NEWS: Emergency Broadcast Test Mistakenly Calls for the Evacuation of Connecticut

on the map i was looking at it looks like they touch each others borders by the coastline.

Everyone should've paniced when they heard it, or at least immeadiately started evacuating the state.

Here's the map:



Connecticut is the green state to the east of New York. They don't touch.

Connecticut isn't that big anyway. If they had anything worth taking California would just send a tugboat to get them and we'd anchor them off the coast of Los Angeles and make them a county.

On a more serious note, this is one hell of an oops. It really doesn't seem right. I see three explanations.
1. They were crying wolf to make us numb.
2. It was a homeland security excercise to see how quickly word spreads and how seriously it is taken.
3. Something bad happened or almost happened and the higher authorites nailed a lid over it before the details prompting the evac could be released.

And here's the funny explanation- but I'm only half kidding. Apparently there is an outbreak of zombie-ism somewhere up in that area.
I've got a friend who lives somewhere remotely in that area. I can't even remember if she's in Conn or NY or NJ, but somewhere up in the North East.

She was telling me earlier today that she's been obvserving some strange behavior around campus today. She says people have seemed sort of dumbed down- walking around looking dang near asleep. The part that really made me wonder if she was pulling me leg though was that she claims she's seen groups of 10-30 people like this walking around as if they were trying to stay in formation- keeping nice tight but somwhat sloppy columns while they were walking around campus, but only for a few moments- then they'd disperse and go their own ways.
She's convinced that her campus is being targeted by some sort of mind-control experiment and she's saying something about wanting to make orgone (beats me what that is). I say that if anything it's obviously Dawn of the Dead (or Shaun of the Dead) waiting to happen.

[edit on 2-2-2005 by The Vagabond]

Originally posted by twitchy
Pushed the wrong button huh? That just doesn't sound right guys. , but an actual warning, like an evacuation order, IS NOT a button kind of thing. Warnings aren't keyed up ready for broadcast, they are individually created and issued. As my understanding of the system goes, there's no way a 'wrong' button push leads to an evacuation order on the system without being initiated intentionally.
[edit on 2-2-2005 by twitchy]

I agree with twitchy.......nothing of that magnitude is accomplished without more than one individuals involvement. Wonder why they did it, on purpose?

BTW, if it was a button mistake, we have are culprit............FredT's mini-profile exclaims how Button Clicky he is!!!!!! Why did you do it FredT, was it for the attention? I swear I'll start reading your posts!!!

www.fcc.gov...

The FCC regulations on EAS (EBS) messages are public. I've only skimmed a few parts so far, but there is a "preamble" apparently transmitted which specifies the Originating Authority, the Nature of the Emergency, and the Geographic Area.

If anyone has screenshots or recording of the announcement or can find the coded preamble we can see how many mistakes there are in it.

I can also say for certain according to this guide that the messages themselves are not standardized. Because the message has to combine all the specific data from the preamble in real words it most likely has to be created from scratch.

At a glance it seems VERY unlikely this was a mistake, but with this manual we can probably determine to a certainty.

Edit: Is anyone else bothered by the incredible lack of detail in the story? It doesn't quote the message, or give really any information at all other than that the system ordered an evacuation then the governor said "no dont evacuate". Something smells.


[edit on 2-2-2005 by The Vagabond]

Originally posted by The Vagabond
www.fcc.gov...

The FCC regulations on EAS (EBS) messages are public. I've only skimmed a few parts so far, but there is a "preamble" apparently transmitted which specifies the Originating Authority, the Nature of the Emergency, and the Geographic Area.

If anyone has screenshots or recording of the announcement or can find the coded preamble we can see how many mistakes there are in it.

I can also say for certain according to this guide that the messages themselves are not standardized. Because the message has to combine all the specific data from the preamble in real words it most likely has to be created from scratch.

At a glance it seems VERY unlikely this was a mistake, but with this manual we can probably determine to a certainty.

Edit: Is anyone else bothered by the incredible lack of detail in the story? It doesn't quote the message, or give really any information at all other than that the system ordered an evacuation then the governor said "no dont evacuate". Something smells.


[edit on 2-2-2005 by The Vagabond]

From what I read in that document, there's no way anyone could make a "mistake" and issue an evacuation order instead of a "test" message. There's several specific codes that have to be entered to create a valid message header and then of course the text has to be entered manually so viewers can understand the message. It would have to look something like this for a normal test:

[16 byte preamble] ZCZC-EAS-RMT-09-duration-date-stationID-End of Message Header. Text "this is a test of the emergency broadcast system".

Instead, this would have to be entered and sent.

[16 byte preamble] ZCZC-CIV-EVI-09-duration-date-stationID-End of Message Header. Text "this is an order to evacuate (or whatever)".

Nobody did this by pushing the wrong button...



[edit on 2-2-2005 by mythatsabigprobe]

[edit on 2-2-2005 by mythatsabigprobe]

Originally posted by ben91069
Perhaps they were testing how much paranoia was present to see how the populace would react? Yes, I believe it is to prepare the gov for martial law, or the opening up about aliens - that could be it.

I'm glad someone had the sack to say it. It very well could have been done to gauge public reaction. I do believe the radio broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' was done for the same reason, and the public failed miserably.

Peace

Originally posted by twitchy
Pushed the wrong button huh? That just doesn't sound right guys...

I agree with twitchy. Some things just do not happen by accident. Like Bush's satanic symbols...I think this is more a hiding in plain sight thing...just to see who's paying attention.

According to the Hartford Courant...initially it was blamed on a hacker, then an embarassed employee who made a mistake and pushed the wrong button. Yeah, right!

Connecticut evacuation: false alarm

I found this Yale article from Monday that seems strange given more recent events. I don't know, maybe I'm nuts but nothing seems like coincidence or human error to me these days. Its like everything that happens is planned and contrived...

Gas leak shuts down street and prompts evacuation of students at model U.N. conference

Here's the scariest part:

"State police said they received no calls related to the erroneous alert."

Couple things from above I'd like to highlight.
1. We know from the FCC's regulations that it would have been impossible to screw up like this.
2. The story has changed; initially they blamed a hacker.

So, what seems most likely?
Are they goving up a tremendous vulnerability to "cyber-terror" (hard to take that word seriously, i know)?
Or are they really trying to prep up for an alien revelation, even though this message had nothing to do with aliens?

I hate to be the skeptic but it turns out that I'm pretty good at that. My bet is that they're covering a gaping hole in our security which could theoretically allow terrorists to direct citizens to "evacuate" INTO the kill-zone of an attack. I'd be a lot more panicky about that, except that so far terrorists have shown zero ability to operate in the USA when upper management in the FBI is not actively protecting them from investigation.

Originally posted by MemoryShock
BTW, if it was a button mistake, we have are culprit............FredT's mini-profile exclaims how Button Clicky he is!!!!!! Why did you do it FredT, was it for the attention? I swear I'll start reading your posts!!!

I could tell you about 'Button Clicky" but then Id have to..... No, that is a happy coincidence . Move along, nothing to see here.

Actually its a term that was used by one of the staff here at ATS a while back and I liked it.

So what happens when more and more of these "mistakes" happen, and eventually people start to ignore the orders to evacuate, then the government decides to test some new weapon out on a city/state that it doesn't like, or stage a terrorist attack, and they use the excuse "Hey, we told you to evacuate, it's not our fault you didn't listen."?

Originally posted by dalepmay
So what happens when more and more of these "mistakes" happen, and eventually people start to ignore the orders to evacuate, then the government decides to test some new weapon out on a city/state that it doesn't like, or stage a terrorist attack, and they use the excuse "Hey, we told you to evacuate, it's not our fault you didn't listen."?

Ummm... people DID ignore the order to evacuate. It's a little late for ifs and whens.
As for the government testing weapons on cities and states that it doesn't like... I'm pretty sure that "like" has nothing to do with it. It's a lottery. If you just happen to be the home of Dugway proving ground, you are the guinea pigs. If you are in an area prone to hurricanes, you'll be seeing the scalar weapons tests. Don't take it so personal.

The government gauging public reaction is the most likely answer, in my opinion. Remember the dirty bomb threat in Boston? I'm just going out on a limb and speculating , but I think that it was a staged event for the same purpose as this Conneticut evacuation. But why would they want to know? You only go through this much effort to learn something if you think the probability of an occurance is high. Someone knows something and these events are part of their equation.

Something else bugging me and that is the relatively mild response of the public. That means something. Either everyone is desensitized and they are displaying an apathy(which by itself is incredibly alarming) or this was a desired result, which means that something occurred specifically to demotivate the public. That would indicate government meddling in the mentality/attitude of its populace. The only reason to learn(if indeed this occurred for the purpose of learning) the sociology of your public is to use this information.

I know we had are own bit of scrambling here on ATS, but does anyone know how the Boston People reacted to the threat? I can't find anything; I'll keep checking.........

I posted the news item on spyman.ca and "George" who is a regular contributor had this comment. I don't know what to make of it, but nothing surprises me these days:

"Coast to Coast AM reports that Steve Quayle has an article posted that there is significant Russian military movement evacuating to the Yamantau Gora Mountain. There has been no activity like this for years. Animals are supposed to have evacuated coastal areas. Yamantau Gora Mountain is the underground NORAD like bunker the Russians built for time of war. www.GlobalSecurity.org has a great description. We will have to search this one out ourselves. Someone in Connecticut may have panicked and pushed the button too soon. The shadow war may end very soon and turn 'hot'. This is not a drill."

www.whatdoesitmean.com...

www.coasttocoastam.com...

I looked at AlwaysLearning's link to a local CT news source, which by the way the page has been moved to here, and it seems to contridict the ABC story. In the ABC story they say no one contacted police, but the story from the Courant lists several instances where people did contact the police.

The terse message sent viewers running for their telephones - police reported calls from the curious and the panicked - but it failed to set off a noticeable exodus into Massachusetts, Rhode Island or New York.

Also in the article is the body of the message.

Civil authorities have issued an immediate evacuation order for all of Connecticut, beginning at 2:10 p.m. and ending at 3:10 p.m."

I believe the short duration of the evac order is why people weren't running for the borders.

And again, to confirm what everyone has said, this is not just a bad button clicky. These coded messages have to be decoded before broadcast. While I haven't ever seen it personally, perhaps some broadcast outlets have an automated system to do this, that reads in a parses the line, then creates a message from stock warning messages based on the type of alert. If they have a bug in their parser, and it grabbed the wrong preprogrammed message that could be a possibility.
But the article at the Courant describes the procedure used there as a manual one.

I live in CT, I heard it and laughed it off. I thought later I probaby should have looked into it further, but when the local DJ's were playing a funny round of coker-oki (joe cocker karioki) I figured I was safe. No big deal at all

Originally posted by phreak_of_nature
And again, to confirm what everyone has said, this is not just a bad button clicky. These coded messages have to be decoded before broadcast. While I haven't ever seen it personally, perhaps some broadcast outlets have an automated system to do this, that reads in a parses the line, then creates a message from stock warning messages based on the type of alert. If they have a bug in their parser, and it grabbed the wrong preprogrammed message that could be a possibility.
But the article at the Courant describes the procedure used there as a manual one.

Good detective work...I bet we won't too soon find out the real reason for why it happened, but as you say, not just bad button clicky.

Did you check out that info that George provided about coast to coast a.m.? They mention the false alarm there.

Originally posted by AlwaysLearning
Good detective work...I bet we won't too soon find out the real reason for why it happened, but as you say, not just bad button clicky.

Did you check out that info that George provided about coast to coast a.m.? They mention the false alarm there.

I just skimmed it real quick. Might be a bit of a stretch to lump it in with all of the other natural disasters they are discussing.
Unless... Unless, the earth is about to crack wide open like an egg and the world governments already know this.

Or maybe..... Aussie Bloke was right