Infosys, the Indian tech company founded by none other than Sunak’s father-in-law, N.R. Narayana Murthy. He is still Chairman Emeritus. Sunak’s mother-in-law is chair of the Infosys Foundation.
Complete coincidence, I’m sure.
I didn’t get one. I suspect it’s because the government recognise the threat I pose to the status quo and are tracking my movements via more bespoke means.
Or maybe because the 4G signal at my house is shite.
One of the two.
Mine just said “To all True and Loyal Patriots. This message is only being sent to those who will not be arrested during the King’s uprising which starts on Saturday.
Do not worry you have nothing to fear. Ignore the fools who think they have only been sent a test. We know now how to find them.”
Did others get a different message?
LEAKED INFO JUST IN:
The Royal Communications Office is scheduling a further ‘Emergency Alert’ for the day of the Coronation, to co-incide with the commencement of the cull. This second one, directed to those who WILL be arrested during the King’s uprising, is different.
Instead of being noisy and limited to a few seconds, the second one will be silent but will last for 48 hours, effectively rendering the mobile phone networks unusable while the non-patriots are rounded up and flown to Rwanda.
Mine came through the telly – gave me a start, I can tell you…