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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

>The fall of TV means that in a situation like that, there isn't any "tune to your local TV station" type broadcast. All you get is a tornado siren.

You didn't get a phone alert about it happening? I thought those were mandatory for these kinds of events, I think they even overrule some of the DND rules on your phone.

I had something similar happen this summer, and I can't remember if I woke up from the alert and went back to sleep or woke up to a missed alert, but I definitely got more information on my phone without ever asking for it.

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> You didn't get a phone alert about it happening? I thought those were mandatory for these kinds of events, I think they even overrule some of the DND rules on your phone.

I turned those off at the system level because the local authorities would abuse them to announce allegations of kidnapping, or license plate numbers of people who supposedly shot at cops and other such things that are not a threat to my life or safety (and thus not my business).

Apple, fortunately, in iOS 15 broke out the categories so you can turn off the "we want you to pay attention to this" crap from the police separately from the "here is critical information about something that might kill you".

Having them on the same category/priority before was massively irresponsible on the part of the police. I'm glad people with enough sense to understand alert fatigue eventually prevailed.

I was getting "emergency alerts" for "COVID vaccine available in your area."

That may be really important information, but it doesn't rise to the level of an emergency.

Yep, I turned them all off after one too many covid alerts.

My area never did that, any government that used EAS for that should be voted out at the next opportunity

You can't vote out the police in the USA, generally, otherwise people would have done so long ago.

Highly unlikely that the police issued the EAS about COVID, also even if you can not vote out the police, you can vote out the head of the police (sheriff or mayor) who would have had to approve an EAS about covid

However these types of messages are often sent out by our local dept of Emergency Management, or Health Dept, both of which do have access to EAS just like the police.

I definitely get the Amber-alert-style phone alert for Tornado warnings in my area.

I had to turn these off because they went off 5 times a day for large parts of the year, often at night. We get a lot of weird spot storms in northeast Georgia from the Gulf that seem to confuse warning systems. It was a choice between dying of stress and poor sleep for sure or maybe dying from a tornado.

Yeah I have all that alerting stuff disabled on my phone too. Way too many false alarms.

Hmm. I guess I should've checked my phone. Thanks for the tip!

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