‘This is only a test’—not the end of the world or a government plot to track you
‘This is only a test’—not the end of the world or a government plot to track you
CORRECTION: Your phone will make a loud noise at 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 4.
CORRECTION: In an earlier post featuring this story, the time was incorrectly listed at 2:20 p.m. That, alas, was Eastern Standard Time. In our time zone, we’ll hear the alert at 11:20 a.m.
Chances are you will hear a loud, startling sound coming from your phone, television or radio on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 4, but don’t worry—it’s only a test.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on Oct. 4, at 11:20 a.m PT.
The WEA portion of the test will be directed to cell phones; the EAS portion of the test will be sent to radios and televisions.
Much like an Amber Alert, a loud, distinctive noise will blare from your phone, and the following message will appear on your phone screen: “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.”
Cell towers will broadcast this emergency alert for 30 minutes starting at 11:20 a.m., but each phone should receive only one alert.
It’s the second national emergency test of cellphones. The first occurred in 2018.
The government issues only three types of alerts—other than tests—through National Wireless Emergency Alert System:
Alerts issued by the President of the United States or the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency;
Alerts involving imminent threats to safety of life, issued in two different categories: extreme threats and severe threats;
AMBER Alerts.
Don’t want to hear this test? Simply turn your phone off during this time period.
Skip Jirrels, the Public Safety Outreach Coordinator for the city of Sebastopol, hopes you won’t do that however.
“There are local alerts that happen – one of which is SoCoAlert. That's our local effort to inform people about what's going on locally. These tests are the nationwide systems being tested,” Jirrels said.
“It's sort of like the test that used to happen—I mean, I'm an old guy—so it's sort of like the tests that used to happen on the radio or on the TV [see illustration of the old Emergency Broadcasting test screen above], where they would test the national system. And then they stopped doing that for decades, right? And now they're doing that same kind of testing again.”
Jirrels said there are the inevitable conspiracy theories floating around about the upcoming test.
“There’s some misinformation or disinformation—I’m not sure which—about there being a dark side to this test,” Jirrels said, “Like there's some hidden message coming into our phones or like there's some hidden way for the government to be able to track us if our phones actually get this alert.” (See a full rundown on these conspiracy theories by the Associated Press here.)
This, he said, is nonsense—though he said the system can detect how many phones were able to pick up the message.
“I just think that it is important for us to know that they're actually trying to see, ‘Hey, are we getting to people?’ I think that's really important,” Jirrels said.