Does it sound different than other sounds a phone usually makes? I imagine that unless it is carefully designed, the reaction could be "what is that"?
I’ve experienced it maybe a dozen times over the past ten years. (I’ve felt earthquakes much more frequently here than I did in California, where I grew up.)
Two or three times it has woken me up in the middle of the night, and I was able to get up and move away from the dresser that's right next to my futon and could conceivably tip over on me. (I shouldn't be sleeping there, I know.)
Several times I was near other people—on a commuter train, in a meeting, walking along a sidewalk—when multiple phones sounded the alarm at the same time. Once or twice, I’ve been on a train that stopped suddenly with an automated announcement coming over the loudspeaker saying “Emergency stop! Earthquake.” Once I felt fairly strong shaking after the train had stopped, so the advance warning might have prevented a derailment.
Maybe half the time no perceptible shaking has followed the alert, either because I was too far away from the affected area or because it was a false alarm. One such false alarm occurred on July 29, 2020, and the Meteorological Agency issued an apology [1, in Japanese]. There have also been at least a couple of strong earthquakes where the system didn’t go off when it was supposed to, so it’s not yet perfect.
The alerts are startling but also reassuring. It’s much better to have a twenty-second warning than none at all.
[1] https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASN7Z4631N7ZUTIL01Z.html
There are restraints you can buy that attach furniture to the walls with a strap. I know its sold to prevent children from attempting to turn their dresser drawers into a set of steps which when climbed tips over on top of them.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/hawkes-bay-today/news/christchurc...
And it saves lives too.
In this particular case there was a 2-3 second warning. Was one of the more violent ones Tokyo has had recently and I was rather glad to not have been inside.
That's so important for emergency alert systems: Acknowledgement that false alarms are disruptive and apologizing for the stress that they cause.
After being woken up in the middle of the night for an unjustified alarm I proactively turn off all emergency alarms on my phone. If, in the morning, all the headlines were about an apology, I'd keep the alarm on.
Obviously, I don't know the exact details of those incidents, but if the epicentre is too close to you, there will not be time for the alert to occur. The alerts work because the earthquake travels slower than the telecommunications signals. No alert can be triggered until after an earthquake has occurred. Then, however, a warning can be sent to notify people further away from the epicentre before the shaking reaches them.
The author of the sound (Kokubo Takashi) interviewed in the past[2] that he designed the sound to make people alerted, but it must not make people feel uneasy or causing panic. The sound must also not resemble any other alert sound as people may ignore it. The result is what we're using in Japan today, repeating three times to ensure it draws enough attention.
Ultimately, nothing should be issued via EAS that does not require prompt and decisive action. This is not an exotic category: tornadoes, flash flooding, large hail, tsunamis, earthquakes, and civil and industrial emergencies are all reasonably frequent real-world events in which prompt and decisive action by the public saves lives and property. Unfortunately we have completely tangled them in with "a child was abducted, or a senior citizen wandered, or a cop was shot somewhere in the state," a scenario with no generally understood action for the public. That information should be disseminated using means other than the distinctive EAS attention tone which has always been intended to be reserved for those situation in which you must act immediately [2].
This doesn't mean a return to the old situation in which only POTUS was authorized to issue emergency messages, but it should mean that emergency message issuance is limited to scenarios that meet the same general criteria of requiring immediate action, regardless of their originator. The NWS and state governors (really their EOCs) do produce such alerts, but they should receive specific criteria to require.
[1] It had been determined in the 1950s that action within 30 seconds would produce substantial (e.g. 70%) reduction in fatalities in the case of an unanticipated nuclear attack, but that warning greater than 30 seconds was not always feasible. Improved early detection systems such as OTH radar have made this issue somewhat obsolete, although more recent developments such as HGVs and nuclear-armed "sea drones" like Kanyon have potentially brought it back to relevance even just in the case of nuclear war.
[2] Really the attention tone is a leftover technical detail from an earlier implementation, but its use has been specifically protected because it is so well recognized by the public as an indication of a national emergency. Unfortunately that protection is at the whims of legislators which frequently expand it to include whatever is politically appealing, regardless of actual outcomes.
They said they’d worked back late and we’re the only person left on the floor when every single mobile did what you describe.
They said “it was truly the sound of the apocalypse” ha
I had my last straw when I started getting alerts for wear a mask and other ridiculous crap.
Since the noise and the alert are tied together, and I absolutely detest the noise, I have the alert turned off.
It's silly that you can turn off the ring for a phone call and still get the notification, but can't turn off the alert noise without also turning off the alert notification.
It’s close to the Orwell ‘2 minute hate’.
This has happened numerous times.
I've also wondered if useable information has been received from these alerts, or if it's just a bit of psychology being used against the perps when the alert about them goes off on their phone.
I'm not sure if seconds before impact would be early enough for me to take action though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding
I appreciate that the warning gave me enough time to radio my kids in the house and let them know to expect something.
We never felt the quake but it was good practice anyway.