You can receive AM with very simple receivers. The cost of adding one to a car is miniscule, and it works when other more complex systems don't.
Not only emergency broadcasts but things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_information_stati... make it important to have a working AM radio in your car.
> Whatever the case may be, the available evidence behind this tale appears to be purely anecdotal and not verifiable at this point.
(the wire is optional if the signal is strong, and a 'headphone' is anything you can make vibrate with electricity)
The video looks convincing but it could also be faked, and I don't think it's possible. The signal coming into the radio tower (which is basically just a big antenna) would already be modulated to a much higher frequency (702khz or whatever).
I guess there could be some other effect that makes it audible when you hold a blade of grass or a hotdog to the transmitter, but I don't think it would be intuitive.
I thought I was going cracy when turning the volume to zero did not cut it before I realized it was radio hehe.
Maybe there can be accidental demodulation somehow?
AM is just power, its why crystal radios work...
I don't think it's faked, what's shown here is what you'd expect. I've been on 'live' FM towers and the RF burned holes in my jeans at my knees (my knees were rapped around the metal tower and the induced RF in the tower zapped holes through the material in my jeans and then burned holes in my skin).
On AM the sound that you're hearing is demodulation caused by resistive non-lineararity in the carbon caused by the burning/heating process. This is quite a common phenomenon with high powered AM transmitters.
This story was the one that came to mind when I say your comment and the post makes for a quick, interesting read.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lucille-ball-fillings-spie...
It's sort of like clickbaiting doctors when they read "doctors don't know what causes obesity!".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment
> The Minot train derailment occurred just west of Minot, North Dakota, United States, on January 18, 2002, when a Canadian Pacific Railway freight train derailed, spreading ammonia gas across the city, delaying rescue operations. The cause was found to be small fatigue cracks in the rails and joint bars, not detectable by the inspection routines then enforced by Canadian Pacific.
[snip]
> Because it was the middle of the night, there were few people at local radio stations, all operated by Clear Channel with mostly automated programming. No formal emergency warnings were issued for several hours while Minot officials located station managers at home. North Dakota's public radio network, Prairie Public Broadcasting, was notified and did broadcast warnings to citizens.
And Minot is one of the bigger cities in North Dakota.
[citation needed]
There's a Grand Canyon between putting in an AM radio circuit and putting in a fully functional AM radio, doing over the vehicle's EMF, and then making it last for a vehicle's lifetime.
https://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/letters_of_autom...
"Our decision to not support AM radio was primarily linked to our electrification strategy. If Volvo Cars had continued to provide AM radio, our BEVs and PHEVs likely would have experienced EMC disturbances and this could result in poor performance. "
Why must all cars have AM radio?
Then we'll get a bunch of people who are either ignorant of the conditions or who are fumbling with their phones trying to find the information on the internet somehow.
We could phase in a new traveler information system that works in new cars, but that would require an enormous expenditure of resources to roll out the new system and then we'd have to maintain the old one for as long as there are vehicles on the road that don't support the new. It's far more cost effective to just mandate that all vehicles be able to receive signals from our existing system.