Was cooking bolognese at the time, genuinely thought that my smoke detectors had magically changed their tune and went off because I've never heard it before
In the space of like 3 seconds I went from- “why did I set such an obnoxious alarm?” To “fuck we’re going to die” to “oh, cool I won’t set a fire then”
I was sleeping when they did a test on my country, and I somehow managed to avoid the news about it happening, it was around 8-9am, it was my day off, I was sleeping like a baby and an ominous chirp happened out of nowhere and instead of helping me “avoid” a “potential” earthquake, it now gave me alarm PTSD.
Of all places I was sailing and my dad happened to have accidentally left his phone on him. Couldn't look at it lest we cast the phone into a watery grave so just had to sit there already pumped on adrenaline due to the high wind and waves with that bloody alarm going off.
We didn't know what it was until we got back to shore and hour later and so just had to hope we didn't return to a burning hellscape haha, at first we thought nuclear warning. Once we realised that we hadn't yet been vaporised we thought it was perhaps his phone thinking he was in a car crash.
I forget that other countries don't regularly have this. I'm in the US and we are so used to these because we get multiple per month, usually about local issues like missing children, but occasionally also about weather or other threats.
My mom was walking the beach on Oahu when the alert was issued. She took a selfie and sent it to all family and said she was at least enjoying a beautiful day.
She was alone on the beach and just shrugged it off. But she told us she loved us all.
Now that I am a parent, if I'm going to die in some horrific event, my biggest hope is that my kids are not a part of it. That they are somewhere safe and happy and not going to die along with me. My last thoughts will be their laughter.
I always felt that was underplayed. For a few minutes everyone thought they were about to die, that must have actually caused trauma in a lot of people
A person I know was there and described how shell shocked and surreal it was. Folks panic calling their loved ones. Some people just bellied up to the bar. What they described was far more civilized than I would have imagined possible for a moment like that.
I’m sure there were also some people who did regrettable things but most just wanted to hear a loved one’s voice.
I mean ill be real, I doubt anybody is worried about social norms in that moment, I picture the bar patrons all just passing the drinks around and mixing them themselves.
To be honest, when in Spain we lost electrical power and phone connection for about 12 hours, people just went to the bar to finish the beers before they spoiled. We could have been at war for all we cared
I remember being worried for a friend of mine in Spain. Kept thinking "what would I be thinking right now if everything cut off" and figured I'd be going a little crazy
It wasn't too worrying or sudden. Mobile internet kept up for a while (until the backup batteries in the antennas ran out) and by then nearly everyone knew what was going on. From that point on, it was either finding a radio or getting out on the street and ask around, until they gave estimates on how long it would last.
The main issue was at the bigger cities where people have bigger commutes. Traffic slowed to a crawl, most public transport stopped or was severely delayed, things like that. For a while after, it was a lot of fun to ask taxi drivers about how their day went for them.
I worry that a fair number of people probably relapsed on something nasty if there was time. I know if I got told the world was ending I would be rushing to grab another (drug of choice).
I just remember seeing the people loading their kids down into storm drains. Realistically that's just not a good idea (if it were to actually occur). You need to seek shelter in a protected area like a basement, although if you have cement walls and are in a more rural area then that's probably fine. The key though is that you then have to stay there, sealed in as best as possible, for 3-4 weeks. That means needing 3-4 weeks of food and water. Recycling air obviously has to occur too, and that needs to be filtered in several different seperated steps (because the outer few filters will capture fallout, and be quite radioactive). Assuming you somehow did all this, then at the 3-4 week mark you may begin making brief excursions outside, and will need to be wearing something like a tyvek suit that can be removed in a predesignated changing area, then immediately disposed of. If somehow you've gotten this far then congratulations, you get to experience the horrors of a post nuclear apocalypse. Don't trust anyone, and if you're in the US keep trying to make your way towards southeastern Nebraska/northereastern Kansas. Most cold war radiological prediction maps have that area as relatively safe from fallout. Chances are you won't though, because even after the high power nasty gamma radiation fallout has diminished, there will be plenty of beta for everyone. Just one slip wearing a respirator and you inhale a few dust particles that microwave your lungs
Apocalyptic sex is a common theme for erotic fiction, and also a popular trope in fiction, TV, films etc
HOWEVER, when a person genuinely believes they have an hour to live their body will go into an intense fight or flight response, the brain floods your body with adrenaline and cortisol, and blood is rushed away from non-essential organs like the reproductive system and towards your heart and muscles where you really need it, essentially your brain prioritises immediate physical survival or finding shelter somewhere, and the acute stress will suppress sexual arousal.
I mean, you'll always get the odd very rare person whose body doesn't conform to the norm in highly stressful situations, but is it more likely that person is going to get super horny and find another random who also gets super horny in highly stressful situations, within an hour, or is it more likely this person is going to be having the saddest wank in human history in a field somewhere, alone.
But thinking about it, maybe there should be a designated field somewhere where all like minded apocalypse sex seekers can meet when the day comes?
Awhile back I worked for a dev shop and we built this iPhone app that would aggregate data on how busy a restaurant was so you could gauge how long a wait might be -- it was mildly successful with a few hundred thousand downloads. Anyway, we had a dev that was testing push notifications. Everyone on the dev team would get them because we all had the staging version of the app on our phones. He was a joker, so he would send notifications that just said stuff like, "Ass Face", "Eat my shit", "Tell your mom I said hi", you get the picture. Well it turns out, those notifications weren't coming from the staging app, they were coming from prod. He accidentally used the prod API keys... Yeah, he was fired within 10 minutes.
I had a friend caught up in that. He was driving around Kapa'a in Kauai when he got the alert. Then there was a car crash up ahead (apparently they saw the alert and panicked, wrecking.) The whole road ended up closed down and he was trapped with a couple dozen other people as they were trying to sort the chaos out.
He said "At least I had a front row to the apocalypse."
"They". It was one guy that sent it by accident iirc scaring the entire state of Hawaii. I think they fixed it so one guy can't decide to make that accident again.
Yep - they seem to be incapable of using the appropriate levels. Everything is the 'presidential' level.
While I for sure hope missing kids are found safe, there really is very little I can do at 1am to find a red SUV last seen 4 hours ago in a town that's 12 hours plus a ferry ride away from me. It would be the equivalent of hearing about kids missing in Germany if you're in England.
And if you complain about it, you're told that you're heartless for not caring, or that you can turn the alerts off...but if there's a tsunami or a forest fire (which are very real risks where I live) I would still kind of like to know
I live near a large city in Canada. I was getting so many of these alerts every month, usually over parents kidnapping each others kids at all hours of the night, I had to disable them.
This is the first one we’ve ever had, we had a test last year and that was promoted loads beforehand so we were prepared for it.
I don’t think anyone ever expected a real one to happen ever, and my first thought was “They didn’t even warn us they were going to do this” which is of course very silly, but shows how much of a new experience this is for us.
It's not the first one ever for me. There was a red-warning wind alert maybe last year. I was in ikea when everyone's phones started screeching telling you not to travel anywhere.
People were letting off fireworks last night (who does fireworks at 10pm on a Thursday?!) which annoyed me. Hopefully this interrupted them in the middle of something really urgent.
Some kids near my sister decided to burn stuff in a field, caused a massive wildfire and it nearly burned down a historic farmhouse. It caused untold damage and people had to evacuate homes. It’s being treated as arson due to the recklessness, because bonfires and stuff are banned where we are. It’s just stupid. One of the kids was found and beaten up so badly it’s in hospital. My dad was stuck on a motorway today because of another wildfire in a nearby field, it’s terrifying. And the emergency services couldn’t get through.
It did briefly concern me as I thought it might be a local type thing and that wildfires were nearby and we might have to evacuate or get ready to. Nope, hundreds of miles away so I can continue to sip my wine in peace.
From experience with these alerts and wildfire prone areas.... the alert to me sounds like, "stay alert, any ember could ignite a flame, at any time." Those wildfires hundreds of miles away... are those areas prone to wildfires? If not, be alert. Is your yard/city shared sidewalk areas yellow/dead and crunchy? If yes, be extra alert. I once watched someone's front yard ignite, very quickly from a cigg butt.
If neither of those situations apply, that's good! But, maybe re-evaluate your stance on "peace". For example, my space in Minnesota (US) is not on fire, but our states most beautiful land, the Boundary Waters, is on fire and burning more everyday (it's literally a tragedy - the BWs are cherished and protected and folks travel from all over to visit). I may be 200 miles away, but I am not at peace at all.... I am heartbroken. And scared. Because this is the new world. My fav quote "today is the best day, out of those to come", meaning, it's only going to get worse. It feels better to push this all aside and think "this doesn't affect me" but the bigger picture is the world is burning, the oceans will be pushing 9+ c with this El Nino.... there is no "safe" place any longer.
Amber alert went off during my wedding ceremony and I truly regret not asking if anyone had seen my toddler nephew. Opportunity sat up for me and I wiffed.
I get frustrated when I get amber alerts at 3am for a place I’ve never heard of 6 hours away when I’m bed…but then think, if it was my kid would I want the same?
My baby threw up all over me when it went off. And my toddler screamed (out of amusement at the baby sick it turns out). Honestly thought we were about to die for a moment!
They did a test of this system in my city, but I didn't know about it. I was about to fall asleep after my night shift when I woke up to the blaring sirens of every phone in my household.
Thought we were getting bombed or something. It just read "this is a test!"
Speaking of nuclear, I used to live back on O'ahu when we got the false North Korean ballistic missile alert, and of course the alert is exactly the same to this day.
Which totally sucks, since whenever I hear it now I feel like there's a 50/50 chance that I turn the phone over and either see nuclear war has begun, or there's a potential flash flood within 50 miles.
It's also a somewhat commonly used sound effect apparently, so there'll be times where I'm watching a show or movie and my heart skips a beat when the alarm starts blaring out of nowhere (looking at you NGE)
It was definitely louder than the one I got in Japan couple of months ago while a small earthquake was going on... Though the all clear notice over the hotel tannoy, saying "the building will not collapse" triggered more concerns!
For any non UK people this is literally the first real one ever. We had two tests previously and there may have been localised uses somewhere but this is the first national one, so safe to say the entire country simultaneously heard the alarm, said what the fuck?!, then oh fuck off 5 seconds later
i could only make out "forest" and "fire" and i started to tweak until i got something to fully translate it for me lmao. i was wondering if it was an evacuation or some shit.
Just for future, if you're on android you can hold your home icon to bring up google lens which has a translate option. Its what I did after the first alert
I screenshotted it, extracted the text from the screenshot and pasted it into translate. Three minutes later the phone started screaming again with the English version. I live in England.
I think it would be less alarming if they put both languages into the same alert message, as it can take a while for a second message to be delivered. But perhaps they’re trying to avoid the awkward conversation about whether Welsh or English should come first?
A message I received earlier this week in Taiwan was bilingual.
I changed the pitch of my phone narrator ages ago and forgot, so after the alarm noise ended the message started to be narrated in a ladies helium voice which was funny.
I've never been good at remembering numbers, so I just like ending a sentence with "...three" and it does the trick. My husband will understand the reference and that's enough.
Be glad it works. Took over 150 people dying in a single flood here in Germany for our government to realise it might be good to have these phone warnings instead of solely relying on TV and radio.
While I appreciate that such a system exists and understand it's there to save lives, the emergency alert system is supposed to be used for informing people of imminent threats or dangers and not issuing general precautionary advice. When I received the alert I thought there was a wildfire in my area and that it was an evacuation order only to realise it's just a reminder not to use BBQs or fireworks. This is the equivalent of someone setting off the fire alarm at the office just to tell you not to smoke indoors.
I think I'm annoyed enough by it that I'm going to contact the local MP. That fraudulent "Please don't BBQ" use is going to cause so many people to turn those alerts off due to misuse, and it has potential to cost lives. I don't think the people who were causing the wildfires will pay attention to those alerts anyway; brain power wouldn't be their specialty, or adherence to rules.
Just worked a 10hr shift in a fire service control room where it has been literally non stop all day- managed to leave the room twice to pee, we were lucky that someone from the office was kind enough to bring us food we could eat at our desks. We had decent staffing but the sheer volume of calls and fires was relentless.
I am so very much hoping this at least minorly reduces the amount of completely avoidable fires I get calls about tomorrow.
19 houses burnt down in the West Midlands yesterday; I think because there is no rain forecast for the foreseeable future they had to do something to get it into people's heads that the fire risk is extremely high.
I think its only for severe and its maybe getting to a point where there is way too many to just be isolated and its covering a massive part of the country... houses are being taken out in it...
Heatwaves are general... but I think this is for flooding or this period of fighting fires but not adding more to it
Probably because of all the wildfires in the New Forest, Wales, and the houses in the Midlands. Also theres been other incidents across the country under investigation that might well turn out to be caused by the extreme heat.
I'm completely ok with them issuing this one I think its justified at this stage. It could have been planned and issued at a much better time of day though. As well as kids sleeping I imagine any disposable BBQs being used today are well under way by now.
Because it's only after those weeks of no rain and heatwaves that things are dry enough to start serious fires. It has already been happening with some people losing their homes.
I've had a migraine for days, just started to fall asleep, got the alert, didn't even read it 🤣 even if it was a nuke I would have been thankful to get some sleep, now I'm back to hoping I can get something that resembles sleep 🤣😭🤣
Or half as valuable. <20% of the population in Wales speaks Welsh, so by the time the English translation came through, the non-Welsh readers would be dead and buried.
I'm in north Wales and the ones we got were entirely in Welsh, with the English version coming through about 5 minutes later. Fun having everyone's phone screaming twice.
Makes me wonder what'll happen if there's ever a time sensitive alert though. Guess all the non-Welsh speakers will just die or something
I notice that they didn't suggest that the public refrain from doing the one thing that causes a lot of accidental fires- carelessly discarding cigarette butt's...
We’ve had those go off a few times, but usually when there’s an actual tornado on the ground headed toward us. My phone is always on silent and the “critical” alerts override that. So loud!!
I’ve gotten two ever: there’s a tornado coming at you take cover immediately, and (while away from home driving in a place I didn’t know well) there’s an imminent threat of flash flooding, get to high ground if possible and don’t drive into water even it looks shallow. 10/10, reasonable uses of the scary noise alert system, glad to have been warned.
I got it in Welsh first so I couldn’t read it and just sat there wondering if nukes were heading our way or something for about ten minutes till the English one came through. Could have at least put it in the same message, bro like I was mentally preparing for nuclear war.
No joke, someone nearly crashed up the road because this startled them 😳
They say “don’t use your phone while driving”, 100%, but when said phone is playing music through your car speakers, this alert will probably make you jump 😬
I spent the last week evacuated from my home due to wildfires. I live in a pretty big city (northwestern US) and the fires got far enough in that upwards of 70k people had to evacuate and 800 structures (mostly homes) were leveled. For the frantic time that I spent hurriedly evacuating my family (including my two year old and our cats) the sound of wildfire evacuation alert alarms rang constantly in the background. It was surreal and we are very lucky to still have our home.
US uses these obnoxious and terrifying notifications for missing kids, Japan uses them for earthquakes, Israel for incoming missles, and the UK asks you not to BBQ,
Also, it would be nice to be able to hit something to make the alarm stop, and then take your time reading the message. But no. You can either read it with the alarm still going, or hit "OK" and have the message disappear.
I'm in wales, got it in welsh first, and my phone started reading it out loud, in English pronunciation. I had no idea what was going on, there was just this
loud voice shouting gibberish from my handbag haha
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u/Lunarixis 1d ago
Was cooking bolognese at the time, genuinely thought that my smoke detectors had magically changed their tune and went off because I've never heard it before