Right here and now? Nowhere. In the next 2-3 years? Well, Belarus, Ukraine and several nations around the Caspian sea have some akward situations that might escalate into something big, especially now that U.S. focus is on domestic matters and others (including the EU) might try to expand their zones of influence.
In 5-10 years time, a lot could happen, depending on how the political and financial situations develop for the next year or so. There's a lot of tension right now, and worst case scenario after Brexit and COVID could mean prolonged financial difficulties that result in social unrest, and once you reach that point there's a lot of stuff that can go down-hill very fast.
The probability is low, of course, but the possibility is there.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, and the Greece/Turkey situation that a sibling comment mentioned is an eternal source of fun. Also, anything happening in the Near-East, like Lebanon, Syria and Israel has a potential to affect Europe and things turn quickly over there.
Apart from the obvious [1], you may have noticed Lukashenko's repeated claims that NATO is threatening Belarus [2].
A war of convenience, started to justify a Russian military intervention in the country, could easily get out of hand due to the sensitivity of the region, in particular the Suwalki gap [3].
Countries around the area, including neutral Sweden, have been ratcheting up their military preparedness to that possibility [4].
Possibility? Several places, in roughly decreasing order of likelihood by my estimation:
* Russia v... well, just about anyone else. Russia has made it clear that they consider a large part of Eastern Europe to be their sphere of influence, and have twice this century (Georgia and Ukraine, the latter mostly undeclared) going to war to prevent "the West" from expanding influence.
* Turkey v Greece and/or Cyprus. Discovery of gas in the eastern Mediterranean has meant that delineating EEZ boundaries there is critical, and especially given the fact that Greece owns a lot of islands just off Turkey's coast, there is an awfully high chance of flashpoints. Furthermore, there is a frozen conflict on the island of Cyprus itself that still poses risks for conflict.
* Balkan War #i-don't-even-know-anymore. The place has long-lasting political antipathy between different countries that provoked two major periods of war (the Balkan Wars that culminated in World War I, and the very messy breakup of Yugoslavia). Serbia hasn't admitted that Kosovo is lost to it, and Bosnia is a fractious country that holds itself together only through a convoluted power structure that hasn't healed the wounds of the Yugoslav Wars. Reignition of war here definitely remains a possibility.
* Civil war in Spain, Italy, or Britain [including a war between Britain and Ireland over Northern Ireland]. To be clear, I'm really scraping the barrel here: this is a war I consider possible, but extremely improbable. These countries have strong, persistent separatist movements--and national governments that are equally persistent in quashing them. It's possible, in exactly the wrong circumstances, that everyone ends up making moves that create a dispute that is only resolved by a war.
* Don't forget the possibility of an external regional conflict escalating into a world war, much as what happened in World War I. This is largely a rehash of the first option, though, since that's the only great power alliance breakdown that could result in this situation.
Note that you asked where it's a possibility, not where it is likely.
Anywhere so called social hot-spots exist. Mostly concentrated around social/public housing projects, where people of different ethnicity/with migrantic background concentrate and organized (drug) criminality flourishes.
The No-Go zones, expanding and overwhelming law enforcement.
Some place(s) in Sweden come to mind, where they even have an App to rate the loudness of explosions, caused by turf wars of competing groups.
This is total nonsense. E.g. in The Netherlands we have had tests every first Monday of the month, since I can't remember how long (I am 37 now), with the exception of 1997-2003 (when it was done once a year).
Tests like this have been conducted on smaller scale in the past, either on Landkreis (county) level or state level. Some towns even test their fire sirens once per month. What makes this newsworthy is that it is conducted "nationwide". Beside that, it's not such a special thing.
As someone who lives in The Netherlands I was kind of confused by this post as well. We have a monthly nationwide test of our emergency warning sirens and every so often the cell broadcast system is tested as well. I thought every/most countries did that?
They still test the sirens every month. The loudness is tuned to mostly alert people who are outside -- the expected action on hearing the siren is going inside anyways.
Meh, the sirens are tested here twice a year. This is the case in many areas. Where my parents live, they are tested every 3 months.
More interestingly, the federal government is realizing that it may have been a mistake to dismantle the sirens in many areas after the Cold War ended, mainly because things likes TV, radio or app messages cannot warn people at night, when their devices are off. I have heard of 3 possible fixes that are discussed:
a) build more sirens again
b) use the mandatory smoke detectors in every home for a warning system
c) use car alarms or car horns
It would be interesting to see how b) and c) are implemented without any concerns regarding security or potential for misuse.
Your are right, that a lot of cities are doing it regulary. The interessting point here is, that there are cities that have no sirens anymore due to the removal after the cold war. So such a nationwide test will help to check the efficiency and to modernize/rebuild the system where needed.
Do the mandatory smoke alarms already have some 'smart' capabilities with a communication network, or are they considering using them because they are mandatory, and the 'smart' implementation would come later?
Berlin doesn't use sirens, so that part was to be expected. The latter... maybe also to be expected (government app...), but that was supposed to alert. Guess that's why we need to run tests...
Yeah, absolutely nothing happened. Also no cell broadcast. Yeah well, I guess Berlin doesn't really matter, it's not like it's the freaking capital or something...
There's no emergency CB system in Germany <facepalm> You have to install the app (which might not work anyway - of my colleagues who had it installed, at least one got no warning).
Correction to the article: the annual test day will be the second Thursday in September, not always the tenth.
I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used. Surely many people don't have the app installed? I'd never heard of it and I've lived in this country the whole time it's been available.
Even if you had heard of it, it's not reliable due to being a normal app. It's affected by energy saving settings, DND etc. I've had it installed for a while but the time when you actually get notified varies a lot between people, depending on their phone's behaviour.
Cell Broadcast/EU-Alert is the way to go for this and I have no idea why they thought an app would be better.
> Unger: Ja, die Niederlande zum Beispiel setzen auf dieses Cell-Broadcast-System. Wir haben davon Abstand genommen, weil die Mobilfunknetze - wie man etwa an Silvester sieht - im Fall der Fälle nicht ausreichen. Hinzu kommt ein datenschutzrechtliches Problem. Wenn man direkt die Handys ansteuert, werden auch Bewegungsdaten erfasst. Wir setzen daher auf die App...
To roughly translate: cell broadcast has a data protection problem, because directly notifying cellphones leads to movement data being recorded. Also cellphone networks don't have the capacity, as can be seen every new year's eve.
Just... what the fuck! What an utterly incompetent idiot.
As a fellow German, I can understand the anger, though.
Basically, we don't have a warning system anymore, because the pieces that are left are mostly being dismantled (sirens, tv and radio) and all they seem to want to replace it with is an app that doesn't reliably work when the network is fine.
Lets be honest, if catastrophy should strike here, we would be last to know.
This x100. It's an utter catastrophe. We had a fully working siren network (at least across Western Germany), and after the end of the Cold War it all got left to rot to pieces - estimates for rebuilding it are well into the hundreds of millions of euro range.
And then the whole radio clusterfuck. AM radio got totally torn down years ago to "cut costs", there's always discussions to dismantle plain old FM radio too and only serve DAB+ instead, which doesn't have nearly the buildout level compared to plain old FM radio.
I'm sick of this shit. Three decades and all what we had went down the drain. It's the same for coronavirus response - back in cold war times we had massive rolling stockpiles of everything, especially of PPE... but again, it all got eliminated to "cut costs".
I really am struggling to understand why it's a big deal? Honestly asking, what's the thought process behind the worth of maintaing one? TV channels and radio stations will just broadcast a breaking news thing. Websites will have notices. I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?
What would you use it for? And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
In case of, say, fire at a chemical plant, it may be important that people downwind get notified right away, there might not be very much time to get inside, close windows etc. Same for collapsed dams, radiological accidents, that sort of thing. Sirens can do that very well. Other channels are much less reliable (people might not have a news website open on their computer, might not be looking at their phone to catch that notification, etc.)
Radio is important because it's so widespread and low-tech. Pretty much every car has a receiver that can run for ages, there are inexpensive emergency ones that can be powered by crank and solar, so even in prolonged power outages, as long as the stations remain powered, and someone in your neighbourhood has a working receiver, it's still useful and pretty low-cost, since the infrastructure is already there.
I'd think in case of radiological accidents it would be policy to NOT use them, to avoid panic. I fully expect road barriers / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordon_sanitaire to be implemented, if one happens here and word of that gets out.
Considering the sheer numbers of FM radios and how long they last it will be decades before DAB takes over. I don't plan on replacing mine until it breaks.
> TV channels and radio stations will just broadcast a breaking news thing.
Many young people don't even own a radio or TV any more, and even more own one but don't use it regularly.
> Websites will have notices
That assumes that a) the Internet is still up everywhere (by the way, same problem with the apps crap) and b) that people are 24/7 surfing on news websites.
> I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?
To announce there is something going on and people to have a look at the TV/radio for more information. That's all.
> And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
AM radios are incredibly cheap to build - all you need is a loop, a tunable capacitor, a diode, a fixed capacitor and an earphone. When I was a kid I had one as a "build it yourself" kit for children. FM radios are more complex but are literally everywhere - many cellphones have them, virtually every car built after the early 50s, kitchen appliances, bathroom radios, classic radios... DAB/DAB+ radios are relatively new, in fact they are only required to be present in cars after end of this year. And in contrast to AM/FM it is almost impossible to build one out of basic components yourself.
> What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
There's more need than just a war for an EBS. Stuff like "the power plant nearby is leaking radioactive gas", "the industrial plants are on fire, close your windows", "there's an earthquake predicted, cover yourself", "flooding immanent" or "active terrorist case with a shooter on the run, stay indoors" is some things that I can easily imagine.
You're mixing two arguments, one about total communications collapse and the FM/Radio, one about immediate danger and the sirens.
Total communications collapse - It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real. If it did happen, the government would also somehow have to still be magically in control of the FM/AM broadcasters.
Urgent Alert - The governments around the world have been organising nationwide lockdowns virtually overnight using existing channels. I just don't see much value even if there were something 'urgent', as it's clear people get alerted pretty quickly about this stuff.
> It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real.
Just how often did we have widespread Internet outages because someone fucked up a BGP entry again? It's incredibly easy to barf up the Internet, all you need is a way to put crap in the global BGP database. Terrorists, nation-scale actors, cybercriminals all have this ability. In contrast, an emergency AM/FM radio service can be done without anything connected to the Internet - plug a microphone in the input line of the radio signal generator and you are on air.
Also, power outages are not unheard of, even in Germany. As said, FM radio does not require much power to receive it.
If I understand correctly, DAB+ transmitters use less power than FM ones, but DAB+ receivers use more power than FM receivers. Considering the number of receivers versus transmitters, this doesn't appear to be a good trade-off to me.
AM even more so, although AM transmitters can be really power-hungry if you want to cover an entire country with one of them.
> *Anmerkung der Redaktion: In einer früheren Fassung hieß es, der Bund habe wegen vermeintlicher Kapazitätsprobleme der Mobilfunknetze und aus Datenschutzgründen Abstand von einem Cell-Broadcast-System genommen. Das Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe hat diese Antwort nachträglich korrigiert
They basically revoked this comment about capacity. The new reason is that mobile service providers don't offer this type of broadcast in Germany and that it's checked whether this can be implemented in the future.
If that was the truth I don’t understand how anyone would come up with the first statement, which is just to precise to be a miscommunication or whatever the reason is. That just sounds like damage control. I am really disappointed at how bad the whole test went through today. Hopefully they get everything sorted out ASAP.
I'd say it's the reverse. "Daten sind das neue Gold / Öl!" Because of this they don't use somehing like cell broadcast, but an app-based approach. They just don't dare to say so in public, or don't care at all. Do you honestly expect anything competent from any of the current talking heads, making appearances in the mainstream of the presstitutes catering to the oh so sensitive public?
(Yes, Yes, I know, the German service providers (allegedly) didn't implement it so far, therefore we(allegedly) can't do it. It's not like a superspecial Extrawurst, since it's in use in many other places. I guess, depending on the vendor of the equipment it would be nothing more than a configuration flag to enable, since it's already there, just
needs a license for the feature, or something like that. /ENDRANT)
I have simply no idea who thought it was a good idea to implement a nation-wide warning system on an app that has ~15k downloads[0]~. We already get warnings through cell broadcast here in Hamburg for the weather (last year we got multiple high wind warnings). I'm very disappointed.
Edit: As a commenter pointed out, it has 1M+ downloads. But I'm still unsure why is there is even an app, when you can use the cell broadcasted warnings, which everyone with a modern phone get, regardless whether they have an app installed.
This seems strange. I have enabled everything, got messages also in the US like amber alert but never in germany incl. Hamburg. I thought this is not used here in germany (see other comments here e.g.)? Do you have some source of your information?
It worked for me, and I got the warnings in German. My phone is all English. I remember clearly, because it threw me off in the beginning. I haven't received any this year, maybe it was a test?
Not on the same scale but, in France, fire alarms are tested every first Wednesday of the month at midday sharp. Though you don't hear them from everywhere so it can still be quite a shock after a few years of not hearing it.
There's been an official response now: The system was overwhelmed because instead of just one nation-wide alarm, several local institutions used the system for local alarms. Which is scary: The number of local alarms was three I read (very uncertain about that number). And the nationwide alarm came 31 minutes late. That seems unreasonable, but yeah I guess the test was productive at least.
Yes, obviously using the phone network is the better idea. But realistically the goal of these projects is not to create a working system. The goal is to create something "new" to leech money off the federal and EU projects, which they succesfully did.
Actually the same in the Netherlands, except that for a few years we had "silent" alarm tests. This was of course a bad idea (actually letting everyone hear it is quite reassuring, and it's good to know what it sounds like), so this was reverted, although that took longer than it should have.
I kinda figure that if people heard the lunchalarm going off at a different time, they'd just assume it was Monday noon and it'd confuse the rest of their week.
> Air raid sirens sounded for one straight minute starting at 11 a.m., testing their tones full blast before varying the pitch of the tone.
The sirens are tested in Lyon, France on the first Wednesday of every month. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary but interesting that Germany hasn’t done it in so long.
Same in Prague (first Wednesday of each month). I've been on calls for work the past couple times, people always ask me what the background noise is.
Here it's a siren, and then a spoken message (in Czech and then in English) telling people the emergency broadcast system is being tested. It goes on for a good 5 minutes.
At the start of the lockdown they blasted this [1] children's song over the broadcast system to try cheer everyone up
As others in this thread have noted, sirens are tested (at least) once a year locally. What makes this special is that it is a centralized test for the whole country with other channels being tested as well (TV, Radio, mobile app).
Where I live, it was rather underwhelming. I probably would not have noticed if I hadn't known about it before which may be a bad sign, to be honest.
AFAIK the sirens that still exist in Germany are also still tested regularly, or at least this happened in my home village until recently, now I'm not sure when I heard that last time.
The "problem" is that most sirens had been removed in the 90's when it became less likely that Germany would be steamrolled by Soviet tanks.
Sweden tests the emergency sirens the first Monday every month at 3PM. It's kind of weird when we have dismantled most every other kind of preparedness.
I'm at work, phone goes off - significant other on the line.
"Our smoke alarms just went off and i'm running around, trying to turn them off"
I'm like "Ooook, have you been cooking?" - "No, nothing, been working and it just went off, also no smoke anywhere to be seen".
Scratching my head, looking at my watch, 10:39 (alarms where supposed to go off at around 11:00).
So, we currently have 6 connected fire alarms around the house (Hekatron Genius Plus X + Base Funk (radio) module, so they're connected).
They're not connected to anything besides themselves, so i really wondered how and why they'd go off for this test alert.
Thing is, the smoke alarms do have a notion of what time it is as they turn off the flashing light from 9PM to 7AM, so i wasn't quick to dismiss them catching the publicly broadcasted signal and go off too...
Scratching my head even further, i figured i'd give Hekatron a call - the guy on the hotline tried really hard to keep his calm but chuckled and said it basically was just a coincidence and if the one that triggered the alarm would go off again i could basically RMA it.
Lesson learned, coincidences do happen, also people do win the lottery after all :)
115 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadRussia? So their economy collapses the same day they attack?
Aliens are more likely to attack EU than Russia.
In 5-10 years time, a lot could happen, depending on how the political and financial situations develop for the next year or so. There's a lot of tension right now, and worst case scenario after Brexit and COVID could mean prolonged financial difficulties that result in social unrest, and once you reach that point there's a lot of stuff that can go down-hill very fast.
The probability is low, of course, but the possibility is there.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, and the Greece/Turkey situation that a sibling comment mentioned is an eternal source of fun. Also, anything happening in the Near-East, like Lebanon, Syria and Israel has a potential to affect Europe and things turn quickly over there.
A war of convenience, started to justify a Russian military intervention in the country, could easily get out of hand due to the sensitivity of the region, in particular the Suwalki gap [3].
Countries around the area, including neutral Sweden, have been ratcheting up their military preparedness to that possibility [4].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbass
[2] https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/29/president-lukashenko-cla...
[3] https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/europe/suwalki...
[4] https://www.politico.eu/article/security-alert-sweden-gotlan...
* Russia v... well, just about anyone else. Russia has made it clear that they consider a large part of Eastern Europe to be their sphere of influence, and have twice this century (Georgia and Ukraine, the latter mostly undeclared) going to war to prevent "the West" from expanding influence.
* Turkey v Greece and/or Cyprus. Discovery of gas in the eastern Mediterranean has meant that delineating EEZ boundaries there is critical, and especially given the fact that Greece owns a lot of islands just off Turkey's coast, there is an awfully high chance of flashpoints. Furthermore, there is a frozen conflict on the island of Cyprus itself that still poses risks for conflict.
* Balkan War #i-don't-even-know-anymore. The place has long-lasting political antipathy between different countries that provoked two major periods of war (the Balkan Wars that culminated in World War I, and the very messy breakup of Yugoslavia). Serbia hasn't admitted that Kosovo is lost to it, and Bosnia is a fractious country that holds itself together only through a convoluted power structure that hasn't healed the wounds of the Yugoslav Wars. Reignition of war here definitely remains a possibility.
* Civil war in Spain, Italy, or Britain [including a war between Britain and Ireland over Northern Ireland]. To be clear, I'm really scraping the barrel here: this is a war I consider possible, but extremely improbable. These countries have strong, persistent separatist movements--and national governments that are equally persistent in quashing them. It's possible, in exactly the wrong circumstances, that everyone ends up making moves that create a dispute that is only resolved by a war.
* Don't forget the possibility of an external regional conflict escalating into a world war, much as what happened in World War I. This is largely a rehash of the first option, though, since that's the only great power alliance breakdown that could result in this situation.
Note that you asked where it's a possibility, not where it is likely.
The No-Go zones, expanding and overwhelming law enforcement.
Some place(s) in Sweden come to mind, where they even have an App to rate the loudness of explosions, caused by turf wars of competing groups.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banlieue in France.
There seem to be some similar places in Belgium, and at least one in the Netherlands.
About any https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_city / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_town with large high-rise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_estate in Germany.
Do I need to say anything about recent events in some downtowns in the USA?
This is something, that localized test runs normally do not include.
Sounds like a complete nationwide fuckup.
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/warntag-115.html
More interestingly, the federal government is realizing that it may have been a mistake to dismantle the sirens in many areas after the Cold War ended, mainly because things likes TV, radio or app messages cannot warn people at night, when their devices are off. I have heard of 3 possible fixes that are discussed:
a) build more sirens again
b) use the mandatory smoke detectors in every home for a warning system
c) use car alarms or car horns
It would be interesting to see how b) and c) are implemented without any concerns regarding security or potential for misuse.
//edit: same info was added to head comment.
Though I must admit I was very surprised the first time I experienced it (I hadn't been forewarned).
I don't understand why Cell Broadcast is not used. Surely many people don't have the app installed? I'd never heard of it and I've lived in this country the whole time it's been available.
Cell Broadcast/EU-Alert is the way to go for this and I have no idea why they thought an app would be better.
Because of utterly dumb people in charge: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/warntag-zum-ziv...
> Unger: Ja, die Niederlande zum Beispiel setzen auf dieses Cell-Broadcast-System. Wir haben davon Abstand genommen, weil die Mobilfunknetze - wie man etwa an Silvester sieht - im Fall der Fälle nicht ausreichen. Hinzu kommt ein datenschutzrechtliches Problem. Wenn man direkt die Handys ansteuert, werden auch Bewegungsdaten erfasst. Wir setzen daher auf die App...
To roughly translate: cell broadcast has a data protection problem, because directly notifying cellphones leads to movement data being recorded. Also cellphone networks don't have the capacity, as can be seen every new year's eve.
Just... what the fuck! What an utterly incompetent idiot.
Basically, we don't have a warning system anymore, because the pieces that are left are mostly being dismantled (sirens, tv and radio) and all they seem to want to replace it with is an app that doesn't reliably work when the network is fine.
Lets be honest, if catastrophy should strike here, we would be last to know.
And then the whole radio clusterfuck. AM radio got totally torn down years ago to "cut costs", there's always discussions to dismantle plain old FM radio too and only serve DAB+ instead, which doesn't have nearly the buildout level compared to plain old FM radio.
I'm sick of this shit. Three decades and all what we had went down the drain. It's the same for coronavirus response - back in cold war times we had massive rolling stockpiles of everything, especially of PPE... but again, it all got eliminated to "cut costs".
What would you use it for? And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
Radio is important because it's so widespread and low-tech. Pretty much every car has a receiver that can run for ages, there are inexpensive emergency ones that can be powered by crank and solar, so even in prolonged power outages, as long as the stations remain powered, and someone in your neighbourhood has a working receiver, it's still useful and pretty low-cost, since the infrastructure is already there.
Many young people don't even own a radio or TV any more, and even more own one but don't use it regularly.
> Websites will have notices
That assumes that a) the Internet is still up everywhere (by the way, same problem with the apps crap) and b) that people are 24/7 surfing on news websites.
> I'm entirely unclear why you'd need an emergency broadcast system? Or place so much emphasis on its importance?
To announce there is something going on and people to have a look at the TV/radio for more information. That's all.
> And why would having one that worked over AM or even FM be worth anything? People don't buy those radios any more. What difference does it make?
AM radios are incredibly cheap to build - all you need is a loop, a tunable capacitor, a diode, a fixed capacitor and an earphone. When I was a kid I had one as a "build it yourself" kit for children. FM radios are more complex but are literally everywhere - many cellphones have them, virtually every car built after the early 50s, kitchen appliances, bathroom radios, classic radios... DAB/DAB+ radios are relatively new, in fact they are only required to be present in cars after end of this year. And in contrast to AM/FM it is almost impossible to build one out of basic components yourself.
> What you're describing sounds like a massive white elephant that was probably worthless even in the cold war. A proverbial safety blanket.
There's more need than just a war for an EBS. Stuff like "the power plant nearby is leaking radioactive gas", "the industrial plants are on fire, close your windows", "there's an earthquake predicted, cover yourself", "flooding immanent" or "active terrorist case with a shooter on the run, stay indoors" is some things that I can easily imagine.
Total communications collapse - It would have to be over night and total for there to be ANY worth to FM/AM radio. It won't be. It's seems unrealisitic to pretend some sort of Walking Dead scenario would ever be real. If it did happen, the government would also somehow have to still be magically in control of the FM/AM broadcasters.
Urgent Alert - The governments around the world have been organising nationwide lockdowns virtually overnight using existing channels. I just don't see much value even if there were something 'urgent', as it's clear people get alerted pretty quickly about this stuff.
Just how often did we have widespread Internet outages because someone fucked up a BGP entry again? It's incredibly easy to barf up the Internet, all you need is a way to put crap in the global BGP database. Terrorists, nation-scale actors, cybercriminals all have this ability. In contrast, an emergency AM/FM radio service can be done without anything connected to the Internet - plug a microphone in the input line of the radio signal generator and you are on air.
Also, power outages are not unheard of, even in Germany. As said, FM radio does not require much power to receive it.
AM even more so, although AM transmitters can be really power-hungry if you want to cover an entire country with one of them.
East Germany had a fully working siren network as well. And it was tested every Wednesday at 1pm.
Sure looks like they take data protection seriously by including advertising trackers...
They basically revoked this comment about capacity. The new reason is that mobile service providers don't offer this type of broadcast in Germany and that it's checked whether this can be implemented in the future.
Why is it checking who gets the message?
(Yes, Yes, I know, the German service providers (allegedly) didn't implement it so far, therefore we(allegedly) can't do it. It's not like a superspecial Extrawurst, since it's in use in many other places. I guess, depending on the vendor of the equipment it would be nothing more than a configuration flag to enable, since it's already there, just needs a license for the feature, or something like that. /ENDRANT)
Jeez. No need to resort to far-right vocabulary!
As for the rest of your point, I'm sure you remember "die Antwort auf diese Frage könnte die Bevölkerung verunsichern"...
(Echt jetzt? Ich verbitte mir diese infame Unterstellung aufs Entschiedenste! Das geht ja so gaaaaa nich!)
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.materna.bbk...
Edit: As a commenter pointed out, it has 1M+ downloads. But I'm still unsure why is there is even an app, when you can use the cell broadcasted warnings, which everyone with a modern phone get, regardless whether they have an app installed.
Maybe the telcos aren't ready? But they wanted to start practicing the other parts of the system?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU-Alert
There are a few implementations, but not as many as I would have assumed:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast#Public_warning_...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202743
Any country that doesn't use cell broadcasts is doing it wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Alert
Cell broadcast is much more suitable than a stupid app if you want to warn people in a certain area.
I wonder how effective this will work in case of real trouble.
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/terrorismebestrijdi...
Haven’t heard anything today.
(or that the Russians are invading again)
The sirens are tested in Lyon, France on the first Wednesday of every month. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary but interesting that Germany hasn’t done it in so long.
Here it's a siren, and then a spoken message (in Czech and then in English) telling people the emergency broadcast system is being tested. It goes on for a good 5 minutes.
At the start of the lockdown they blasted this [1] children's song over the broadcast system to try cheer everyone up
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YWcQRKNyjM
Where I live, it was rather underwhelming. I probably would not have noticed if I hadn't known about it before which may be a bad sign, to be honest.
The "problem" is that most sirens had been removed in the 90's when it became less likely that Germany would be steamrolled by Soviet tanks.
What a great emergency warning system!
I'm at work, phone goes off - significant other on the line.
"Our smoke alarms just went off and i'm running around, trying to turn them off"
I'm like "Ooook, have you been cooking?" - "No, nothing, been working and it just went off, also no smoke anywhere to be seen".
Scratching my head, looking at my watch, 10:39 (alarms where supposed to go off at around 11:00).
So, we currently have 6 connected fire alarms around the house (Hekatron Genius Plus X + Base Funk (radio) module, so they're connected).
They're not connected to anything besides themselves, so i really wondered how and why they'd go off for this test alert.
Thing is, the smoke alarms do have a notion of what time it is as they turn off the flashing light from 9PM to 7AM, so i wasn't quick to dismiss them catching the publicly broadcasted signal and go off too...
Scratching my head even further, i figured i'd give Hekatron a call - the guy on the hotline tried really hard to keep his calm but chuckled and said it basically was just a coincidence and if the one that triggered the alarm would go off again i could basically RMA it.
Lesson learned, coincidences do happen, also people do win the lottery after all :)