Just found out that the Dutch air raid sirens are getting decommissioned next year (because cell phone alerts have just as high a penetration these days and can bundle a message explaining what's actually wrong).
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@0xabad1dea wait what?
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@dysfun it was apparently announced several months ago but I missed it https://nos.nl/artikel/2511033-maandags-luchtalarm-gaat-volgend-jaar-verdwijnen-nl-alert-neemt-het-over
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@0xabad1dea Interesting. Germany is bringing sirens back because it turns out that they are an important part of the alert system (they were only decomissioned because it was thought that the threat had gone away for good ... )
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@0xabad1dea sad
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@dysfun @0xabad1dea the optimism of the people who think that when the push comes to shove, the whole power and telecom infrastructure will be still available, is quite astonishing.
(i mean, deprioritising the use is reasonable, but decommissioning the whole low-tech infra is unconscionable.)
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@0xabad1dea @dysfun they can be operated independently from the network and from emergency power.
and they don't need that people have a fragile electronic device on hand to receive the signal.
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@lipow @0xabad1dea
well in Germany the cellphone coverage isn't perfect so an extra reason to keep the sirenes.
They should keep them in The Netherlands too, aside the cellphone system, only for the case the internet brakes down. The two systems are complementary to each other. -
@0xabad1dea @mawhrin @dysfun It's the same argument people have to still want a house phone - "what if the internet doesn't work!". They don't seem to realize that all phones have been going through the internet for the past decade at least, so if the internet is actually down your phone is just as down.
But sure, keep paying €5 a month for a "fixed phone" to prevent that.
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@mawhrin @dysfun I understand your point that the old fashioned sirens may be a bit more robust, but also - they're not very actionable as a general alarm. What are you expected to do when you hear one? Either it's extremely obvious what's wrong by looking out the window (so the alarm is just a formality) or you have no idea and need an alternate communication source. Air raid sirens were invented to communicate a single thing ("bombers incoming! get to shelter!") but that's just not a problem here for many decades and I sure hope for many more. The last few times the sirens have been deployed anywhere in NL, it was to announce floods - where running to your bomb shelter is the exact opposite of what will help!
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@dascandy no, it's not the same argument, and i'm quite annoyed by the tech people hubris. pay attention, please:
- the sirens can be operated independently from the country-wide alarm network,
- they can be powered from emergency power generators (or, indeed, there are manual variants, as someone pointed that out),
- they don't require fragile electronic equipment (which needs batteries recharged every few days) for the general population to receive the signals.
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@0xabad1dea @mawhrin @dysfun That's why there are different siren sounds depending on what you're warning against, which should be taught at school.
The most well known should be the ABC siren, as well as the fire siren.It's rather funny to hear this given the german government just fixed the whole siren network in addition to cell broadcast alerts. We also got yearly test alerts where both get triggered. Was done as reaction to a catastrophic flood where nothing worked.
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@mawhrin @dascandy @0xabad1dea @dysfun This. Good sirens are still electromechanical hybrids, enabling someone (usually either the mayor or heads of police or fire department) to spin it up by hand if necessary.
In rural areas it just takes one power outage to knock out whole phone cells, leaving huge chunks of the population without warning. You can't knock on every door in such a case, but you sure as hell can spin up a siren.
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@alloalli @lipow @0xabad1dea Small sidenote, this ain't necessarily true for cell broadcasts. If your phone got O2 as a carrier network but no signal it will still pick up a cell broadcast transmitted by towers of "rivaling" Telecom providers. As with emergency calls, this feature overrides any network rules.
Meaning unless you're in the deepest part of the black forest your phone will most likely still pick up some signal.
