AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA​AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

May 18, 2021 7:55 AM

Rating Emergency Alert System (EAS) alarms: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, via
posted by not_the_water (32 comments total)

Does it mean something that the ones for the WWII axis powers are all sort of festive sounding?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:07 AM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Emergency. There's an emergency going on.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:14 AM on May 18, 2021 [8 favorites]

I hear the iphone one multiple times a week because my phone has Amber Alerts (missing children) and Silver Alerts (missing old people) turned on. Then a cacophony as everyone in the vicinity with a phone and theirs go off too. Yay.

Some of the those sound so much better. Iran's race car and the ones that sound like air raid sirens are fun.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:25 AM on May 18, 2021

New Zealand: fucking hell
Greece: I swear this is the "nuclear launch detected" sound from Defcon.
South Korea: That's just a dial-up modem, come on
China: sounds like it's been remixed?
Norway: horror movie soundtrack
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:26 AM on May 18, 2021

Saudi Arabia's sounds like a note from the old Lost in Space show. Does South Korea's really start with the old modem sound?
Iran's seems to have drum beats in the background. And does Finland's really have a guitar playing?
posted by eye of newt at 8:44 AM on May 18, 2021

I couldn't hear the 'text tone' on my phone, so I changed the tone to one that sounds like Taiwan's.
Fortunately I do not get a lot of texts, cause it's kinda scary.
posted by MtDewd at 8:44 AM on May 18, 2021

The modem sounds in the US one are digitally encoded data related to the actual content of the alert. I assume South Korea is doing something similar.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:47 AM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

hi we’re faxing the alert to your tv
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:48 AM on May 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

I still suffer from a mild PTSD from that wowowowowowowowow…
posted by Omon Ra at 8:49 AM on May 18, 2021

France’s (in part 3) sounds like a truck backing up. In the event of a serious public emergency in France, everyone who lives or works near a construction site is doomed, as they have learned to tune that sound out.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:50 AM on May 18, 2021

All those red alerts, all that dancing
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:50 AM on May 18, 2021

My dog rates them all "How could you click on this while I was sleeping, you ass?"
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:58 AM on May 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

Greece (the first one), Italy, and Norway kick ass. Malaysia's good but it's basically just a standard US municipal tornado siren.
posted by saladin at 9:00 AM on May 18, 2021

I really enjoy Saudi Arabia's choice to announce their emergencies as though they were soap opera twists though, that's solid.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:02 AM on May 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

This post gets an instant favoriting from me, because I am a troubled soul who enjoys EAS and number stations.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 9:38 AM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

Well I just listened to all of them and I'm still not very alert, so IDK.
posted by aubilenon at 9:59 AM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

The USA FCC is currently reviewing proposals to add the EAS alerts to streaming services. Won't that be fun?
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:05 AM on May 18, 2021

Something about the dark musicality of Norway's alert (beginning of Part 3) sounds really unsettling to me, like the actual cacaphony of the end of the world, i.e. car horns in a long tunnel or echoing off the sides of buildings, people desparately trying to escape something they know deep down cannot be escaped, each tone the last, pained cry of a wounded gazelle as the lion takes it down -- in short, the sound of millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror. 10/10.
posted by swift at 10:07 AM on May 18, 2021 [3 favorites]

I find it strange that some significant research has gone into the effectiveness of different alert sounds and yet almost every country has arrived at a different result.
posted by Lanark at 10:22 AM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

New Zealand: Daleks are attacking!
Germany: an NES miniboss is attacking!
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:44 AM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

How would you rate the Cloister Bell on the TARDIS?
posted by stannate at 10:49 AM on May 18, 2021

Those were really fun. The more air raid style ones seemed much more alarming to me and I wonder if that's because the US one has been the same for so long that I mostly tune it out. Germany is hands down my favorite of the bunch.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:44 AM on May 18, 2021

I love that the New Zealand one was so disorientating that it caused them to misspell it as New Zeland. The missing "A" dropped below the score somehow....

I wonder if any of these would work as an auditory signal for that whole "this is not a place of honor" / how do you keep radioactive waste sites secure for thousands of years discussion. Like design a long lived wind sculpture that plays one of these tunes when a wind blows, or you open the storage vault and wind rushes in. I mean not the Japanese one for sure....
posted by inflatablekiwi at 11:47 AM on May 18, 2021

A few of them reminded me of the klaxons mounted on towers in various parts of the town I grew up in. They were for use in the event of a leak or explosion at one of the many nearby chemical plants (or, as Don Delillo would have it, an "airborne toxic event").

They would be tested occasionally -- the fact that it was an announced test didn't make them any less spooky.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:56 AM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Way back in the 90's a guy at my high-school somehow got hold of an air raid siren. And turned it on. From the top of our six floor school tower block. Which is next to Government House. During the moment's silence on Armistice Day, when most of the country was standing still and silent.

Tears of (completely inappropriate) schoolboy laughter.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:01 PM on May 18, 2021

Also - we should definitely do a Eurovision style competition where your country's EAS sound needs to be mixed into your country's entry. I can see Italy's turning into an absolute banger.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 12:42 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

That Dutch clip is way to short to get the entire sequence. Here is a better example.
posted by Pendragon at 1:59 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

And we hear that at noon on the first monday of every month when they test the system. Always scares the shit out of me.
posted by Pendragon at 2:03 PM on May 18, 2021

Back when I was on-call overnight for production issues, the text from the office would use the Canvey Island Flood Siren to make sure I'd get up.
posted by mikelieman at 4:09 PM on May 18, 2021

it caused them to misspell it as New Zeland.

Although the subject is interesting, the illiterate spelling turned me off, not amusing, couldn't finish even part 1.
posted by Rash at 4:28 PM on May 18, 2021

Um, have you met the internet??
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:07 PM on May 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Finland's EAS signal is someone calling CQ in morse code? That's ... that's an unusual choice.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:00 AM on May 25, 2021