Hurrah for preparation!

Those Kobe Bryant defense lawyers will stoop to anything.

Watch out for Rosie O'Donnell, she jumped in the pool!

THAT would cause a big tsunami.

We finally get to surf in Colorado!

Tsunami party!

Are they sure it wasn't a warning about a giant fireworks snake?

Oh man this is BAD! Some dumbass hit the wrong button, and its like " well it works! " Ironic that this was done in Colorado for a tsunami, but what if this was in well say my area, Hampton Roads, powered by Surry Nuclear Power plant.

*annoying ass noise* " You need to leave Newport News, Hampton, VA Beach, Norfolf, blah blah blah" *annoying noise*
silence..... " Surry Nuclear Plant has just issued a meltdown warning, please evacuate."

Or what ever pre recorded message they have on those things. hmm that would be a good audioedit theme, would it not?

Anyways, I hear the test sirens, and the EBS shiat all the time, and I am allways awaiting "further information." Just a good damn thing this was in Colorado and tsunami. I do see two side to the consequences to the wrong button pushed in an area that might believe it:
1. Rampant looting, traffic jams, utter chaos.
2. Last day alive sex.

Scary tag, Ironic, but not silly!

I can't wait for that beach front property in Kansas.

Surf must be really farking up.

What year is it in Colorado?

Which is worse: the fact that the mistake was made?

Or: all the really lame jokes the newspaper article makes about it?

"Wilder lamented that he didn't play any music from the Beach Boys or Dick Dale in the wake of the incident..."

"Bob Hendee, manager of the Columbine Market in Gypsum, reported no run on canned goods or ark materials Wednesday.

Thousands of comedy writers out of work in this country...couldn't the Denver Post hire one of them?

Um - who cares?

any farking time,
any farking day,
learn to swim,
see you down in Denver Bay

EatTheWorld You may be on to something there... fake an "end of the world" anouncement then start looking for end of the world sex. Maybe those freaks with the signs that the end is nigh are on to something.

Thanx Mouser....New wallpaper:)

LOLOLO I H4x00R3d 1T h4rD !!!1one!

Why does the weather service feel the need to yell?

Code_Archie ... you owe me a new monitor!

/reaches for squeegee ...

You wer like DUUUDE!....Then you wer like bumber duude!

I think this guy was involved somehow

Maybe it was a new form of advertising for this.
SFW and opens in a new window.

Who wants to bet half the people in that town don't know what a tsunami is, and were expecting torrential rains, since they were thinking "monsoon", even though that's not really even what a monsoon is.

Gojira! Gojira!

EBS has been dead for years now. It's now known as EAS (Emergency Alert System). One of the handy things about EAS is that sends data along with the audio (that's those three little carrier blasts you hear on tests now).

A station can configure the system to automatically immediately relay alerts, or allow the operator to send them at a good time, or to ignore them entirely.

EAS has a lot of good stuff built into it. In theory, the President could make a live broadcast on every station in the country. On a more practical level, a police or safety official could broadcast information about a local emergency. Sadly, I don't think any of the emergency planning groups responsible for figuring this stuff out have put in the effort to make it as useful as it could be.

Christian Bale

I'm thinking that most people know what a tsunami is. And though it may have worried a few children or senile seniors, in the mainscheme, i dont see Colorado's population being that stupid.

It's all Bush's fault!

Hmmm, a three mile high tsunami might do the trick.

Sounds like somebody's been playing with the EAS box. Man those things are neat. Now if only any other radio stations had their EAS boxes set to listen to my old college station back in the day...I could have sent out a tsunami warning from a station that's a couple miles away from the Mississippi. (Note to FCC: I didn't do anything bad. Boy Scout honor.)

M-G
I hate to call it totally useless, but where was it at on September 11, 2001? If there was ever a day it could have been used..

so.. whens the Denver Fark Party ?

Of course it was fake. If it was a real warning for Colorado, well, there's not much point in a warning, since the rest of the world must already be dead. Where ya going to go?

One of my buddies maintained a low-power UHF station here in town (range was only a few miles) and managed to get his hands on the little unit that issues the emergency warnings.

It wasn't hooked up to the transmitter at the time (dammit) but we were able to issue a tsunami warning for Omaha, Nebraska.

Gotta keep an eye on the Platte river you know.

Dr.Knockboots: "so.. whens the Denver Fark Party ?"

I don't know when but it's going to be on a raft floating over downtown.

EatTheWorld

I hate to call it totally useless, but where was it at on September 11, 2001? If there was ever a day it could have been used.

Well, considering about every TV and radio station was covering the events, and no one knew WTF was going on anyway...

The old EBS system used the familiar alert tone. A station in a given area was considered to be an originator, and all the other stations in that area had a receiver tuned to them. You then had some kind of alarm setup, so the operator of the downstream station would check on the alert. If it was just a test, it was logged. If a real emergency, the operator then decides whether the information needs to be relayed or not, and most had the ability to rebroadcast the audio of the originating station. In the EBS days, we'd actually initiate our own alerts based on NWS reports for tornado warnings and such. (You can still initiate an alert with EAS, but it's more complicated.) Anyway, given the nature of the system, EBS wasn't terribly robust. No way to automate the process, a single point of failure, and decisions had to be made as to whether or not the alert impacted the station's coverage area.

In comparison, EAS is a beautiful thing. All stations now monitor at least two others, typically the originating station as before, as well as the local NWS station. The receiver is programmed to ignore alerts that are outside the area you select, or for certain types of alerts. You can also tell it whether to immediately broadcast an alert or delay an alert until a break in programming, all based on the type of alert it is. Really cool is the ability to delay it, but if the operator doesn't resend in a set amount of time, it will automatically do it.

Now, the technical bit - the three bursts you hear at the start of an EAS alert are the message header, repeated three times to help ensure it's received correctly. That contains a decent amount of information - the FIPS code(s) for the areas it applies to, the type of alert, start and stop times, etc. The three short bursts at the end are basically an EOM transmission. In between is the audio portion. If you're set up to automatically relay an alert (and IIRC, a national emergency is always automatically relayed), the audio portion from upstream will be sent out as long as the EOM isn't received. So, if the President needed to tell us to kiss our asses goodbye, a national level EAS event could be triggered. It would take a short amount of time for all stations to get connected, after which an announcement could be made. After which you should have a copy of 'Party at Ground Zero' cued up....

The local aspect is this: the local emergency management agency could have certain frequencies specified that the originating station would have to monitor. Then, in the event of a chemical leak or whatever, they could use that frequency to originate an alert, which would then get sent down the line, but similarly, they could end up directly on the air of all area stations. But this requires a lot of planning and coordination of the emergency management agencies. Given the difficulties I had even finding out which stations we were supposed to monitor, I suspect that most haven't gone through this sort of effort. But the ability is there in every broadcast station.

I should add that the old EBS system was really intended exactly for a kiss your ass goodbye scenario in the form of a nuclear attack. There was even an envelope of authentication codes you would use in the event the authorities called and directed you to initiate an alert. Very cold war.

The EAS was designed to be able to handle the more common local emergencies, which while EBS _could_ do, didn't happen very often.

M-G

thanks. i always wondered why they did away with ebs. thats pretty interesting. seriously.

Perhaps they have a molasses plant in town.

M-G
In theory, the President could make a live broadcast on every station in the country.

Reason #1 Howard Stern and his censorship-conspiracy-theories are full of crap :-).

2004-03-04 10:45:07 PM Muta
Why does the weather service feel the need to yell?

Probably some teletypes in the loop somewhere. They only have uppercase.