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GreenPlasticSushiGrass ,

I remember one year I heard that weather radios save lives, so I bought them for the whole family one Christmas. They might save more lives if they weren't loud pains in the ass that eventually get turned off.

melroy ,
@melroy@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Be sure to wear ear-pods on your iPhone, so you get the alert message at 100% full volume into your ears.. This will help you to gain an additional super-power called: Tinnitus.

kitnaht ,

Step one: Own a smartphone.

You’re done.

You actually have to opt-OUT of these alerts on almost any modern smartphone made in the past 5-6 years.

JackGreenEarth ,

How do you opt out of them? I mean, I probably don’t want to, but I feel I should know how, if only to feel I own my device, rather than the government.

I use a Motorola Android phone for reference.

otp ,

In some countries, you can’t unless you connect your phone to a PC and disable the system on your phone entirely.

But googling “[phone make and model] disable amber alerts” should direct you to the settings where you can adjust things (assuming your country does it properly and respects these settings).

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Depends on the system

The “Yo dog, a tidal wave is hitting right now. That is why it looks like it is super duper low tide.” alert? Yeah, you’ll get that. Whether that is time to meaningfully act or not depends.

But most regions have additional services you can and should sign up for that will give the early warnings. So “Seismic activity detected a mile or three off shore or however tidal waves work. We are monitoring the situation” is a good indicator of “maybe today is not the day I go to the beach”. And “We are no longer monitoring the situation. Please proceed as normal” is a sign that maybe you do want to go for swimmies after all.

Same with other disasters. I live in a region that has a lot of wildfires. We tend to get the early warnings and even the “We might say to evacuate in a few days” through a different service. We get the “Get the fuck out of town immediately” alerts through the normal emergency alert system.

otp ,

You actually have to opt-OUT of these alerts on almost any modern smartphone made in the past 5-6 years.

I had to “hack” my phone to disable them (using the term loosely; you need to connect it to the computer and use a terminal).

Disabled them because in my country, they abuse the system and send all alerts at the “Presidential” level (aka. top priority and everyone might die unless you do something soon). My phone manufacturer helpfully decides not to have Presidential alerts respect my volume settings (like Do-Not-Disturb).

I also live in a particularly large region.

All this combined means that I have to live without alerts that say “Tornado incoming” because I don’t want monthly alarms blaring in the middle of the night to tell me that a child is involved in a custody dispute somewhere about a 7 hour drive away from me. Guess they wanted me to keep my eyes open and call the police when I see a “white vehicle” because it may contain the “missing” child, whose entire description is “7, last seen wearing a red shirt and jeans”.

So yeah, I opted out. Against all alerts, against my will.

Also, in my country, when there was an active mass/spree shooter who was masquerading as a cop and pulling people over before shooting them, they DIDN’T use the emergency alert system. They used Twitter. Remember to like and subscribe!

systemglitch ,

Government issued alerts are something I went out of my way to remove. I’ll happily live precariously like humans managed to do for the entire rest of our history before cell phones.

tabular ,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

I ain’t a fan of the corporate tracking device but how people acted before a technology existed says little to how best to act now. Even if it did the past is littered with the corpses of those unaware of incoming danger from natural disasters.

systemglitch ,

It’s not a big enough difference maker for most of us to ever truly need it. An amber alert for a kid thousands of miles away? No thanks, because that is what I got the vast majority of the time.

Life is too short for such invasive stress.

tomasz ,

Is this US only?

Telorand ,

Actually handy. My city doesn’t have disaster sirens, but they do have emergency text alerts I didn’t know about.

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