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So .... I got a note the other day from my cable TV service provider telling me that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was doing their first ever test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) on November 9th at 2.00 Eastern. Basically, there's a hooked up system where FEMA can send a message out over the TV and Radio stations if they ever need to let the population know there's an emergency.

Now, before we get into it, I will say that this system is extremely valuable as it is used regionally for alerts such as bad weather or, I do remember once, hearing an alert put out with the make, color and license plate of a car that had been used to kidnap a child.

But that said, an alert going out on TV and Radio ..... seriously? As opposed to sending out network wide text messages on the mobile phone networks and/or a system wide message on Twitter and Facebook. We have a TV, but we don't watch it. We record all the shows we like and play them back so we can skip through all the commercials. We only ever listen to the radio on the drive into work, so it's pretty unlikely that I'd get this emergency message if it were put out there and I'm pretty sure there's many people in similar situations. I'm just thinking that a nationwide emergency alert would need to be pretty serious and I'd have thought you'd want it to get to as many people as possible.

Follow that up with the fact that they are putting a lot of effort into telling people this test is coming as there are communications problems with the equipment in place. The hope is that they can change the message in most cases to say something like “this is a test” but in other cases, they aren't able to make the change and it will say “this is an emergency”. Ah ha! In order to combat this, they can overlay the visual message with sound and those people that see the emergency message will hear someone saying this is a test ..... but what about the deaf and hard of hearing? Well, they're hoping that people in the communities will tell them this test is going to happen and that they shouldn't worry ...... but they are working on updating the communications equipment.

Back to my earlier point of using modern communications means to get the message out. I would think the message would spread quicker if it were posted on the social media sites. In fact, you could argue that there's already been a test of the EAS when the Phillies fans heard about the death of Osama Bin Laden during the Phillies-Mets game and started chanting “U.S.A! U.S.A!” whilst holding up their phones with the news on them. I could suggest that FEMA put together a video of a cat singing about the emergency and posting it on YouTube as that would likely go viral faster than the news would spread through TV.