Today at 2:20 p.m. Eastern, most Americans will simultaneously feel their cellphones vibrate, hear them make a loud sound and see a push alert pop up on their screens. Most radio and television stations will broadcast an alert at the same time for about one minute.
There is no national emergency, no reason to panic and nothing you need to do about the alerts. It is, as the text will say, just a test.
It’s a test of the national emergency alert systems, which are designed to let the government reach hundreds of millions of people in the United States immediately if there is a disaster affecting the entire country. TheFederal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission are conducting the coordinated test to see if the technology is working as designed and if any improvements are needed.
And of course, because we live in the stupidest timeline, there’s this:
So, turns out we’ve gone mad all by ourselves, no virus or fungal spores needed. Nice.
Washington Post helpfully adds this:
While most smartphones have options for controlling what emergency alerts you receive, there is no way to disable a national alert in your settings. You can try putting your phone in Do Not Disturb mode, but because there is variation in how different hardware manufacturers and cellular providers handle the test, that is not guaranteed to work.
You can silence the sound when it begins by clicking a button on your phone.
If you have a phone that you absolutely do not want to make a sound — for instance, if you are in an abusive relationship and have a hidden device — there is something you can do. Turn it off before 2:20 p.m. Eastern and do not turn it on for at least 30 minutes. The alerts should not send after 2:50 p.m. Eastern. If you are in a situation in which a phone needs to stay hidden for your safety, do not rely on muting it or other settings. Turn it off.
There’s something called a “Faraday bag”* that will cut off all outside transmission fields—including alert signals and GFS tracking—from reaching your phone (though you can still run a cable into it for charging).
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*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
My primary field of expertise (before computers) is electronics. It has always amazed me that my cell phone still receives text messages while inside an all metal locker at the gym. I always assumed the metal locker would be good enough to block everything. So it it all down to the holes?