Part of the reason it's illegal to play that tone is because it can trigger other stations that are listening to start broadcasting the EAS signal too, causing a chain reaction.
I thought this being so illegal was absurd until the Geico ad scenario was brought up. Lots of radio ads are disguised as breaking news or weather reports, so they would 100% do this if they could.
Car dealerships seem to be the worst about it. I would have qualified that with "in my area," but even when I travel well outside my area, it still happens. Guess the used car salesman stereotype is true.
Don't forget all those mass-mailings disguised as bills, because they absolutely are hoping people will be tricked into just straight-up sending them money for nothing.
I had to testify to an FCC investigator in college when I messed up an EAS test. I was trying to play the whole this is only a test message but the only thing that got broadcast was the attention signals. No context. Fortunately, I and the station got away with a slap on the wrist.
How did they know who did it? It is still impossible today for the FCC or anyone for that matter to track radio signals. It is simply impossible, that's why I can be an illegal HAM radio operator and as long as I don't give away my location the FCC can't do anything. Also you cannot be arrrested for refusing to pay fines, the SCOTUS ruled unanimoustly on that about 10 years ago. I don't know when you were in college but as of now you cannot go to jail for refusing to pay any fine.
@@outspokengeniusthey can definitely track you down, pretty easily. You just aren’t a big enough annoyance for them to do so. You’d be more likely to be turned in by the other HAM nerds
@@outspokengenius Being an illegal ham operator isn't high on the government list of prosecution, unless you use your knowledge to cause damage to infrastructure, or harm people, which I refuse to reveal how. As for not paying a fine to the FCC, it isn't the FCC fines that carry weight, it is the court fines that carry penalties for failure to pay. But thinking the FCC can't track down a radio signal if they put their mind to it, think again, depending on the problem, they can give a person a call the same day they find the signal, as I had that happen one night when I was transmitting...
@Brian Roberts Yes, the current US president is a Canadian actor. You have discovered our carefully laid plan to finally take control of the US, as is our god-given right.
Ahh, the sounds of my youth. I remember the speech quite well: "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Stations in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would have been followed by news or other information. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."
Youth? Hell, I heard that last month and am about to hear it again tomorrow. (1st Wednesday of the month, tornado siren/warnings testing time... wooohoo) Benefit of living in Tornado Alley.
I haven't heard that message in years. Probably because I no longer use a TV. I do have the crap scared out of me every Wednesday when the tornado siren goes off though. Then I feel like an idiot when I remember it's just Wednesday. Occasionally my phone likes to scare me too because I have the amber alert type warning set to sound.
It’s perfectly legal to play on RUclips. There’s an entire community of people who make fake EAS scenarios like nuclear war with valid tones. The only rule is that you need to put a disclaimer to not play any tones over the radio or TV. Playing them would activate other real stations and could cause mass panic. Sweet baby jesus 5.8k
was just bout to comment this, because i like listening to those fake EAS scenarios. there was a few good scenarios thats been made in the last 4 years. one is named "EF6" and there is a few on harvesters youtube channel that are pretty good as well. i think half as interesting should've clarified that you can play them on youtube, just gotta have a disclaimer up. also stations usually don't listen to youtube videos, since they are not going over the air in terms of signals, but instead going though a smartphone or pc via internet data.
Oh, THAT sound. If you live anywhere that frequently frequently has (or had) tornados then you'll recognize that eerie sound. I find the sound more unpleasant from the associated memories than I do the actual tones. It's pretty easy to search "attention sound EAS sample" and find it.
I used to work at a tv news station where one of the reporters put the tone in one of his packages on a tornado that hit in our coverage area. It was like a full-blown scandal. After it happened every single employee at the station had to send a written acknowledgement to the station vice president that we knew to never play the tones, and there signs posted in the newsroom about never playing it, and like once a month we got an email about "remember to NEVER to do this". Pretty wild stuff, honestly shocked the reporter didn't get fired.
News packaging in journalism describes a news report for television that includes a narrative with video, the reporter on camera, and other people involved on camera (e.g., witnesses, experts, victims). News packaging describes longer stories that include a number of perspectives and people.
@@TheDude4077 It's actually legal for a FCC licensed broadcaster to initiate a local emergency broadcast, but it has to be duly logged and otherwise comply with relevant 47 CFR 73 regulations. It sounds like that news guy was clueless and being a drama queen. It's easier for broadcasters to just use some unofficial attention getting noise for local activities, unless they're in a tornado alley where lots of locals have cheap EBS/EAS monitors responsive to the tone pair. Lots of people in this comment section are using "broadcast" as if it has common IT network meanings, when in context it refers exclusively to FCC licensed broadcasters subject to the Communications Act of 1934 as amended, and 47 CFR 73 regulations.
A note: The SAME header is actually more illegal than the attention signal. The attention signal is just a tone; still protected on air. The SAME header, however, if played over the air, can activate the Emergency Alert System, and that's what makes it illegal. It's only illegal if you cause damage with it.
The SAME tones are the entire alert, minus any human understandable content (voice, etc). They contain the type of alert, areas involved, and the duration of the alert. They're broadcast three times and the receiving equipment must be able to decode two of them in order to count it as a reception. That way an AM station transmitting the tones during a thunder storm can have one mangled by the electrical impulse of a lightning blast, but two make it by. It's a horribly flawed system that works, as shown by the multiple nation wide tests over the past few years.
There have been cases where the EAS header was played on the air and activated the EAS at other TV and radio stations. The stations that played it were heavily fined. You would think it would be encrypted and only trigger the EAS if it was received within a certain time frame.
it’s weird that i kinda like the sound isn’t it like if i hear it while i’m watching tv it’s unnerving, but if i just listen to it im like “sick dual-tone”
I am one of those. Idk what it is, but the tones give me the good chills down my spine. I have only ever heard them irl ONCE because I never really watched much TV and my area only gets storms bad enough to trigger it very rarely. In fact, my favorite video on this site is "Don't look up EAS scenario LOCAL58". Try watching that sucker in VR in Bigscreen Fullscreen in a quiet room and you'll go insane.
One note. Under CONELRAD the radio stations didn't actually switch frequency. The antennas and transmitters are tuned to a specific frequency, and can't easily change that. What did happen was that everything but the 1240 and 640 stations would go dark. The 640 and 1240 stations would alternate in a sort of chain, only staying live for a few minutes at a time. The idea was to keep enemy missiles or bombers from being able to use these stations as fixed navigation aids. Early AM radios actually have little civil defense triangles at 640 and 1240 to make it easy for users to switch back and forth as the stations switched on and off. I worked at a 1240 "relay key" station in the 70's before EAS took over. At that time, EBS had replaced CONELRAD. We had a red phone with no dial mechanism, and a red folder in the DJ booth. Occasionally the red phone would ring, and we'd answer. The person on the other end would give us a code (just like you see in the movies) and we'd open the appropriate envelope and read a code back to him. Once authenticated, we'd run an Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) test, which was basically playing those tones for 10 long seconds, followed by the standard script, then back to programming. There were actually two different scripts. One was for the 640 and 1240 stations, and said, (quoted as close as I can from memory) "If this had been an actual emergency, this station would carry instructions and information on what you should do". For non-CONELRAD stations, the script instead said, "if this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune for further instructions. Fun fact, the folder also included a sealed envelope with very specific instructions to never open that except as instructed during a national emergency. That envelope contained instructions on what to tell people and what to do, and even had helpful advice on how to permanently disable the station in the event that it was about to fall into enemy control. (yeah, we read one) The way the new EAS works is basically a cascade system. in Atlanta WSB radio and TV is the primary station. So they get the message to send an alert. They activate the EAS system. Other stations are actually monitoring WSB's radio frequency. The two sounds at the start (we call them duck farts) are the Specific Message Area Encoder" information that tells the receivers what areas are included. If your station is included, the EAS system will open the audio and either play the WSB signal for the DJ, or if your station is automated, take over the signal and rebroadcast the WSB audio. And so on down the line.
I occasionally read through the Wikipedia page on EAS and the SAME tech. The whole thing is simultaneously fascinating and scary. It’s interesting (and probably a good thing) that the EAS has never really had to be used for a worst-case scenario-especially since word travels so fast on social media. The Hawaii false alarm incident shows how powerful that system is.
@@antiseth3964 the S.A.M.E. Wikipedia page is pretty interesting. Fun fact: there’s also a section for when it has been used incorrectly, as this video talks about. The FCC will *really* not play around, for good reason.
Interesting note related to your comment on being provided instructions on how to permanently disable the broadcasting station: the US armed forces provided instructions for how to permanently disable the Hammond organs used for religious services should the bases or camps using them need to be abandoned.
I used to think we lived in the worst timeline until you mentioned the theoretical Geico car insurance emergency commercial. Because corporations _absolutely_ would do that.
I thought this law was absurd until he pointed that out - I hear quite a few ads on the radio disguised as breaking news or weather reports, so there's no doubt they would do this if they could.
Under the Australian Commercial Radio and TV codes of practice, "Advertisements broadcast by a licensee must: (a) not be presented as news programs or other programs;" I couldn't tell you how often an advertiser (or a station advertising salesman) has asked me to "use a news theme to get attention". I took great delight in pulling out the codes of practice and telling them to sod off!
The term you’re looking for is called “alarm fatigue”. They don’t want people to get used to the tones because alarm fatigue is a very real thing. The other term you’re looking for to describe how bad it sounds is “discordant”. Two tones producing a harsh sound due to lack of harmony.
This concept also applies to icons/symbols used to convey health hazards and potential death such as biohazards and radiation. They’re going to have to be updated eventually. Also they’ll need to be updated more “frequently” than sounds I assume since images are more accessible and seen more often than these sounds can be accessed and heard
@@welshgit My dorm was notorious for waking us up for drills and accidental alarms. People would burn popcorn constantly or fail at covering their vape or shower steam from the alarms. It took one month for us to nearly not get up and be in trouble for not showing up in the lot outside. It also took the entirety of the dorm to file out of the building like 10 minutes more than I'd imagine would be ideal for a damn FIRE. Guys started sleeping through it.
@@0Rookie0 Oh geeeze. I can imagine. When I was a student, the dorms had a basic fire alarm with activation buttons - no smoke alarms in the kitchens or bedrooms. If there had been, they'd have been going off all the time too!
Fun fact: Local broadcasting stations are required to perform routine (weekly and monthly) tests of this system. The header used during tests specifically encodes that it is just a test, and any accompanying audio message similarly identifies that it is a test.
>. The header used during tests specifically encodes that it is just a test, and any accompanying audio message similarly identifies that it is a test. * makes an EAS alert using valid test tones, but the TTS portion describes nuclear war from the DPRK this comment is purely fictional
i remember that header!..they don't use it here anymore, just the tones...it was slowly downgraded from **incredibly Loud irritating beeping sound** THIS is just a test of the national emergency broadcast system. if it were an actual emergency you would be directed to your local emergency location. This is just a test....to that Blasting beep then : This is Just a test of the national broadcasting system....then to just: This is just a test.**BEEEpEEEEpEEPPP**...& recently...no words..just that infernal beeping.
Here's what Sam didn't mention: A. Correction to 4:00 - these two tones are played for television broadcasts. Radio broadcasts over NOAA NWS weather radio frequencies use a 1050hz activation tone. Also, it's called an activation tone because it activates consumer and federal recievers. The activation tone plays for 10 seconds on NOAA weather radio frequencies. 2. SAME is an acronym for Specific Area Message Encoding. Generally each county is given a SAME code. (I'll speak on NOAA Weather Radio terms because that's easier to understand.) When the Weather Forecast Office issues a product - warning, watch, advisory, forecast, discussion, etc. - the message is broadcast over the internet with SAME codes. These codes line up with the areas that the product covers. When a product requires EAS activation, the NOAA Weather Radio transmitters look for the SAME codes. If their broadcast region includes the counties with those SAME codes, it interrupts the broadcast to play the emergency message. Other U.S. government agencies can issue EAS products to specific areas and even the whole country, which would mean ALL the SAME codes included on a messsge. III. How does an EAS activation actually work? Consumer weather radios listen for both the leading tones and activation tone (as well as ending tones) before EAS activation status begins. BOTH ARE IMPORTANT! While they do grab human attention, the activation tone is mainly for the computer in a reciever to confirm it is recieving an EAS product and take appropriate action: sound a siren, broadcast on another frequency, or activate an alarm if it's a consumer radio. The leading tones are indended to distinguish an EAS broadcast from a superfluous activation tone, since other radio channels might broadcast these tones and may accidentally bleed into the NOAA frequencies. I have heard EAS broadcasts where the leading tones were not played (back when the new Paul voice was introduced to NWS radio) but only during bands of thunderstorms when multiple EAS activations were issued in a short time frame. Sometimes the computer doesn't seem to get it all right!
"Young Sheldon" is on CBS. A radio station in Las Vegas played the SAME Tones 3 seperate times, within the span of a day, for a bit on a talk show in 2021 and got fined $20,000. The talk show host that knowingly aired the clip that contained the tones (after being told by a board op that it was illegal to do so) was also fined $20,000.
@hainesnoids In the US, that sound is regulated by the FCC. No station can air it outside of Emergency Alert System broadcasts and broadcasts from state Emergency Services (ie: Amber alerts, Senior/Silver alerts, etc.).
The SAME header contains information that other stations are listening to, so if you broadcast valid same headers it can start a chain reaction of literally every TV show and radio station and even mobile device in possibly the entire world to activate EAS. The attention tone, however just gets your attention and won’t trigger anything.
i think sirens are fair game because if you were hearing them in real life around you locally you’d be well aware of it. part of the EAS noises contain data i believe, and even the dual-tone can potentially trigger other radio stations playing it.
@@SatoshiAR agree on that one. i was more thinking air raid sirens. if i heard one at radio volume, i would just assume it was part of an ad or something
@@ExperimentIV I've heard the air raid siren so many times that my reaction would just be to think it is noon. It wouldn't cause me to think about seeking shelter or anything it was designed to do.
its actually the SAME HEADER that’s illegal to play on live air. Not the attention signal. The SAME header contains important information and can trigger EAS equipment if the station that broadcasted that header was specifically being monitored by that said EAS equipment.
Learn something new everyday. I just took a look at the instructions for an old Motorola radio I've got and sure enough it describes the CONELRAD civil defense markings on the dial. Haven't heard the two-tone attention signal in so long, I'd forgotten what it sounded like - the sound of my youth. I can't quite recall the sirens on the firestation I assumed were also part of the emergency alert system.
When I went on Wikipedia to look up the sound, it only took me half a second before I realized I've heard this sound many times before. I had only ever heard it when I had gotten Amber Alerts on my phone, which surprisingly happens around where I live more than one would expect. I hadn't heard it used for any other kind of alert though, but I can see why that particular tone was chosen. No matter how many times I've heard it, it's still completely jarring and grabs my attention right away. It's a totally unpleasant sound, and I'd say it's nearly impossible to ignore.
@Sarafina Summers Yup. It's the exact same one used on all Android and Google phones as well. It's good that they use a universal tone to grab people's attention, rather than a different tone for each type of alert.
The SAME Header sound may be the most terrifying sound ever. I remember waking up to it when my mom was driving us through Dayton OH where there was a tornado warning a few years back. I know it’s important to make sure people are alerted, but that sound is a great way to get people to panic.
It's not just "unpleasant to the human ear" to get your attention. It's also because that makes it much much less likely to be a sound which would ever happen to occur in any other contexts (music, etc), which could cause false-alarms, etc. If you're playing that sound, it's pretty much guaranteed it's only because you intended it to be (or at least sound like) an EAS broadcast.
I don't live in the US, but the first time I heard the sound was while playing CoD MW2 that has one of the missions play that sound. Fast foward a few years and I was with my family on Florida on vacation and immediately recognized the sound on the radio, I told everyone to listlen, it turned out to be a severe weather alert.
If you want to hear the attention signal its basically the noise your phone makes when you get a weather warning notification. Just checked on wiki and my hair stood up. That is a horrible sound to hear for reasons 🤣
It's meant that way. FEMA specifically chose it to be the most annoying tone they could come up with, because, well, it's supposed to get your attention.
Yeah I remember that tone from periodic EBS test messages broadcast by radio stations way back when. I also remember the weekly air raid siren tests, every Tuesday at noon, that’s how many of us used to set our clocks. In San Francisco grade schools we would have periodic combined earthquake/ air raid drills, where we had to get away from windows and dive under desks.
😸🤠😂! Ah yes. Those fond memories of hiding under our desks looking at each other saying "This isnt going to do _ANYTHING_ to save us from nuclear radiation. They must _REALLY_ think were dumb!" US Duck & Cover Drills 1955-1980
@@ileutur6863 The night Putin went crazy... Way down in the workshop he got tired of making noise.... Something must have snapped in his brain!!!... He thought he was getting a raw deal... The nigh he went nuts.... The night Putin went crazy... Something must have snapped in his brain.😦😲😵😵💫
As a meteorology student and avid storm chaser that sound is amazing to hear. It means I did something right and I'm in the right spot to see storms. It probably doesn't have the "bite" it's supposed to for me though. I'm definitely not as sensitive to it anymore
In the midwest you don't even have to be a storm chaser to be desensitized. Lol. I'm a storm chaser, but my mom isn't and is still very desensitized to these tones and outdoor warning sirens.
It sounds like that one case from Ace Attorney Chronicles where Ryuunosuke Naruhodo needs to play a music box with encoded government information to the jury for the acquittal of his client.
Fun fact: your smartphone can play this sound as well, scared the shit out of me several times last year when my area had an unusually high number of AMBER alerts
@qwqqewwqeqweqew I only get the non custodial parent alarm at like 3am. Well seeing as how I *was* sleeping, no Karen I haven't seen your ex's car and I ain't going looking and by the morning I'll have forgotten all about it. And what makes me mad is the report is from like 5 pm but they didn't run it until the middle of the night
Not only the tone, but it seems to blare at max loudness as well regardless of your current phone setting. Three times I've been in grocery stores when this alert system went off. Scariest seconds of my life as EVERY phone goes off at once. Hundreds of them all across the store suddenly activating in unison make it seem like the world is ending, good lord!
Went off at 4 once it can also force it to vibrate (probably the system handling like a phone call) possibly explaining why modern phones may still have fm chips
@@evil1by1 There were some people in the area who had a habit of misplacing children every afternoon. Those faux Amber Alerts were so annoying that I turned them off on my receiver. Or, seeing Karen's child while I'm sleeping, as you mentioned. I don't dream of Karen's child. I DO want to hear if there's a tornado on the ground, even if it wakes me up!
@@raikou25 I looked up the sound on other RUclips channels, checking it was the correct combination of pitches mentioned. Not all of RUclips is subject to the same legal restrictions as HAI. And it’s a very… memorable combination of tones. Does exactly the job it’s supposed to. It was extremely alarming even when I hadn’t heard of it.
I used two tone generators in two tabs in my browser to play the two tones simultaneously and they sound exactly like Apple's NL-Alert tone. In The Netherlands, we have a system called - you guessed it - NL-Alert that the government can use to alert citizens in certain areas for upcoming extreme weather, power outages, large fires with toxic smoke, a murderer on the loose, etc. They test this twice a year and all phones receiving this alert go on high volume and you can hear this sound all over the city since all 'connected' devices play this sound as loud as they can. This sound is unmistakably weird, penetrating and loud, even if you play it at a low volume. By the way: my sound processor (Stereo Tool) goes berserk after having played this sound for more than ten seconds. It jumps up and down and starts sounding like some kind of digital jumping. After a while, it doesn't sound like the original sound at all anymore. I've played around with other frequencies and I've not found a combination that does this. Weird but intersting!
I don't like the attention signal, but I think the SAME-encoding sound is much worse. I cringe with I hear the SAME-encoded sound, where I simply shout "Who's kid got abducted" when I hear the attention tones (I hear those attention tones on my cell phone when an Amber alert is active...shame it never warns me of any impending severe weather).
I didn't go to Wikipedia to hear the sound. I just synthesised it in Audacity instead. After all, you DID give us all the necessary information to do so...
Giving the specification isn't unlawful, only broadcasting it where it could potentially trip automated alert equipment is the reason behind prohibition of broadcasting it. Which is odd now, back in the day, tone alerts were quite basic, all analog. Now, the alerts are digital, with included encoded text, which can do anything from help one select what to interrupt services and retransmit for the government or not. There are administrative messages that should never be transmitted or played, there are management messages that also shouldn't be played and there are various types of alerts from Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, some law enforcement alerts in other categories, to the disaster that you've just experienced has killed you and here is who you call to bury you alerts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding The retcon of "it'll dilute attention" is bogus, as the siren alerts are allowed to be rebroadcast freely and they're also still used to warn people when all hell is about to break loose, such as with a tornado or to let you know to head toward the light. Not that I'll likely notice, I'm pretty much on ground zero anyway, my first hint will be when Saint Peter's cussing me out - again. Hey, I feel like I'm that old in the morning. We had a similar local system on our base overseas, the Giant Voice system. Company that made it folded up, so high was its quality and half of it quit working. I considered beginning a startup and bidding to fix it, but one good look and it was such a goat screw of a design that it'd never be even break even to make the thing sort of work. No matter how much you polish a turd, it'll not turn into a shiny golden ring. The best use for that mess was to give it to the enemy, it'd put them decades behind themselves technologically. And alas, I'm being overly generous to the system's design. Faster, cheaper, better means brokety, broken, busted.
For those who don't wanna read too much: SAME headers are even more of a problem than the attention tone! *Disclaimer: I am not a licensed radio technician, and this information is only as good as my understanding of the subject. The equipment I mention is part of a hobbyist collection and does not broadcast to a radio station.* The funny thing is that I own equipment that powers the Emergency Alert System. Granted, the equipment is not compliant with the current FCC guidelines, but it has the same core functionality. It's just as illegal (if not, more illegal) to broadcast SAME headers as it is the attention tone, as those can actually trigger alert equipment depending on how the station has theirs set up, and god forbid if someone transmits the EAN code mentioned in this video, as all of the EAS equipment will retransmit the alert regardless of what time and what location it was encoded for. This is according to the settings on both of my EAS encoder/decoders, though, and may be different for others. I should mention that one of my units does have an indicator for when an attention tone is being received, but it doesn't generate any alerts or log it to my computer. And yes, I'm well aware there are several comments like this already.
That portion of the alert tone that you did play is something I will always despise, because it is used for weather alerts. My stepfather had a weather alert radio setup in our home growing up, and I always hated when it came on during the night to inform us of weather that was "near" us but wasn't actually near us. To double dip in my hatred of it, we have one of those radios as well at the hospital I work at, and on nights when it goes off, it goes off a lot, and we can't silence it until the human message comes across that tells us what counties the alert is actually for to know whether we have to call out a weather warning to the hospital on the whole, so we have to sit through the whole thing quite a lot.
Now this is stuck in my head: "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency ... you'd already be screwed. But again, this is only a test."
Weirdly, it's even close to a purely tuned 9:8 major second, i.e. within a single cent. Weirdly, if they had gone with 963 Hz vs. 856 Hz, they would have had an exactly pure major second.
In case any of You where wondering Sam Denby is an American RUclipsr, best known for creating the edutainment RUclips channels Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, Extremities and Jet Lag: The Game.
As a severe weather "enthusiast" and certified storm spotter down here in Dixie Alley, I hear these EAS tones a lot in the Spring and even in the Fall and Winter. I have the sounds downloaded to my phone and use them as alert tones for some of the weather apps I use because of how unmistakable and obnoxious they are.
@@PsRohrbaugh Probably a bad idea. If you are woken by an actual alert, it is possible to disregard it and end up getting tornadoed on or whatever. Personally, I just use a recording of an early 90s alarm clock.
They use that sound here in the Netherlands on mobile phones for emergencies however it's not a continues version but a always in bursts of about 2 seconds then 1 second noting and back to 2 seconds and continuing for a wile.
@@user2C47 Man, my leather jacket is from the early '90s (got it second hand three years ago from a coworker for $30). ツ I know what the early '90s alarm clocks are also, those brown rectangles found in cheap hotels with red digital numbers that have a loud grating beeping noise.
@@user2C47 Most people disregard tornado sirens and tornado warnings anyway. Correction, most people would grab their cameras or sit on their porches to watch for the tornados.
I am old enough to associate "that sound" with the possibility of nuclear war. In school, we had nuclear bomb drills where we would huddle under our desks to protect us from the exploding window glass, because that would actually work. A few years later, the same drill was instead taught as "tornado preparedness" and people were distracted by lining up for gasoline according to the last number on their license plate (one day odd, the next day even, I forget what it meant is you had no numbers on your plate - odd or even?).
This sound is actually not illegal to be on RUclips contrary to many people here saying. It is illegal on radio and TV since if broadcasted, the other stations will also pick it up, triggering a mass panic situation. But very interesting information, Thank you.
Interestingly, on smartphones today you will get that tone with an emergency alert notification. You don't get the "fax machine noise", but just the disharmonous sine waves that are for getting your attention. There's no point in playing the fax noises on a smart phone (as far as I know).
@AccessMemory That's because you *HAVE*. Mine does. Exact Implementation depends on several factors. Including Manufacturer, Hardware and especially Software+Version; just to name a few.
As far as I can recall, I'd always get the "fax machine noises" on my phone...It's been a while since I've heard an alert though, since I've turned off AMBER alerts and we don't get severe weather.
You forgot to mention yelling, Fire!, in a crowded theater, bar, club etc. You can be charged with homicide in some states if someone gets crushed in the rush for the exits.
Google: Italian Hall disaster On Christmas Eve 1913 someone yelled "Fire" during a party for miner's families; 73 men, women, and children were crushed to death. The miners were on strike at the time and had been for 5 months. There is reason to think that a man who was part of a group created by the mine owners to oppose the strike raised the cry. There was no fire. So, this is not a theoretical situation. Oh, and the SCOTUS ruling only says "theatre", not a crowded theatre.
it is easily one of my least favorite sounds of all time. it genuinely brings up childhood trauma of extreme storms in my hometown. makes my spine shiver
I heard it all the time for severe thunderstorms on TV or radio. "Eeeeehhh! Eeeeehhh!" and then "BOOOOOOP!" I wonder if THAT is the illegal to use tone he's talking about. "The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning..."
The sounds are not illegal to play, just illegal to broadcast on the radio. The cops aren't gonna kick in your door for playing the EAS tones on your iPod. However, speaking of the attention signal, the reason they chose those two tones specifically is because they needed a standard for consumer radio equipment to be able to detect the broadcast. Only radio stations listen for the first three screeches, known as Specific Area Message Encoding. The attention signal is designed to trigger certain functions on consumer radio equipment. Police scanners and weather radios are often programmed to squelch, or stay silent, until an alert is received. Some of them have their own built-in sirens which activate when this happens. They are listening for the attention tones, not the Specific Area Message Encoding tones.
hear it at least multiple times a week. just waiting for a real MAJOR EMERGENCY and almost everyone to ignore it because of the excessive frequency of tests
I hear that exact tone quite frequently during phone calls when the other person hangs up, also when a child abduction occurs ~20 miles away while I'm stuck at school and can't possibly be affected.
Let's not forget that Siren Head (a creepy-pasta horror) plays the EAS alert tones while stalking prey or wandering, though I don't recommend entering that rabbit hole unless you're ready for some spooky nightmares.
4:45 quite frankly that’s what’s happened here in Ontario Canada, our amber alert system on phones is the same level as a presidential alert (nukes, etc.). Constantly the amber alerts happen at night, are for a very wide area and they bypass do not disturb. At this point most people are frustrated with this and ignore the alerts or outright disable them. I don’t get why we didn’t adopt the same standard as the US. It’s been like this for 3 years or more at this point. People also get mad when you point out this flaw, don’t get me wrong I’m glad we have amber alerts and it has saved children’s lives but it has caused the boy who cried wolf scenario and it’s time for our government to fix it here in Ontario.
Yeah, in the US, the phone-alert system only notifies people within 20-30 miles of the abduction, not only due to people being desensitized, but because there'd be a possible influx of false leads from folks who are hours away.
Yeah. I've turned Amber Alerts off on my weather radio receiver (I get all EAS alerts as options, and can turn individual ones off and on), because we've had people in the local area who'd set off an Amber Alert whenever they couldn't find their child - the same ones, several times per day. Now, the Amber Alert system has saved children's lives, but people need to be stopped (perhaps with fines) for abusing it.' In another state, visiting my brother who lives as a shut-in in an ex-burb, he'd get several per day - it was annoying and he couldn't shut them off. He really didn't have much opportunity to have seen a child other than his grandson. More often, it would wake him up, although we did follow some excitement of a real kidnapped child taken by a family member, driven a couple hundred miles and reported, (returned safely, and the family member arrested - as we heard later on the news).
I live up in mountains southern Colorado in a valley. one Sunday morning i woke up and the power was out no internet. There was many military jets flying around which was not normal for this area. I went out to my ford bronco and turned on the radio ( my radio reception am/fm is also bad) i finally reached a station and first thing i heard was the emergency broadcast sound and an announcer saying this is the emergency broadcast system. next thing I HEARD THIS IS AN ADVERTIZEMENT FOR SURVIVAL FOODS. the announcer went thru the add, then i heard normal broadcasting. I'm retired military not easy to scare but so Luckly i did not need to change my underwear. Never did find out what the air force was doing. Power outage was a tree took the lines down.
Hear that initial burst once a week when they do the scheduled test for the EAS because there is a nuke power station a few miles away. Always makes the heart skip a beat until they say it is a test.
@@williamfeely6264 EAS is activated for many weather warnings, for example tornado warnings, and some flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings (but only if impacts are expected to be "considerable" or "catastrophic"). So kinda, yeah, they do say things will get worse or are getting worse.
This puts me in mind of the "Brown Note" as shown to great effect on a 'South Park' episode where the kids surreptitiously substitute the music sheets for a world-wide recorder blow, resulting in the whole world simultaneously soiling their pants.
huh, the encoded header does a much better job of grabbing my attention and carrying the ascribed meaning of "emergency alert" than the attention signal does for me
Recently the Hong Kong government used this to broadcast an "emergency" message about a hospital being converted to treat COVID patients only... needless to say, it was massively criticized (desensitizing people of the sound, as mentioned in the video)
But that is an important thing for the general public to know, including those who don't routinely read/watch/listen to news: the fact that a particular hospital, though still open, is no longer a general treatment location.
@@Azlehria I agree, it is crucial for everyone to know. However, it is not "urgently crucial", as 1. they'll still admit people with life-threatening situations and 2. accidentally going there isn't a big deal cause you'll be turned around by security long before you reach the buildings
Living near Arkansas/Oklahoma state line, I hear this test sound quite often... the only time it really bothered me was in April 1996, after the tornado had passed over 10 minutes earlier. They were a little slow calling that one!
ok, so if the specific tone is illegal to play unless there is an emergency, what if you altered it by a couple of hz in each direction so that you make one that sounds similar and is just as attention getting, but isn't the official tone ?
"Here's the basic rundown on what happens when the US detects a nuke, or a tsunami, or a nuke that got swept up in a tsunami and formed the dreaded Nuke Tsunami, which, oh no, oh God, it's headed straight for the Liberty Bell!"
I only ever knew about CONELRAD because of the episode of The Twilight Zone called The Shelter. I always heard it as CONRAD, though it's possible the kid who says it is just saying it wrong.
NOTE: The tone is NOT illegal to play or listen to. you are fine watching a RUclips video with the tone on it or making it yourself in audacity. you CANNOT broadcast the tone to a public radio, television station or over other forms of controlled radio such as HAM radio and CB radio. it is specifically an FCC violation and not a federal law, meaning if the FCC do not have the authority to control it, they cannot fine it. Dumbing down the facts to make it easier to ingest is ok, so don't think this is me saying HaI is wrong or stupid. But i know many people who may take this too seriously considering how serious an actual EAS alert can be.
For context: The FCC doesn't care if you use the tone AS LONG as it doesn't go on the air on any station that is licensed such as TV stations, AM/FM stations, or the Government run NOAA weather stations
The college I am close to plays this on their loudspeakers before every game. Being the Iowa state cyclones the emergency message goes something like this. "This is a cyclone weather alert, strong storms have been indicated by radar near Jack Trice Stadium, Sooner fans in the affected area should seek immediate shelter."
This reminds me of the prohibition on using red crosses on white backgrounds in video games, for the reason of "people might mistake the video game for an actual first aid kit" or something.
@@TitaniusAnglesmith Nope, the creator of stardew valley actually got in trouble because of this. Violated the geneva conventions. I don't believe they got punished or anything tho. They immedietly fixed the issues.
When you mentioned couple of tones, I knew it would be about EAS systems. Pretty awesome. A nice and simple explanation of what’s happening. The tones used are FSK and DTMF. Thanks for bringing some light to what goes on in terms of emergency preparedness. Awesome video of beginners guide to EAS, FSK and DTMF
Goddamnit now my anxiety is peaking because after the two tones my brain automatically put the final tone in and honestly i get legitimately so paranoid with that alert istg
Im pretty sure you're allowed to play the EAS sound effect on RUclips as long as someone doesnt stream the video to a live broadcast channel or station
It’s only illegal to _broadcast_ these tones on the air. Not to put them on a video. I am an EAS Creator myself and can confirm that you will only get in trouble if you _broadcast_ these tones. Radio stations get fined because there is an audience listening to the radio. That should clear it up. Also, have not heard of any station that has used 25 second tones unless you’re KBPA who uses 30 second attention tones for *WHATEVER* reason. Also, the EAS has been hacked many times believe it or not. It is impossible to count how many times this has happened. This video is completely wrong.
Back in the days of CONELRAD or early EBS with a 1 kHz +/- 50 Hz tone (playable from cart on tape), or late EBS or early EAS with 853.0 and 960.0 Hz equal amplitude tones and +/- 0.5 Hz tolerances, 47 CFR 73 tech standards defined requirements for tones and for detectors (wider frequency tolerance), but they never defined exactly how different a signal would need to be to sound the same to humans, but not be that alert tone as defined in FCC regulations with legally restricted use. National security? The number of actual alerts to bend over and watch for your town to vaporize in the combined histories of all 3 sets of acronyms, precisely zero. Predator politicians need their illusions of security theater, a disgusting absurdity.
Yes. A main purpose was to trip tone decoders. Soneone has a mostly working TFT decoder on YT. A fully restored daisy chain would be a good museum exhibit.
@@DoomTape1981 A fully restored realistic demo would have a letter about a rare effort to link up stations live for a statewide real time test, be sitting on a Program Director's desk unopened the week after the test was missed by many stations. (real history with real stations) The systems and standards have had major changes to include non-broadcast cel and alternative media, plus real time authorized source to actual stations live retransmissions, and data integration, but in the old days most stations would log received tests, and send their own at convenient program breaks, and not try to (legally optional) link a major station's weekly test for rebroadcast as their own. Given that TFT 760-(options) EBS systems were 2 rack unit frames to hold 3 modules, generally a tone generator, AM or FM digitally tuned receiver, and a decoder, all separate other than power supply, there's not much to demonstrate that can't be done testing the generator into the decoder, and show maps of state networks, and real life stories about how absurd the system was outside a few regions that used it for tornado and similar issues. It's been many years, but I've installed, configured, and repaired, tested, and aligned those systems.
Not what I expected, but that left two questions: 1. If nobody is allowed to play it, how are we meant to know about it? Does it matter? Edit: I now recall hearing it on the TV, including from other states. Still, tests are infrequent, aren't they? 2. As we transition to other options like satellite broadcasts, has/will the system been/be changed?
1. 2 reasons: a. It will scare the shit out of you b. If you’re watching TV, the program gets interrupted and a message gets shown on the TV screen. If you’re on a phone, a notification gets shown 2. Possibly
1- it does get played. It's that sound you hear every time a radio or TV station does an Emergency Alert System test. 2-that is a very good question, and one they haven't 100 percent figured out. Cable stations can break in even if you're on your DVR, but satellite or online is a whole different story. Because you're not hard wired to a location, it's tough to figure out what alerts you need to see. That's part of why the "presidential" alert option on phones cannot be turned off. As a last resort, they know they have one way to reach every single cellphone in the country, which would spread the message very quickly.
Part of the reason it's illegal to play that tone is because it can trigger other stations that are listening to start broadcasting the EAS signal too, causing a chain reaction.
let me guess - he left that part out
Plus it's really really unpleasant to the human ear. I've just heard it and my ears are still like, "Dude, wtf?! Don't ever do that again!"
@purple X don't click his link, it's a spam message advertising some religious cult.
This is only true with TV and radio. All other streaming services like youtube are safe.
@@donkmeister lmao the link has some muslim religous stuff not a "cult"
I thought this being so illegal was absurd until the Geico ad scenario was brought up. Lots of radio ads are disguised as breaking news or weather reports, so they would 100% do this if they could.
Car dealerships seem to be the worst about it. I would have qualified that with "in my area," but even when I travel well outside my area, it still happens.
Guess the used car salesman stereotype is true.
Yeah, I wish sirens would be illegal in ads...I *hate* that.
Most “news” is just ads disguised as news called native ads.
Think of all the times a commercial either starts with or features the chirping buzz of an alarm clock - even at 4 in the afternoon.
Don't forget all those mass-mailings disguised as bills, because they absolutely are hoping people will be tricked into just straight-up sending them money for nothing.
I had to testify to an FCC investigator in college when I messed up an EAS test. I was trying to play the whole this is only a test message but the only thing that got broadcast was the attention signals. No context. Fortunately, I and the station got away with a slap on the wrist.
That's good that you only got a slap on the wrist. It's better to learn and do better, since your intention wasn't malicious.
How did they know who did it? It is still impossible today for the FCC or anyone for that matter to track radio signals. It is simply impossible, that's why I can be an illegal HAM radio operator and as long as I don't give away my location the FCC can't do anything. Also you cannot be arrrested for refusing to pay fines, the SCOTUS ruled unanimoustly on that about 10 years ago. I don't know when you were in college but as of now you cannot go to jail for refusing to pay any fine.
@@outspokengenius I was the only person in the station, and this was well beyond 10 years ago.
@@outspokengeniusthey can definitely track you down, pretty easily. You just aren’t a big enough annoyance for them to do so. You’d be more likely to be turned in by the other HAM nerds
@@outspokengenius Being an illegal ham operator isn't high on the government list of prosecution, unless you use your knowledge to cause damage to infrastructure, or harm people, which I refuse to reveal how.
As for not paying a fine to the FCC, it isn't the FCC fines that carry weight, it is the court fines that carry penalties for failure to pay.
But thinking the FCC can't track down a radio signal if they put their mind to it, think again, depending on the problem, they can give a person a call the same day they find the signal, as I had that happen one night when I was transmitting...
Haven't even watched it yet, but I know I'm getting my weekly dose of stock footage
🤣🤣
Amen to that!
Great comment btw!!!
Only thing that is always in stock.
Hahaha
"Conspiring to kill the president is a job best left to the government."
fair enough, still hillarious
The current Resident, notice I didn't say President is probably already gone. I heard its Jim Carrey in a mask.
@@brianroberts5740 No, it’s a Kardashian duh
The same gov't that shot Kennedy?
@Brian Roberts Yes, the current US president is a Canadian actor. You have discovered our carefully laid plan to finally take control of the US, as is our god-given right.
You guys are hilarious!
Ahh, the sounds of my youth. I remember the speech quite well:
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Stations in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would have been followed by news or other information. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."
Youth? Hell, I heard that last month and am about to hear it again tomorrow. (1st Wednesday of the month, tornado siren/warnings testing time... wooohoo) Benefit of living in Tornado Alley.
I haven't heard that message in years. Probably because I no longer use a TV.
I do have the crap scared out of me every Wednesday when the tornado siren goes off though. Then I feel like an idiot when I remember it's just Wednesday.
Occasionally my phone likes to scare me too because I have the amber alert type warning set to sound.
I kept wondering “but what does the attention signal sound like”
Ah, April. It sounds like April
I still hear it on the regular radio while I'm at work. They still test the system. As long as they don't start sending it to our phones in a test!
when you fall asleep in front of the TV during summer break from school you hear that before the national anthem
It’s perfectly legal to play on RUclips. There’s an entire community of people who make fake EAS scenarios like nuclear war with valid tones. The only rule is that you need to put a disclaimer to not play any tones over the radio or TV. Playing them would activate other real stations and could cause mass panic.
Sweet baby jesus 5.8k
Yep. It's only illegal to _broadcast._
and they're amazing
You can broad cast it digitally, that's why it is on RUclips
was just bout to comment this, because i like listening to those fake EAS scenarios. there was a few good scenarios thats been made in the last 4 years. one is named "EF6" and there is a few on harvesters youtube channel that are pretty good as well.
i think half as interesting should've clarified that you can play them on youtube, just gotta have a disclaimer up.
also stations usually don't listen to youtube videos, since they are not going over the air in terms of signals, but instead going though a smartphone or pc via internet data.
just what i was gonna say
Oh, THAT sound. If you live anywhere that frequently frequently has (or had) tornados then you'll recognize that eerie sound. I find the sound more unpleasant from the associated memories than I do the actual tones. It's pretty easy to search "attention sound EAS sample" and find it.
Right! I know this sound all too well. There was a tornado just 5 minutes away from me a couple hours ago.
@@a-r glad you’re still here even though I don’t know you. I live in Kansas. Tornado seasons approaching.
Ughhh that sound terrified me as a child. I still get a shiver down my spine hearing it
I was a bit surprised that some people hadn't heard it. Comes on at least a couple times a year where I'm from, sometimes way more.
We hear that sound a few times a year, living in tornado country. It's scary when you're working or watching TV, and that comes up. Makes me jump.
I used to work at a tv news station where one of the reporters put the tone in one of his packages on a tornado that hit in our coverage area. It was like a full-blown scandal. After it happened every single employee at the station had to send a written acknowledgement to the station vice president that we knew to never play the tones, and there signs posted in the newsroom about never playing it, and like once a month we got an email about "remember to NEVER to do this". Pretty wild stuff, honestly shocked the reporter didn't get fired.
If his employer had never told him, they'd not have good reason, but he probably should've known that. His schools fault too
Packages?
Yeah, more info about packages please
News packaging in journalism describes a news report for television that includes a narrative with video, the reporter on camera, and other people involved on camera (e.g., witnesses, experts, victims). News packaging describes longer stories that include a number of perspectives and people.
@@TheDude4077 It's actually legal for a FCC licensed broadcaster to initiate a local emergency broadcast, but it has to be duly logged and otherwise comply with relevant 47 CFR 73 regulations.
It sounds like that news guy was clueless and being a drama queen.
It's easier for broadcasters to just use some unofficial attention getting noise for local activities, unless they're in a tornado alley where lots of locals have cheap EBS/EAS monitors responsive to the tone pair.
Lots of people in this comment section are using "broadcast" as if it has common IT network meanings, when in context it refers exclusively to FCC licensed broadcasters subject to the Communications Act of 1934 as amended, and 47 CFR 73 regulations.
A note:
The SAME header is actually more illegal than the attention signal. The attention signal is just a tone; still protected on air. The SAME header, however, if played over the air, can activate the Emergency Alert System, and that's what makes it illegal. It's only illegal if you cause damage with it.
The SAME tones are the entire alert, minus any human understandable content (voice, etc). They contain the type of alert, areas involved, and the duration of the alert. They're broadcast three times and the receiving equipment must be able to decode two of them in order to count it as a reception. That way an AM station transmitting the tones during a thunder storm can have one mangled by the electrical impulse of a lightning blast, but two make it by.
It's a horribly flawed system that works, as shown by the multiple nation wide tests over the past few years.
Yep, and he totally could have played it in this video.
Is this possibly what happened in Hawaii with the missle threat alert, a while back?
There have been cases where the EAS header was played on the air and activated the EAS at other TV and radio stations. The stations that played it were heavily fined. You would think it would be encrypted and only trigger the EAS if it was received within a certain time frame.
@EAS World hello, you interested about the tones too?
The EAS tone when it’s tested on TV is always jolting and a little unnerving
@purple X nobody cares
It reminds me of the one Vsauce video where he showed what one of the emergency alerts would be if America was getting nuked
Good, then it's working as intended.
Have a nice day and I hope we don't hear the EAS tone any time soon.
Wait till you listen to the Canadian one shits spooky
it’s weird that i kinda like the sound isn’t it
like if i hear it while i’m watching tv it’s unnerving, but if i just listen to it im like “sick dual-tone”
I like how you mentioned desensitization to the alert, which is actually very serious, especially if you watch EAS scenario videos all the time.
I am one of those. Idk what it is, but the tones give me the good chills down my spine. I have only ever heard them irl ONCE because I never really watched much TV and my area only gets storms bad enough to trigger it very rarely. In fact, my favorite video on this site is "Don't look up EAS scenario LOCAL58". Try watching that sucker in VR in Bigscreen Fullscreen in a quiet room and you'll go insane.
Like a fire alarm at school, I just assume it's a drill or some idiot pulled the alarm, now I don't take it serious (and that's not a good thing).
I’ve definitely been desensitized to the alert tone. I used to be terrified of it but now that I’m into EAS scenarios, that’s history.
One note. Under CONELRAD the radio stations didn't actually switch frequency. The antennas and transmitters are tuned to a specific frequency, and can't easily change that. What did happen was that everything but the 1240 and 640 stations would go dark. The 640 and 1240 stations would alternate in a sort of chain, only staying live for a few minutes at a time. The idea was to keep enemy missiles or bombers from being able to use these stations as fixed navigation aids. Early AM radios actually have little civil defense triangles at 640 and 1240 to make it easy for users to switch back and forth as the stations switched on and off.
I worked at a 1240 "relay key" station in the 70's before EAS took over. At that time, EBS had replaced CONELRAD. We had a red phone with no dial mechanism, and a red folder in the DJ booth. Occasionally the red phone would ring, and we'd answer. The person on the other end would give us a code (just like you see in the movies) and we'd open the appropriate envelope and read a code back to him. Once authenticated, we'd run an Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) test, which was basically playing those tones for 10 long seconds, followed by the standard script, then back to programming.
There were actually two different scripts. One was for the 640 and 1240 stations, and said, (quoted as close as I can from memory) "If this had been an actual emergency, this station would carry instructions and information on what you should do". For non-CONELRAD stations, the script instead said, "if this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune for further instructions.
Fun fact, the folder also included a sealed envelope with very specific instructions to never open that except as instructed during a national emergency. That envelope contained instructions on what to tell people and what to do, and even had helpful advice on how to permanently disable the station in the event that it was about to fall into enemy control. (yeah, we read one)
The way the new EAS works is basically a cascade system. in Atlanta WSB radio and TV is the primary station. So they get the message to send an alert. They activate the EAS system. Other stations are actually monitoring WSB's radio frequency. The two sounds at the start (we call them duck farts) are the Specific Message Area Encoder" information that tells the receivers what areas are included. If your station is included, the EAS system will open the audio and either play the WSB signal for the DJ, or if your station is automated, take over the signal and rebroadcast the WSB audio. And so on down the line.
Thanks for sharing, very interesting
I occasionally read through the Wikipedia page on EAS and the SAME tech. The whole thing is simultaneously fascinating and scary. It’s interesting (and probably a good thing) that the EAS has never really had to be used for a worst-case scenario-especially since word travels so fast on social media. The Hawaii false alarm incident shows how powerful that system is.
Thanks for the in-depth explanation. Definitely helps me to better understand how they work.
@@antiseth3964 the S.A.M.E. Wikipedia page is pretty interesting. Fun fact: there’s also a section for when it has been used incorrectly, as this video talks about. The FCC will *really* not play around, for good reason.
Interesting note related to your comment on being provided instructions on how to permanently disable the broadcasting station: the US armed forces provided instructions for how to permanently disable the Hammond organs used for religious services should the bases or camps using them need to be abandoned.
I used to think we lived in the worst timeline until you mentioned the theoretical Geico car insurance emergency commercial.
Because corporations _absolutely_ would do that.
Will* Give them time to changes the laws again.
Ah yes, capitalism at it’s finest
I thought this law was absurd until he pointed that out - I hear quite a few ads on the radio disguised as breaking news or weather reports, so there's no doubt they would do this if they could.
Yeah, I think the government made the right call on that one.
Under the Australian Commercial Radio and TV codes of practice, "Advertisements broadcast by a licensee must:
(a) not be presented as news programs or other programs;"
I couldn't tell you how often an advertiser (or a station advertising salesman) has asked me to "use a news theme to get attention".
I took great delight in pulling out the codes of practice and telling them to sod off!
When he made that nuke tsunami joke a producer at SyFy was like “write that down, write that down!”
Sharknado ???: sharknado meets nuknami!
The term you’re looking for is called “alarm fatigue”. They don’t want people to get used to the tones because alarm fatigue is a very real thing.
The other term you’re looking for to describe how bad it sounds is “discordant”. Two tones producing a harsh sound due to lack of harmony.
This concept also applies to icons/symbols used to convey health hazards and potential death such as biohazards and radiation. They’re going to have to be updated eventually. Also they’ll need to be updated more “frequently” than sounds I assume since images are more accessible and seen more often than these sounds can be accessed and heard
Yep! As a kid, if I woke up to our smoke alarm going off, I'd just think "oh, dad's burned the toast again", and go back to sleep!
@@welshgit My dorm was notorious for waking us up for drills and accidental alarms. People would burn popcorn constantly or fail at covering their vape or shower steam from the alarms. It took one month for us to nearly not get up and be in trouble for not showing up in the lot outside. It also took the entirety of the dorm to file out of the building like 10 minutes more than I'd imagine would be ideal for a damn FIRE. Guys started sleeping through it.
@@0Rookie0 Oh geeeze. I can imagine. When I was a student, the dorms had a basic fire alarm with activation buttons - no smoke alarms in the kitchens or bedrooms. If there had been, they'd have been going off all the time too!
It is called ....''Dissonant Tones''..........................
Fun fact: Local broadcasting stations are required to perform routine (weekly and monthly) tests of this system. The header used during tests specifically encodes that it is just a test, and any accompanying audio message similarly identifies that it is a test.
It's also used as basically *the* AMBER Alert sound today!
>. The header used during tests specifically encodes that it is just a test, and any accompanying audio message similarly identifies that it is a test.
* makes an EAS alert using valid test tones, but the TTS portion describes nuclear war from the DPRK
this comment is purely fictional
i remember that header!..they don't use it here anymore, just the tones...it was slowly downgraded from **incredibly Loud irritating beeping sound** THIS is just a test of the national emergency broadcast system. if it were an actual emergency you would be directed to your local emergency location. This is just a test....to that Blasting beep then : This is Just a test of the national broadcasting system....then to just: This is just a test.**BEEEpEEEEpEEPPP**...& recently...no words..just that infernal beeping.
Here's what Sam didn't mention:
A. Correction to 4:00 - these two tones are played for television broadcasts. Radio broadcasts over NOAA NWS weather radio frequencies use a 1050hz activation tone. Also, it's called an activation tone because it activates consumer and federal recievers. The activation tone plays for 10 seconds on NOAA weather radio frequencies.
2. SAME is an acronym for Specific Area Message Encoding. Generally each county is given a SAME code. (I'll speak on NOAA Weather Radio terms because that's easier to understand.) When the Weather Forecast Office issues a product - warning, watch, advisory, forecast, discussion, etc. - the message is broadcast over the internet with SAME codes. These codes line up with the areas that the product covers. When a product requires EAS activation, the NOAA Weather Radio transmitters look for the SAME codes. If their broadcast region includes the counties with those SAME codes, it interrupts the broadcast to play the emergency message. Other U.S. government agencies can issue EAS products to specific areas and even the whole country, which would mean ALL the SAME codes included on a messsge.
III. How does an EAS activation actually work? Consumer weather radios listen for both the leading tones and activation tone (as well as ending tones) before EAS activation status begins. BOTH ARE IMPORTANT! While they do grab human attention, the activation tone is mainly for the computer in a reciever to confirm it is recieving an EAS product and take appropriate action: sound a siren, broadcast on another frequency, or activate an alarm if it's a consumer radio. The leading tones are indended to distinguish an EAS broadcast from a superfluous activation tone, since other radio channels might broadcast these tones and may accidentally bleed into the NOAA frequencies. I have heard EAS broadcasts where the leading tones were not played (back when the new Paul voice was introduced to NWS radio) but only during bands of thunderstorms when multiple EAS activations were issued in a short time frame. Sometimes the computer doesn't seem to get it all right!
"Young Sheldon" is on CBS.
A radio station in Las Vegas played the SAME Tones 3 seperate times, within the span of a day, for a bit on a talk show in 2021 and got fined $20,000. The talk show host that knowingly aired the clip that contained the tones (after being told by a board op that it was illegal to do so) was also fined $20,000.
Nice
it depends where you are.
@hainesnoids In the US, that sound is regulated by the FCC. No station can air it outside of Emergency Alert System broadcasts and broadcasts from state Emergency Services (ie: Amber alerts, Senior/Silver alerts, etc.).
The SAME header contains information that other stations are listening to, so if you broadcast valid same headers it can start a chain reaction of literally every TV show and radio station and even mobile device in possibly the entire world to activate EAS. The attention tone, however just gets your attention and won’t trigger anything.
"Back when everyone was concerned that Russia was gonna start a war for no reason."
Wow, so glad we're no longer afraid of that 😐
...yeaaaahhhhhhh
So uh... About that.
There's always reasons, how about you spend an hour to learn about them.
Well, we can't be concerned about to start a war, if the war already started!
@@steve1978ger wooosh.
The tone is 100% legal to play on youtube, its only illegal to broadcast on am/fm radio or tv
Are emergency siren noises allowed? I swear I've heard them in both ads and songs on the radio. Seems those should be protected as well.
i think sirens are fair game because if you were hearing them in real life around you locally you’d be well aware of it. part of the EAS noises contain data i believe, and even the dual-tone can potentially trigger other radio stations playing it.
Any business that has the gall to use police sirens in their radio ads automatically gets boycotted by me.
@@SatoshiAR agree on that one. i was more thinking air raid sirens. if i heard one at radio volume, i would just assume it was part of an ad or something
Yeah pretty annoying to hear them in songs
@@ExperimentIV I've heard the air raid siren so many times that my reaction would just be to think it is noon. It wouldn't cause me to think about seeking shelter or anything it was designed to do.
its actually the SAME HEADER that’s illegal to play on live air. Not the attention signal. The SAME header contains important information and can trigger EAS equipment if the station that broadcasted that header was specifically being monitored by that said EAS equipment.
Learn something new everyday. I just took a look at the instructions for an old Motorola radio I've got and sure enough it describes the CONELRAD civil defense markings on the dial. Haven't heard the two-tone attention signal in so long, I'd forgotten what it sounded like - the sound of my youth. I can't quite recall the sirens on the firestation I assumed were also part of the emergency alert system.
Are you serious? I hear it multiple times/year where I live.
Not to mention that channels do the tests ALLLLLL the time.
When I went on Wikipedia to look up the sound, it only took me half a second before I realized I've heard this sound many times before. I had only ever heard it when I had gotten Amber Alerts on my phone, which surprisingly happens around where I live more than one would expect. I hadn't heard it used for any other kind of alert though, but I can see why that particular tone was chosen. No matter how many times I've heard it, it's still completely jarring and grabs my attention right away. It's a totally unpleasant sound, and I'd say it's nearly impossible to ignore.
Yep.
Same. Used for typhoon alerts in our area
That's actually a side effect of being easy to isolate for electronics and unlikely to occur incidentally. A very useful side effect, admittedly.
@Sarafina Summers Yup. It's the exact same one used on all Android and Google phones as well. It's good that they use a universal tone to grab people's attention, rather than a different tone for each type of alert.
Can you send the Wikipedia page?
The SAME Header sound may be the most terrifying sound ever. I remember waking up to it when my mom was driving us through Dayton OH where there was a tornado warning a few years back. I know it’s important to make sure people are alerted, but that sound is a great way to get people to panic.
well it is information so it's not like they made it sound like that intentionally
It's not just "unpleasant to the human ear" to get your attention. It's also because that makes it much much less likely to be a sound which would ever happen to occur in any other contexts (music, etc), which could cause false-alarms, etc.
If you're playing that sound, it's pretty much guaranteed it's only because you intended it to be (or at least sound like) an EAS broadcast.
Even more so with mobile phones as it is almost impossible under normal circumstances for several devices to go off at the same time with that sound
When I saw "why this sound is illegal to play" as the title, I knew it was going to be about the EAS
Since I get a few of those sounds by them conducting a "test" of the system every week, my immediate response is to change the channel.
I don't live in the US, but the first time I heard the sound was while playing CoD MW2 that has one of the missions play that sound. Fast foward a few years and I was with my family on Florida on vacation and immediately recognized the sound on the radio, I told everyone to listlen, it turned out to be a severe weather alert.
For once CoD of duty did something good for being edgy
If you want to hear the attention signal its basically the noise your phone makes when you get a weather warning notification. Just checked on wiki and my hair stood up. That is a horrible sound to hear for reasons 🤣
It is, indeed, that sound. Though both took it from the Emergency Broadcast System, which the EAS replaced in 1997.
It's meant that way. FEMA specifically chose it to be the most annoying tone they could come up with, because, well, it's supposed to get your attention.
Is it like the amber alert sounds? (i always shit my pants listeninsg to it)
@@edwardclark6731 That's the tone
Being from the midwest, that is the last sound I want to hear coming out of my weather radio in the middle of the night.
Yeah I remember that tone from periodic EBS test messages broadcast by radio stations way back when. I also remember the weekly air raid siren tests, every Tuesday at noon, that’s how many of us used to set our clocks. In San Francisco grade schools we would have periodic combined earthquake/ air raid drills, where we had to get away from windows and dive under desks.
😸🤠😂! Ah yes. Those fond memories of hiding under our desks looking at each other saying "This isnt going to do _ANYTHING_ to save us from nuclear radiation. They must _REALLY_ think were dumb!"
US Duck & Cover Drills
1955-1980
"...a silly antiquated age when everyone was worried that Russia was just gonna start a war out of nowhere for no reason..."
yup, that's it
Every war has a reason. Not a justifiable one, but a reason nonetheless
There's a reason, it's just a really bad one.
@@ileutur6863 The night Putin went crazy... Way down in the workshop he got tired of making noise.... Something must have snapped in his brain!!!... He thought he was getting a raw deal... The nigh he went nuts.... The night Putin went crazy... Something must have snapped in his brain.😦😲😵😵💫
@@MidoriOfTheShuinsen But USSR didn't want war same as US?
@@isaowater ...I was talking about current events, but to clarify, yes and no.
As a meteorology student and avid storm chaser that sound is amazing to hear. It means I did something right and I'm in the right spot to see storms. It probably doesn't have the "bite" it's supposed to for me though. I'm definitely not as sensitive to it anymore
In the midwest you don't even have to be a storm chaser to be desensitized. Lol. I'm a storm chaser, but my mom isn't and is still very desensitized to these tones and outdoor warning sirens.
It sounds like that one case from Ace Attorney Chronicles where Ryuunosuke Naruhodo needs to play a music box with encoded government information to the jury for the acquittal of his client.
i see you too have the power to find insanely weird ways to relate things to ace attorney
Fun fact: your smartphone can play this sound as well, scared the shit out of me several times last year when my area had an unusually high number of AMBER alerts
@qwqqewwqeqweqew I only get the non custodial parent alarm at like 3am. Well seeing as how I *was* sleeping, no Karen I haven't seen your ex's car and I ain't going looking and by the morning I'll have forgotten all about it. And what makes me mad is the report is from like 5 pm but they didn't run it until the middle of the night
Not only the tone, but it seems to blare at max loudness as well regardless of your current phone setting. Three times I've been in grocery stores when this alert system went off. Scariest seconds of my life as EVERY phone goes off at once. Hundreds of them all across the store suddenly activating in unison make it seem like the world is ending, good lord!
Went off at 4 once it can also force it to vibrate (probably the system handling like a phone call) possibly explaining why modern phones may still have fm chips
@@evil1by1 There were some people in the area who had a habit of misplacing children every afternoon. Those faux Amber Alerts were so annoying that I turned them off on my receiver. Or, seeing Karen's child while I'm sleeping, as you mentioned. I don't dream of Karen's child. I DO want to hear if there's a tornado on the ground, even if it wakes me up!
My phone has played this sound you won’t play before, back when BT was messing up some emergency broadcast tests. And I’m in the UK.
And how do you know it’s the same sound
@@raikou25 It's an international standard sound. Not illegal to play it in the UK though. UK system is purely phone based.
Can confirm, it is the same sound.
@@raikou25 I looked up the sound on other RUclips channels, checking it was the correct combination of pitches mentioned. Not all of RUclips is subject to the same legal restrictions as HAI. And it’s a very… memorable combination of tones. Does exactly the job it’s supposed to. It was extremely alarming even when I hadn’t heard of it.
@@raikou25 the ones on Phones use the sound from the US ones
I used two tone generators in two tabs in my browser to play the two tones simultaneously and they sound exactly like Apple's NL-Alert tone. In The Netherlands, we have a system called - you guessed it - NL-Alert that the government can use to alert citizens in certain areas for upcoming extreme weather, power outages, large fires with toxic smoke, a murderer on the loose, etc. They test this twice a year and all phones receiving this alert go on high volume and you can hear this sound all over the city since all 'connected' devices play this sound as loud as they can. This sound is unmistakably weird, penetrating and loud, even if you play it at a low volume.
By the way: my sound processor (Stereo Tool) goes berserk after having played this sound for more than ten seconds. It jumps up and down and starts sounding like some kind of digital jumping. After a while, it doesn't sound like the original sound at all anymore. I've played around with other frequencies and I've not found a combination that does this. Weird but intersting!
I absolutely hate this emergency sound, it gives me goosebumps immediately
I don't like the attention signal, but I think the SAME-encoding sound is much worse.
I cringe with I hear the SAME-encoded sound, where I simply shout "Who's kid got abducted" when I hear the attention tones (I hear those attention tones on my cell phone when an Amber alert is active...shame it never warns me of any impending severe weather).
That's what it's designed to do, get our attention and tell us all hell is about to break loose.
I didn't go to Wikipedia to hear the sound. I just synthesised it in Audacity instead. After all, you DID give us all the necessary information to do so...
Giving the specification isn't unlawful, only broadcasting it where it could potentially trip automated alert equipment is the reason behind prohibition of broadcasting it. Which is odd now, back in the day, tone alerts were quite basic, all analog. Now, the alerts are digital, with included encoded text, which can do anything from help one select what to interrupt services and retransmit for the government or not. There are administrative messages that should never be transmitted or played, there are management messages that also shouldn't be played and there are various types of alerts from Amber Alerts, Silver Alerts, some law enforcement alerts in other categories, to the disaster that you've just experienced has killed you and here is who you call to bury you alerts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding
The retcon of "it'll dilute attention" is bogus, as the siren alerts are allowed to be rebroadcast freely and they're also still used to warn people when all hell is about to break loose, such as with a tornado or to let you know to head toward the light.
Not that I'll likely notice, I'm pretty much on ground zero anyway, my first hint will be when Saint Peter's cussing me out - again. Hey, I feel like I'm that old in the morning.
We had a similar local system on our base overseas, the Giant Voice system. Company that made it folded up, so high was its quality and half of it quit working. I considered beginning a startup and bidding to fix it, but one good look and it was such a goat screw of a design that it'd never be even break even to make the thing sort of work. No matter how much you polish a turd, it'll not turn into a shiny golden ring. The best use for that mess was to give it to the enemy, it'd put them decades behind themselves technologically.
And alas, I'm being overly generous to the system's design. Faster, cheaper, better means brokety, broken, busted.
1:24 Caligon is, in fact, a real state, and I've been lied to by and by about it. Thanks, Half as Interesting!
"When everyone was worried that Russia was just gonna start a war out of nowhere for no reason"
That sounds familiar
Yeah, never gonna happen ... Oops !
Yeah. It only took the dissolution of the Soviet Union and 30 more years for the unlikely to become a reality.
democrats have brought back
the 1912 plague
the 1920s recession
the cold war
all at once!
That's the joke.png
@Sarafina Summers yes
For those who don't wanna read too much: SAME headers are even more of a problem than the attention tone!
*Disclaimer: I am not a licensed radio technician, and this information is only as good as my understanding of the subject. The equipment I mention is part of a hobbyist collection and does not broadcast to a radio station.*
The funny thing is that I own equipment that powers the Emergency Alert System. Granted, the equipment is not compliant with the current FCC guidelines, but it has the same core functionality. It's just as illegal (if not, more illegal) to broadcast SAME headers as it is the attention tone, as those can actually trigger alert equipment depending on how the station has theirs set up, and god forbid if someone transmits the EAN code mentioned in this video, as all of the EAS equipment will retransmit the alert regardless of what time and what location it was encoded for. This is according to the settings on both of my EAS encoder/decoders, though, and may be different for others. I should mention that one of my units does have an indicator for when an attention tone is being received, but it doesn't generate any alerts or log it to my computer. And yes, I'm well aware there are several comments like this already.
i literally prefer this explanation over the entire video itself lmao
ok toaster
That portion of the alert tone that you did play is something I will always despise, because it is used for weather alerts. My stepfather had a weather alert radio setup in our home growing up, and I always hated when it came on during the night to inform us of weather that was "near" us but wasn't actually near us. To double dip in my hatred of it, we have one of those radios as well at the hospital I work at, and on nights when it goes off, it goes off a lot, and we can't silence it until the human message comes across that tells us what counties the alert is actually for to know whether we have to call out a weather warning to the hospital on the whole, so we have to sit through the whole thing quite a lot.
Now this is stuck in my head:
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency ... you'd already be screwed. But again, this is only a test."
Yup, that was my childhood. I don't know why Sam said that system didn't work - the tests worked fine all the time! 🤣
Yeah, and I swear it seems like someone is running a "weekly test" almost every day!
Actual "test" results.
My father, who has good hearing, frequently falls asleep to these sounds.
Easiest way to wake him,
is to turn off the tones.
Bruh I was reading the comments, and i realized: "I probably shouldn't be reading this comment section at 10:30 pm
The interval between those two frequencies is roughly 4.6 cents sharp of an equal-tempered major second.
Weirdly, it's even close to a purely tuned 9:8 major second, i.e. within a single cent. Weirdly, if they had gone with 963 Hz vs. 856 Hz, they would have had an exactly pure major second.
*closer
This is why I both envy and pity those who have perfect pitch.
In case any of You where wondering
Sam Denby is an American RUclipsr, best known for creating the edutainment RUclips channels Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, Extremities and Jet Lag: The Game.
As a severe weather "enthusiast" and certified storm spotter down here in Dixie Alley, I hear these EAS tones a lot in the Spring and even in the Fall and Winter. I have the sounds downloaded to my phone and use them as alert tones for some of the weather apps I use because of how unmistakable and obnoxious they are.
For anyone wondering what the two-tone sound is, it's right here
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emergency_Alert_System_Attention_Signal_20s.ogg
Found my new alarm clock noise.
@@PsRohrbaugh Probably a bad idea. If you are woken by an actual alert, it is possible to disregard it and end up getting tornadoed on or whatever.
Personally, I just use a recording of an early 90s alarm clock.
They use that sound here in the Netherlands on mobile phones for emergencies however it's not a continues version but a always in bursts of about 2 seconds then 1 second noting and back to 2 seconds and continuing for a wile.
@@user2C47 Man, my leather jacket is from the early '90s (got it second hand three years ago from a coworker for $30). ツ
I know what the early '90s alarm clocks are also, those brown rectangles found in cheap hotels with red digital numbers that have a loud grating beeping noise.
@@user2C47 Most people disregard tornado sirens and tornado warnings anyway. Correction, most people would grab their cameras or sit on their porches to watch for the tornados.
I am old enough to associate "that sound" with the possibility of nuclear war. In school, we had nuclear bomb drills where we would huddle under our desks to protect us from the exploding window glass, because that would actually work.
A few years later, the same drill was instead taught as "tornado preparedness" and people were distracted by lining up for gasoline according to the last number on their license plate (one day odd, the next day even, I forget what it meant is you had no numbers on your plate - odd or even?).
This sound is actually not illegal to be on RUclips contrary to many people here saying. It is illegal on radio and TV since if broadcasted, the other stations will also pick it up, triggering a mass panic situation. But very interesting information, Thank you.
Interestingly, on smartphones today you will get that tone with an emergency alert notification. You don't get the "fax machine noise", but just the disharmonous sine waves that are for getting your attention. There's no point in playing the fax noises on a smart phone (as far as I know).
@AccessMemory That's because you *HAVE*. Mine does. Exact Implementation depends on several factors. Including Manufacturer, Hardware and especially Software+Version; just to name a few.
As far as I can recall, I'd always get the "fax machine noises" on my phone...It's been a while since I've heard an alert though, since I've turned off AMBER alerts and we don't get severe weather.
“WE PLAYED THIS SOUND AND ALMOST DIED (OMG!) (100% REAL) 🔊☠️❌”
- RUclips creators be like
This is really funny. Thanks for incorporating humor for those of us who don't laugh as often as we should.
You forgot to mention yelling, Fire!, in a crowded theater, bar, club etc. You can be charged with homicide in some states if someone gets crushed in the rush for the exits.
Google: Italian Hall disaster
On Christmas Eve 1913 someone yelled "Fire" during a party for miner's families; 73 men, women, and children were crushed to death. The miners were on strike at the time and had been for 5 months. There is reason to think that a man who was part of a group created by the mine owners to oppose the strike raised the cry. There was no fire.
So, this is not a theoretical situation.
Oh, and the SCOTUS ruling only says "theatre", not a crowded theatre.
it is easily one of my least favorite sounds of all time. it genuinely brings up childhood trauma of extreme storms in my hometown. makes my spine shiver
I heard it all the time for severe thunderstorms on TV or radio. "Eeeeehhh! Eeeeehhh!" and then "BOOOOOOP!" I wonder if THAT is the illegal to use tone he's talking about. "The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning..."
The sounds are not illegal to play, just illegal to broadcast on the radio. The cops aren't gonna kick in your door for playing the EAS tones on your iPod. However, speaking of the attention signal, the reason they chose those two tones specifically is because they needed a standard for consumer radio equipment to be able to detect the broadcast. Only radio stations listen for the first three screeches, known as Specific Area Message Encoding. The attention signal is designed to trigger certain functions on consumer radio equipment. Police scanners and weather radios are often programmed to squelch, or stay silent, until an alert is received. Some of them have their own built-in sirens which activate when this happens. They are listening for the attention tones, not the Specific Area Message Encoding tones.
0:46 that moment when immediate realization that this vid's about eas
As someone that works at a terrestrial television broadcaster, I know these sounds, and the rules behind them, very well
After being terrorized in a car by a tornado as a kid that EAS tone on the TV would send me into hysterics. Sounds definitely connect to memories .
I’ll bet every American heard the sound in their head before you had to describe it… it’s in our DNA 😂
hear it at least multiple times a week. just waiting for a real MAJOR EMERGENCY and almost everyone to ignore it because of the excessive frequency of tests
At first, when he mentioned the Cold War, I thought it was the tone to activate sleeper agents...
@@OnyxEclypse It probably is.
I commented what it was talking about before the part where he mentioned it
I hear that exact tone quite frequently during phone calls when the other person hangs up, also when a child abduction occurs ~20 miles away while I'm stuck at school and can't possibly be affected.
That phone call tone consists of lower frequencies in the United States.
Let's not forget that Siren Head (a creepy-pasta horror) plays the EAS alert tones while stalking prey or wandering, though I don't recommend entering that rabbit hole unless you're ready for some spooky nightmares.
4:45 quite frankly that’s what’s happened here in Ontario Canada, our amber alert system on phones is the same level as a presidential alert (nukes, etc.). Constantly the amber alerts happen at night, are for a very wide area and they bypass do not disturb. At this point most people are frustrated with this and ignore the alerts or outright disable them. I don’t get why we didn’t adopt the same standard as the US. It’s been like this for 3 years or more at this point. People also get mad when you point out this flaw, don’t get me wrong I’m glad we have amber alerts and it has saved children’s lives but it has caused the boy who cried wolf scenario and it’s time for our government to fix it here in Ontario.
Yeah, in the US, the phone-alert system only notifies people within 20-30 miles of the abduction, not only due to people being desensitized, but because there'd be a possible influx of false leads from folks who are hours away.
At the bare minimum, they need to re-standardize on using different sounds for Amber Alerts than they do major emergencies.
Yeah. I've turned Amber Alerts off on my weather radio receiver (I get all EAS alerts as options, and can turn individual ones off and on), because we've had people in the local area who'd set off an Amber Alert whenever they couldn't find their child - the same ones, several times per day. Now, the Amber Alert system has saved children's lives, but people need to be stopped (perhaps with fines) for abusing it.'
In another state, visiting my brother who lives as a shut-in in an ex-burb, he'd get several per day - it was annoying and he couldn't shut them off. He really didn't have much opportunity to have seen a child other than his grandson. More often, it would wake him up, although we did follow some excitement of a real kidnapped child taken by a family member, driven a couple hundred miles and reported, (returned safely, and the family member arrested - as we heard later on the news).
0:23 the CIA approves this message, JFK does not
I live up in mountains southern Colorado in a valley. one Sunday morning i woke up and the power was out no internet. There was many military jets flying around which was not normal for this area.
I went out to my ford bronco and turned on the radio ( my radio reception am/fm is also bad) i finally reached a station and first thing i heard was the emergency broadcast sound and an announcer saying this is the emergency broadcast system. next thing I HEARD THIS IS AN ADVERTIZEMENT FOR SURVIVAL FOODS. the announcer went thru the add, then i heard normal broadcasting. I'm retired military not easy to scare but so Luckly i did not need to change my underwear. Never did find out what the air force was doing. Power outage was a tree took the lines down.
Hear that initial burst once a week when they do the scheduled test for the EAS because there is a nuke power station a few miles away. Always makes the heart skip a beat until they say it is a test.
I seem to notice the noise the most when the weather is bad and assume they are about to say things will get worse.
Every station nationwide performs weekly tests.
@@williamfeely6264 EAS is activated for many weather warnings, for example tornado warnings, and some flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings (but only if impacts are expected to be "considerable" or "catastrophic"). So kinda, yeah, they do say things will get worse or are getting worse.
This puts me in mind of the "Brown Note" as shown to great effect on a 'South Park' episode where the kids surreptitiously substitute the music sheets for a world-wide recorder blow, resulting in the whole world simultaneously soiling their pants.
This sound can also work as a brown note.
huh, the encoded header does a much better job of grabbing my attention and carrying the ascribed meaning of "emergency alert" than the attention signal does for me
I grew up to this sound actually. I lived in MS so every spring and fall (tornado season), my PBS kids would be disrupted by the EAS tone
The tv ones are the worst
Recently the Hong Kong government used this to broadcast an "emergency" message about a hospital being converted to treat COVID patients only... needless to say, it was massively criticized (desensitizing people of the sound, as mentioned in the video)
But that is an important thing for the general public to know, including those who don't routinely read/watch/listen to news: the fact that a particular hospital, though still open, is no longer a general treatment location.
@@Azlehria I agree, it is crucial for everyone to know. However, it is not "urgently crucial", as 1. they'll still admit people with life-threatening situations and 2. accidentally going there isn't a big deal cause you'll be turned around by security long before you reach the buildings
"criticize the Hong Kong government"? Can't have that over there now...
@@Game_Hero you can criticize the government, if you support the government :)
@@FrozenBusChannel The world is with you, Hong Kong, stay strong!
Correction: 5:19 Young Sheldon is on CBS, not NBC.
Living near Arkansas/Oklahoma state line, I hear this test sound quite often... the only time it really bothered me was in April 1996, after the tornado had passed over 10 minutes earlier.
They were a little slow calling that one!
In central Oklahoma here. I've appreciated it sometimes when it's really scary outside.
Found this interesting as a commerical played this recently and I was amazed it was legal. They probably got a bit screwed for it.
ok, so if the specific tone is illegal to play unless there is an emergency, what if you altered it by a couple of hz in each direction so that you make one that sounds similar and is just as attention getting, but isn't the official tone ?
When you've heard it enough to already know exactly what it sounds like
Nice profile picture
@@ionic7777 i might be mistaken, but pretty sure it's Nolegs, from Epic Battle Fantasy
hear it no less than once a week. getting old... wonder how many people will ignore a real broadcast when the time comes...
I love how he mixes interesting stories with some really funny humor.
"Here's the basic rundown on what happens when the US detects a nuke, or a tsunami, or a nuke that got swept up in a tsunami and formed the dreaded Nuke Tsunami, which, oh no, oh God, it's headed straight for the Liberty Bell!"
I only ever knew about CONELRAD because of the episode of The Twilight Zone called The Shelter. I always heard it as CONRAD, though it's possible the kid who says it is just saying it wrong.
Maybe it was illegal to say the full name in a fictional presentation?
@@Bacopa68 Oh, maybe. Or they felt the need to change it so no one would overhear it and mistake it for an actual emergency notification.
Definitely saying it wrong.
NOTE: The tone is NOT illegal to play or listen to. you are fine watching a RUclips video with the tone on it or making it yourself in audacity. you CANNOT broadcast the tone to a public radio, television station or over other forms of controlled radio such as HAM radio and CB radio. it is specifically an FCC violation and not a federal law, meaning if the FCC do not have the authority to control it, they cannot fine it.
Dumbing down the facts to make it easier to ingest is ok, so don't think this is me saying HaI is wrong or stupid. But i know many people who may take this too seriously considering how serious an actual EAS alert can be.
No.. it's bad to listen to it at all
@@SpanishArmadaProd im listening to it right now, call the police.
@@SpanishArmadaProd no
For context: The FCC doesn't care if you use the tone AS LONG as it doesn't go on the air on any station that is licensed such as TV stations, AM/FM stations, or the Government run NOAA weather stations
What's with the 15 star (?) flag at 1:05 ? Random movie footage with cars but from before 1818?
It's still legal to fly any previous US flag. I still see 48 star flags frequently, as well as other numbers, especially 13 or 36.
"This sound is illegal to play"
Every analog horror channel:
"I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that"
Local58
Its only the second part where it goes slightly longer
The college I am close to plays this on their loudspeakers before every game. Being the Iowa state cyclones the emergency message goes something like this. "This is a cyclone weather alert, strong storms have been indicated by radar near Jack Trice Stadium, Sooner fans in the affected area should seek immediate shelter."
0:55
this aged so poorly that the reason it aged poorly happened before the video came out
#doyouknowwhatsarcasamis
This reminds me of the prohibition on using red crosses on white backgrounds in video games, for the reason of "people might mistake the video game for an actual first aid kit" or something.
I thought that was a myth?
I thought it was due to copyright issues or was a myth entirely lol
@@TitaniusAnglesmith Nope,
the creator of stardew valley actually got in trouble because of this. Violated the geneva conventions.
I don't believe they got punished or anything tho. They immedietly fixed the issues.
So it’s that lovely sound that woke me up at 4:30 in the morning from my phone going off at full volume because they needed to test it
2:36 so we're just not going to talk about this part? 😳
*lmfao-*
only in ohio
I got an Amber alert right at 0:37 and thought you illegally played EAS tones 😅😂
*LMFAO-*
apparently if u play it near any actual eas equipment, it deliveres the message, which could start the system up.
When you mentioned couple of tones, I knew it would be about EAS systems. Pretty awesome. A nice and simple explanation of what’s happening. The tones used are FSK and DTMF. Thanks for bringing some light to what goes on in terms of emergency preparedness. Awesome video of beginners guide to EAS, FSK and DTMF
Where, exactly, is DTMF used as a functional part of the EAS?
Got to watch before this video is banned. The sound is... Interesting to say the least...
@purple X your death?
the sound that we didnt hear?
@purple X I understand why it’s illegal.
Such a shitty “motivational” video should be considered as a crime against humanity 😀
It won't be. Completely legal as long as you aren't broadcasting it over the air.
Goddamnit now my anxiety is peaking because after the two tones my brain automatically put the final tone in and honestly i get legitimately so paranoid with that alert istg
1:33 absolute f for my boy Oregon who just got annexed by california
Im pretty sure you're allowed to play the EAS sound effect on RUclips as long as someone doesnt stream the video to a live broadcast channel or station
You can play EAS tones on youtube, however over the air is highly illegal
It’s only illegal to _broadcast_ these tones on the air. Not to put them on a video. I am an EAS Creator myself and can confirm that you will only get in trouble if you _broadcast_ these tones. Radio stations get fined because there is an audience listening to the radio. That should clear it up. Also, have not heard of any station that has used 25 second tones unless you’re KBPA who uses 30 second attention tones for *WHATEVER* reason. Also, the EAS has been hacked many times believe it or not. It is impossible to count how many times this has happened. This video is completely wrong.
Back in the days of CONELRAD or early EBS with a 1 kHz +/- 50 Hz tone (playable from cart on tape), or late EBS or early EAS with 853.0 and 960.0 Hz equal amplitude tones and +/- 0.5 Hz tolerances, 47 CFR 73 tech standards defined requirements for tones and for detectors (wider frequency tolerance), but they never defined exactly how different a signal would need to be to sound the same to humans, but not be that alert tone as defined in FCC regulations with legally restricted use.
National security? The number of actual alerts to bend over and watch for your town to vaporize in the combined histories of all 3 sets of acronyms, precisely zero. Predator politicians need their illusions of security theater, a disgusting absurdity.
Yes. A main purpose was to trip tone decoders. Soneone has a mostly working TFT decoder on YT. A fully restored daisy chain would be a good museum exhibit.
@@DoomTape1981 A fully restored realistic demo would have a letter about a rare effort to link up stations live for a statewide real time test, be sitting on a Program Director's desk unopened the week after the test was missed by many stations. (real history with real stations)
The systems and standards have had major changes to include non-broadcast cel and alternative media, plus real time authorized source to actual stations live retransmissions, and data integration, but in the old days most stations would log received tests, and send their own at convenient program breaks, and not try to (legally optional) link a major station's weekly test for rebroadcast as their own.
Given that TFT 760-(options) EBS systems were 2 rack unit frames to hold 3 modules, generally a tone generator, AM or FM digitally tuned receiver, and a decoder, all separate other than power supply, there's not much to demonstrate that can't be done testing the generator into the decoder, and show maps of state networks, and real life stories about how absurd the system was outside a few regions that used it for tornado and similar issues.
It's been many years, but I've installed, configured, and repaired, tested, and aligned those systems.
Is it just me or does anyone else find the two-tone sound on Wikipedia kind of relaxing?
Two-Tone has always been the best ska
i dont i hate it.
@@InvadersMC I don't get why people are so scared of the sound or hate it. It just sounds like a normal sound
@@new_delhi It sounds really eerie,
@@new_delhi its usually associated with tornado warnings, at least in the midwest
Not what I expected, but that left two questions:
1. If nobody is allowed to play it, how are we meant to know about it? Does it matter? Edit: I now recall hearing it on the TV, including from other states. Still, tests are infrequent, aren't they?
2. As we transition to other options like satellite broadcasts, has/will the system been/be changed?
Trust me, you'll know. It's so loud and annoying that it'll be hard to miss.
1. 2 reasons:
a. It will scare the shit out of you
b. If you’re watching TV, the program gets interrupted and a message gets shown on the TV screen. If you’re on a phone, a notification gets shown
2. Possibly
1- it does get played. It's that sound you hear every time a radio or TV station does an Emergency Alert System test.
2-that is a very good question, and one they haven't 100 percent figured out. Cable stations can break in even if you're on your DVR, but satellite or online is a whole different story. Because you're not hard wired to a location, it's tough to figure out what alerts you need to see. That's part of why the "presidential" alert option on phones cannot be turned off. As a last resort, they know they have one way to reach every single cellphone in the country, which would spread the message very quickly.
Tests are weekly.
@@karlrovey Seriously?