Emergency Alerts Matter

0:02Keith You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, monitored by Duct tape, the real duct tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.

0:21 Hey, all, if you're looking for the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for October the 20th, 2026, you have the right spot. My name is Keith, and let's get a few administrative things out of the way right off the top. The amount of international listeners that are downloading the podcast over the last three months has increased almost 20%.

0:43 I appreciate all my listeners, both domestic and abroad, but I especially like the fact that more folks abroad are tuning in. So please do me a favor: like, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. So with that said, let me go into some of the towns where we have new listeners, both U.S.

1:05 and abroad. Lena, Illinois, Oregon, Ohio. How cool is that? Now this place is in Denmark, but I'm going to mess it up. S-T-O-R-E. And then the second word is M-E-R-L-O with the line through it. S-E-Z Land, Trumbull, Texas, Evington, Virginia, Statesville, North Carolina, down near Charlotte, Borden, New Hampshire, Lyle, Illinois, Hudson, New York, Forest, Ontario, Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire.

1:39 So thank you so much for all of those new listeners. Like I said before, episode 21, the final episode for Lone Man on the Ridge is ready to go. I just need to find the time to download that. In addition to the new site, BuildYourArk, A-R-K, BuildYourArk.net. If you go to the article section, normally what the articles do is the articles are generated and posted within several hours of the posting of a brand new episode.

2:09 However, I do have the ability of going in and creating an article without it being tied to an episode. So what I did about 45 minutes ago, I did one on the Corn Index. We've spoken about this before. So the cool thing about the site is not only do you get an article that's tied to a recent podcast, I have the ability of generating an article that has nothing to do with any recent podcast.

2:37 So go to buildyourark.net, go to the articles tab, and take a look at the article. It's about a six-minute read that I did on the Corn Index. So that's a nice new feature that I have available to me on the new website. So tonight let's talk about the emergency alert system here in the United States. So this is coming up, and most people treat it as an annoyance, and I understand why.

3:05 On Tuesday, November 17th, around 220 in the afternoon, Eastern time, why 220? No idea. The US government is going to run a nationwide test of the emergency alert system. I always call it the emergency broadcast system. So if you've got a radio on or your TV, your programming might get interrupted for about a minute.

3:28 You'll hear that very annoying sound, and then the test message, the one that says this is only a test. Again, most folks are going to be like, oh, great. They'll mute the phone, turn the volume down, wait for it to pass, and then get on with their day. I get it. But I want you to do something different with that minute.

3:45 And let's treat it like a dress rehearsal in a sense. So, in the interest of clarity, because clarity is the entire game when it comes to alerts, November 17th, 220 Eastern, that's about 11:20 on the West Coast. FEMA sends out a test message through a system that feeds our emergency alerts, radio stations, TV, cable, satellites.

4:08 They all interrupt normal programming for a short window and pass along to test. It goes out in English and in Spanish. If the weather is bad that day or something big is going on, they have a backup date of December 3rd. So in the unlikely event that there is a genuine emergency or something serious going on that needs the attention of the government, they will go ahead and postpone the test until December the third.

4:39 Now, this test is over the air, radio and television. It's the first nationwide test of the broadcast system in almost three years. So one note so you're not caught off guard either way. This one is the broadcast test. Don't count on your cell phone buzzing in your pocket or interrupting a meeting with everybody else's phones going off.

5:00 That was done a couple years back. If your phone goes off for the alert, that's fine. But the thing I can tell you is that for certain, this one is going out over the air. So if you think about it, it's a good reminder all by itself because the radio is a layer that shows up even when nothing else does.

5:18 So here's a question I'm sure several of you are already thinking. What if I'm not watching regular TV? What if I'm watching YouTube, Netflix, or streaming something on my phone during that afternoon? Well, you probably will not get the alert. The streaming apps are not wired into the emergency alert system.

5:36 There's no hookup that allows a government to reach into YouTube or Netflix and interrupt what you are watching. If you're streaming on your phone or through a smart app on your TV, that test and someday a real alert can roll right past you and you'll never know. The one exception is if you watch through cable or a satellite box, they are part of the system.

6:01 So the box itself will cut over to the test and then let you go back to your show. And remember, on this round, there is no cell phone alert plan. So that's the reason why folks should have an over-the-air radio. A cheap battery or crank radio that doesn't care what app you're using, whether the towers are up or not, whether you remember to turn it off or put it into do not disturb, those kind of radios just work.

6:28 That's why it's the first thing on the list, not the last. And so this is bigger than just one test. A lot of folks out there have already cut the cord completely. No antenna, no cable box, no satellite, just like me. The TV is a smart TV running apps. Music is a streaming app, news comes off your phone.

6:49 If that's your house, then stop and really understand. The government's main way of warning the public will not reach you. Not because it doesn't work, because you're not listening to a device where it can reach you. A lot of folks have quietly stepped outside cable TV and commercial TV, so they don't really have an effective way of receiving these alerts.

7:17 Now, I'm not telling everybody to go up and put an antenna or call your cable company and get plugged back in. I'm just letting you know that a $15 or $25 crank radio fills that gap. For a lot of modern households, that's not very expensive. And we should have one of those in our get home bag or our go bag anyway.

7:38 It could be, in some circumstances, the only direct line you have to get an official government alert. And I'll throw some numbers at you here because they tell the story better than I can. The last time they ran one of these was back in 2023. The test reached about 97% of the stations in the chain. That's not saying 97% of the population heard the alert.

8:05 So the system itself works. Nearly every station that was supposed to pass it along did pass it along. So that's the good news. But here's the catch, and it's a big one. Reaching those stations is not the same as reaching the people because streaming is now just about half of all television watched in the United States, more than cable and the old-fashioned over-the-air broadcast that I can't tell you the last time I watched.

8:32 Something like 80 million households have cut the cord when it comes to traditional cable. Roughly two-thirds of the homes out there do not pay for TV in the old school way. So you've got a warning system that almost works perfectly, pouring a signal into pipes that fewer and fewer people are connected to.

8:52 The system's not broken, it's just the audience walked out of the room during the commercial. And this round, with no phone alert in the mix, the gap is going to be even wider than usual. So why do we even have these alerts? The same reason the fire department tests their sirens, the same reason you pull the smoke detector down twice a year and hit the button and change the batteries.

9:17 A warning system you've never tested is just a theory. You don't want to find out the silly thing is broken. The only day, the most important day that you need, and that is the day that you need to use it. And here's the thing that surprises most people when they hear this: the big nationwide version, the one where the entire country lights up at once, the presidential alert has never been used for a real emergency.

9:44 Not once. Not on 9-11, not for any war, nor any disaster, any crisis in over 60 years of the system existing in one form or another. The only time the national signal has ever gone out were during tests. So folks are going to hear this and say, well, why do we even have it? And that's kind of thinking about it backwards.

10:07 That's like saying, you've never needed to use the fire extinguisher under your sink, so let's just throw it out. The whole point of it is to have it sitting there ready for the day that we hope never comes. And it's not like the system sits idle either. The same pipes carry tornado warnings, flash flood warnings, amber alerts, even at your local level.

10:28 So the infrastructure is there. It's not like it's collecting dust. But the national button has never been pushed. You know, I wish I could find out where that button is. I'm sure that's just a metaphor. I'm sure there's not just like a big red button sitting on somebody's desk, but that'd be kind of cool if it was.

10:44 Anyway, I digress. The system's working the whole time. It's just running in the background. So it's not waste, it's just being prepared. So they test it. They send the signal all the way down the chain from the federal level out to your local stations, and they make sure that every link is active as it gets passed along.

11:03 That's just good practice. So that's kind of like what I tell folks is if you have a plan, practice your plan. You don't want to wait until the poop hits the fan and then blow the dust off your plan and try to test it out. And that's the thing. They're rehearsing the system that afternoon. Why wouldn't you want to rehearse yours at the same time?

11:25 So, like I said a few minutes ago, we have a lot of folks that listen outside the United States. Canada has the same type of warning system. They call it alert ready, and it's TV, radio, and cell phones. The UK built one a couple years back, and here's an example of it working. Last year, they used it to evacuate part of a city after someone dug up a live World War II bomb in their backyard.

11:51 I remember reading that story. Phones in the area lit up, people cleared out, nobody got hurt. That's the system working exactly how it is planned to work. Across the EU, most countries run a shared standard, even if they have their own name on it. But the one that puts ours to shame is Japan. Earthquakes, tsunamis don't give you much of a warning.

12:14 So they went all in. Their system, called a J Alert, fires automatically. It doesn't wait for somebody to push a button on a desk, and it doesn't just go to your phones. They've got outdoor loudspeakers mounted in towns all over the country. So these warnings reach whether you're inside, outside, asleep, your phone's dead, your phone's off, it's in a drawer.

12:38 If the big one is coming, the entire town, city, if they need to, country hears it at the same time. And so here's a piece worth sitting with and thinking about. Here's the thing every one of those systems has in common, ours included. They only work if the warning can actually reach you. Japan solved that by putting loudspeakers on poles.

13:01 So most of the rest of us, we're betting on a phone and a broadcast signal and hoping you're near something that's listening. That's why I keep coming back to the little hand crank radio. Regardless of the country, regardless of where you are or the type of system, that radio will get you access to the emergency broadcast message.

13:24 So here's what I'd like to do when the test comes across on the 17th. Start with an obvious one as a practice. When the grid goes down and the cell towers are jammed, how do you actually find out what's going on? If the answer is, I will just look at my phone, then you don't have a plan. You have a phone, and that's not the same thing.

13:45 So do you have a radio that works without the grid? Battery, hand crank, solar something. And here's the part that some people skip. Do you have fresh batteries for it? Not, oh, they're somewhere in the drawer. This test is a reminder to go grab your little radio, check the batteries, and if it's been a year or six months, just put fresh ones in there just so you know.

14:10 Next, do you know your stations? Not during an emergency, but do you know them now? Which local AM or FM station you would turn to? So if you have a NOAA weather radio, it should be programmed for your area. If it's not, just go to the FEMA website, go to the NOAA website, and look up the frequency for the NOAA weather radio channel in your area.

14:36 Then the people part. When something happens, who are you checking in on? And who's checking in on you? And lastly, when the alert comes across for real someday, do you know the difference between the ones that mean pay attention and the one that means you need to get your butt in gear? Because a plan that treats every alert the same is going to wear you out before the one that matters actually shows up.

15:03 This is all free, none of it costs a dime other than the radio. All of this is much easier to sort out prior to the test in November. So that's the entire idea. They're going to hand you a free dress rehearsal on the 17th. Most people will treat it as 30 seconds of annoyance, but we're going to treat it as 30 seconds of homework, the homework that we actually need to do.

15:29 So write it down somewhere, do a little calendar invite to yourself. Ask Alexa to set you a reminder. So mark it down. November 17th, a little after 220 Eastern time. So when you're listening to something or your show cuts out and you hear that tone, don't reach for the dial. Just ask yourself one question.

15:49 If this had been real, would I have known what to do next? If the answer is yes, you are good to go. You are ready. And the test just confirm that. If the answer is I'm not sure, then we have some work to do. So a warning only works if someone is ready to hear it and they know what to do when they hear it.

16:11 And someone has a plan in the event it's a real emergency. Again, November 17th, it's a test. So let's make sure the person on the receiving end is going to be tested as well. All right, folks, thank you so much for stopping by. I really do appreciate it. Practical prep podcast at gmail.com on the Twitters, prep underscore podcast.

16:36 Check out the new website, buildyourark.net, and check out the article on the Corn Index and email me. Is there an article that you would like me to generate? Is there an article that you would like me to put together? Maybe something that would require less time, or I don't have to go as in-depth as a 15 or 20 minute podcast.

16:57 Just let me know and I'll whip it up for you. No worries at all. All right, folks, as always, be careful out there. Take care of one another. And until next time.

17:08Keith You've been listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper. Subscribe, like, drop a review over and out.