Listening to Mock EAS Broadcasts · 6:07am Sep 10th, 2017
I don't know what it is about listening to fabricated Emergency Alert System messages that has drawn me. I tell myself that it's a humbling experience: shocking myself into hearing what could happen in the worst-case scenario. In particular, the cold, unerring terror of hearing a message play that tells me about an incoming attack. Some others deal with severe weather, and one that I found was built around the 9/11 attack, but the most haunting in my search so far involved a nuclear attack against the US by several other countries.
It was...incredible.
I don't mean to say that I'm inspired. There was no appreciation involved; no humor, no laughter, nothing happy about it at all. Rather, the experience of it left me shaken, on the verge of tears, and wringing my hands together as I dealt with an onset of helplessness. One video that contains such a mock message went as far as to include a narrative, and ended with the abrupt disruption of the broadcast signal. It even threw in a cryptic message when the signal was lost:
If you're interested, you can view the mock scenario here.
Be warned: this is serious subject matter.
It's hard to wrap my head around it. There's the ever-looming question of if - if an attack occurred, what could I do? I don't know of any nearby shelters, and I don't have any kit set aside for such a situation. But I know that the question of if is...unlikely. I mean, I don't claim to know the current state of affairs between countries. All I know is that the threat of war hasn't been on everyone's lips. Severe weather has. Granted, severe weather comes with its own terror, but I think I'm used to that because of the area where I grew up. I experienced tornado and hail warnings over a dozen times in my childhood, and even help organized the sheltering of an entire store where at least fifty people were working (I don't even know how many others were there just shopping). So the warnings involving weather, while serious in their own right, are kind of 'old news' to me. I know what to do in those situations.
That, I think, is what attracted me to these simulations. It's all based on audio, but the way it's presented is so straightforward that I wouldn't be able to tell the difference if I hadn't seen the opening disclaimer. I know by now to focus and listen whenever I hear the EAS tone play on my radio or through my phone. It's part of how I was raised, and hopefully how everyone else was raised too. But then? Hearing the actual content of the messages? I will always expect severe weather warnings and silver alerts (and, to a sad extent, amber alerts). Plus, having family members who work in hospitals has indirectly exposed me to a different variety of alerts. Those are what I expect because it's what I've learned. But if the message is something I didn't expect?
These simulations, these mock messages, have indeed left me humbled. Thank goodness that they are false, designed to inform and entertain, because I still have that knowledge at the front of my mind. It's helped to bring me back when I finish with a video. But until that point...until I work myself back from wringing my hands and into a mindset of action, I can do little else beyond sit here in silence as a very real sense of terror grips me.
At the end of the video I posted, the audio cuts out in a hiss of static. The screen goes blue with a simple message of 'no signal'. I know at that point that whatever attack was simulated made contact with the broadcast station. What I don't know is if that strike was the first of hundreds, the second, or somewhere in the middle. And yet it takes me a few seconds to realize that. It's not instant. What I do instantly feel is a chill throughout my body, starting at my spine and ending in my arms and legs. The entire simulation was leading up to something I can't expect, something I can't plan for, and I'm left in a stunned silence. Utterly still. Thinking nothing, saying nothing, doing nothing.
Helpless.
...
It's an experience I can probably describe in a few other ways. It's not one I will ever describe as 'happy.' It was cold. It was direct. It was scary. Terrifying. Humbling. Stunning. Humiliating.
Is it something that other people deal with in their lives?
I'm reminded of the recent hurricanes, Harvey and Irma. I think of the people who were, and are being, affected by the storms and the hazards left behind. I think of the helplessness they must feel, when everything they've done will come to a result within minutes, when they wait, huddled and shivering, next to whatever radio they could find, waiting, waiting for someone to speak, waiting some more, and only getting emergency signals and civil directions, hoping that the next one will have something new but dreading that it will have something worse.
I'm reminded of the attacks from September 11th, which I saw occur when I was in sixth grade. I remember not hearing any live broadcasts because I was too shocked at the news and too scared to see what any new news might bring. I remember talking about it in the days following the attacks, and then weeks following, and then months. I remember what I did as a student: we formed a project to color small printed American flags, one for each of the known victims. We got a grade for it. It was all we did for a straight week. The student body finished with over four-thousand flags. I remember these things, but I never really knew what the scope of it was. Or maybe I did and I've forgotten.
These videos...these mock signals...
Visceral.
Deep. Inward. Instinct. It's what I would feel if I were put in such a situation. It's what I would have felt had I been in the area of the World Trade Centers, of Harvey and Irma, of any disaster from which I had no escape or plan. It's what I think the people who are in those areas must feel, or at least it's the closest I've ever been.
In my mind, I know it can go deeper. It can get more real. But before these simulations, I was ignorant. Now, I think, I've experienced that deep, cold terror. That intense focus. That helplessness. And I don't know what else to say.
~Leo
I too have felt this type of dread. Though I'm not old by any means, only 27 right now, I too remember the fall of the trade centers. Sitting in home room of middle school. Everything was just...silence. Shock. Terror. It was something that I hope no more children or people in general will have to bear. Those events led me to join the army and help any way I could.
Recently I also started watching old videos from the 50s and on warning about the dangers of radiation, what to do in case of an attack, scenarios that showed reactions of every day people, prepared or not. It's still a chilling thought.
I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that in the recent uprising of tension between everyone really. There's just so much that we have to live for, but it seems no one is caring. World leaders not thinking clearly. People not doing anything yet judging others for perceived slights. Insanity.
Yeah... I think about it on occasions, the possibility of a nuke coming at us and we have to get ready... that's one of the things that scares me.... <:((