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I don't agree with this using a dedicated single-purpose IoT device. Who wants ever more shit on their network? Just send an alert to existing emergency alert systems. My phone is already able to tell me when old people go missing or a child is kidnapped, so the infrastructure seems to be in place already to do this.

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But that would create a mass panic, while this device lets the owner quietly proceed to their private shelter without alerting the neighbors.

There would be no way to shelter from a nearby gamma ray burst. You would die and there would be nothing you or anybody else could do about it, except maybe commit suicide to avoid the coming trauma.

Well you could get lucky and be on the other side of the world from the source. It's just then that you have to figure out how to shelter yourself from years of acid rain.

In that sense an asteroid strike is worse, apparently it sends up shards of glass that hit at a density of more than one per square meter, all around the world.

Such an intense burst would likely pass through the whole earth and exterminate all life everywhere on it.

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