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Comment by sk5t | Hacker News Reader

About a week ago my phone went bonkers with a weather alert, warning of potential flash floods. I would say this was roughly as distracting as an air raid siren... it wasn't raining and to my knowledge no flash floods actually came to visit destruction upon the Philadelphia region that day.

It seems absurd that there's no setting in iOS to disable this nonsense without calling up the phone company. Can we at least have a graduated system of alert terrifyingness out of which to opt?

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> It seems absurd that there's no setting in iOS to disable this nonsense without calling up the phone company

There is: Settings > Notifications > Government Alerts (at the bottom)

Cool, thanks for the pointer. I'd never scrolled past the start of the enormous list of notification center apps.

I disabled the alerts on iPhone by going into Notifications settings, scrolling to the bottom and toggling the Amber Alerts and Emergency Alerts off. This is on an AT&T phone, not sure if it's carrier-specific.

A friend of mine experienced a similar thing before my phone had the capability. His phone went crazy with a "blizzard warning", even though there were no storms around, and I don't believe the NWS has ever issued a blizzard warning for this area.

> I disabled the alerts on iPhone by going into Notifications settings, scrolling to the bottom and toggling the Amber Alerts and Emergency Alerts off. This is on an AT&T phone, not sure if it's carrier-specific.

Also on Verizon iPhone. Received Tornado warning alert via iPhone Emergency Alert night we had 5 tornadoes...it was awesome!

There is a setting in iOS to disable it...

Settings > Notifications > down at the bottom there's a Government Alerts section, with AMBER Alerts and Emergency Alerts toggles.

At least, there is with AT&T, because I recall getting a notification saying my phone's software was updated to be complient with phone company requirements, which added the two toggles.

Yeah it woke me up at 2 AM despite my do not disturb being set during that time.

Don't you want this to alert you for things like floods/earthquakes/etc even with do not disturb? I don't think do not disturb means ignore alerts about weather or other life threatening (to you at least) alerts.

I'd love a system that could warn me of earthquakes.

It's not out of the question actually. The speed that earthquakes propagate can give those not at the epicenter a handful of seconds to take cover under a fast response alert system. Those who live in earthquake prone areas have probably experienced watching a live news broadcast and having the anchors react to an earthquake a few seconds before you felt it yourself.

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