New UK Emergency alert system.

[DrV]

I refer the honourable gentleman to my earlier statement...

[Ynot]

3 hours ago, callumb said:

Could be worse! Three users never got the warning. 

Certainly seems to be the case if social media is anything to go by.
My feed has 3 common threads today...

1. EE users complaining they got the alarm early at 14:59

2. Vodafone users complaining they got theirs late at 15:01

3. '3' users complaining they never got it at all...

Saw a couple of comments that despite copious notices and verbal announcements there were at least 2 venues in the West End where punters didn't turn the phones OFF and consequently ended up fishing in handbags and back pockets to scrabble at silencing the noise!! 🙂

I gather that at Drury Lane, Olaf the snowman made a quip, as he was 'lighting a fire' on stage at the time that he'd set off the fire alarm.... 
😄 😄 😄 

[Andrew C]

Not a squeak from mine on O2.  I'm obviously on the "Do Not Save" list.

[sleah]

Vodafone here. I got it at 3:15pm.

[sunray]

I was at a rehearsal and my phone went off (Tesco/O2) I think mine was the only one out of say 15 phones. However it's in a poor signal area and I was up a ladder on stage at the time and the others were at the other end of the hall which may have made a difference.

About  half the others didn't know anything about it.

Edited April 24, 2023 by sunray

[pscandrett]

This thread is the best thing I've found that explains what went on, and why most Three customers were never going to get it.

https://twitter.com/davwheat_/status/1650149573313085441

As I understand it... essentially, your phone polls occasionally to see if there's any emergency thing to show you. If there is, on the next poll it downloads it and displays it. If there isn't, it goes back to sleep. The alert (and 'there's an alert to fetch' message) was 'live' for 20 minutes or so, from 1459-1520, so if you turned your phone on at 1515 then you'd still get the alert, but if you'd not got it by 1520 you were never going to get it at all.

The issue with Three is that they made the whole thing live a single time, so if your 3 phone /happened/ to poll in that short timeframe it would have alerted you. Otherwise, if you missed that one time, you've missed the boat and your phone would stubbornly stay silent in ignorance.

 

Also, it seems that on a previous test scenario, Three dropped the ball then too (with the same problem!).

I found it interesting.

[richardash1981]

Thank you for the detail. Several people outdoors at 3pm had no idea what was going on (but got the alert), my phone (on Three) didn't get it at all.

[ojc123]

On 4/6/2023 at 8:30 PM, bruce said:

Growing up in a rural town in the 70s, before the days of mobile phones and pagers - even phones in the house weren't too common - there was an old air-raid siren on the tower of the town hall. It was controlled from the fire station, about half a mile away, and used to call out the volunteer fire brigade.

It was tested every Monday evening - if we were playing in the area, the firemaster (who lived above the fire station) used to let us press the button....

We had the same in the 60s.  I'd be about 7 or 8 when they showed us a not at all age appropriate 'what to do in the event of a nuclear attack*' film.  This, along with the teacher reassuring us that since we were surrounded by military and intelligence targets then we would be likely to be bombed sooner rather than later, scared the wits out of me. Everytime the siren went off thereafter I fully expected the end of the world, or at least my bit of it.

*The answer was lie in a ditch. (20:28 in the video above.)  In retrospect, standing in the middle of a field and being instantly vapourised seems a better option really.

[sleah]

I've memories of an animated PSV about nuclear attack. Might even be what FGTH sampled for 'Two Tribes'.

Scared the ***p out of me too.

[kerry davies]

Oddly enough despite being closely allied with anti-nuke movements, NCCL, CND, Greenham and Molesworth and being of prime 1950's childhood the bomb never actually scared me. Made me more nihilistic and far less obedient toward the established order but never scared. 

This was a hit when I was 11.  

[Ynot]

8 minutes ago, kerry davies said:

This was a hit when I was 11.  

Followed the link, and despite being familiar with Mr Lehrer, I was immediately reminded of a very different song from Billy Eliot near the finale of the show...

Relevant bit starts around 2:20

VERY poignant bit of the plot, though not related to nuclear annihilation...

[sandall]

I was somewhere in the South China Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having recently read "On the Beach" I was more than a bit concerned that there might not be a home to go back to🙁.

[Junior8]

2 hours ago, sandall said:

I was somewhere in the South China Sea during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Having recently read "On the Beach" I was more than a bit concerned that there might not be a home to go back to🙁.

Yes - well outside the author's usual subject matter but based on the idea that ' the bomber would always get through'. Appropos ojc above we had the 1 in 3 talks when in the VIth form which seemed to merely advise us to take all the doors off make a shelter under the stairs with them and cope with a tin of beans and the radio. The civil servant sent to give this talk seemed to find it as risible as we did. (Especially as none of us actually owned any doors at the time.) 

[paulears]

I really can't see why any emergency system to tell people vital info generated so much bad feeling. Where I live, there were very severe floods in 1953, and so many people lost homes and even a few lives because they didn't not know to move to higher ground. This system to me is just common sense, and even if a few don't get the message, enough will to make it work.

[mnorwood]

I think it's not so much that people don't like the idea of being informed about emergencies, it's that they're sceptical about this (to them: "New") System or those perceived to run it, and/or they don't know enough about it or why it's needed instead of using preexisting systems.

Or to put it another way: at the moment people see it as yet another Government Scheme that Costs The Taxpayer and Inconveniences The General Public.

I would imagine that the first time it is used "for real" in this country will be the point at which most people form their first proper impression of it. If that is a situation where it is seen to be of help and clearly saves lives, then folks will start to think favourable of it. If it is seen to just sow confusion and/or panic, then not so much.