At 2:18 p.m. on Wednesday, October 4, 2023, cell phones all across America emitted an obnoxious alarm from the federal government two minutes earlier than the reported start time. No doubt, dogs across America panicked and started barking (mine certainly did) and students in schools were frightened (yes, I have heard anecdotal local stories about this as well).
According to the Associated Press, Antwane Johnson, the director of FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, said after the test that he’s confident the test performed as expected but that the government would gather and analyze data in the coming weeks to assess how it went. He estimated hundreds of millions of people received Wednesday’s message. He said, “I’m totally elated.”
However, a lot of people with cell phones were probably NOT elated on Wednesday.
Besides dogs and kids, how many people were surprised and startled by what was happening and got into car accidents? How many elderly people or folks with PTSD were shocked and scared that something might actually be going on in the country? How many women hiding from rapists and murderers were exposed in their closets or outside hiding with their now-exposed cell phones going off?
Like most things, Democrats don’t care about (what they consider to be) ancillary issues or collateral damage. They do what they do. They are who they are. And they used the law as a cover for their behavior by telling us that federal law requires the alert system to be tested every three years. The last test was on August 11, 2021 which begs the question… Why did they do it early???? Is there something that they know that they’re not telling us? In a possibly related story, Russia tested their own emergency warning system on the same day [1].
So what was the important message that appeared on everyone’s cell phones on Wednesday? It said “National Alert: THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. The purpose is to maintain and improve alert and warning capabilities at the federal, state, local, tribal and territorial levels and to evaluate the nation’s public alerts and warning capabilities. No action is required by the public.”
So what exactly constitutes a national emergency? Trump winning the presidential election? Climate change? My guess is that it’s anything that the Democrats want it to be.
Wednesday’s test [2] came from Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission and it was sent out to anyone who had a cell phone turned on and was in range of an active cell tower. Cell phone users who have their phones set to the Spanish language should have gotten the alert in Spanish and phones that were set to wi-fi or in airplane mode didn’t receive the alert at all. Cell phone users who had their cell phones turned off at 2:20 p.m. but turned them back on over the next 30 minutes, they still would have gotten the alert – as the alert was set for a 30 minute time period.
At the White House on Wednesday, there were messages taped to chairs in the press briefing room to turn off their cell phones so it didn’t interrupt the daily briefing. As usual, the Democrats want to be immune from their own crap. But not all of the media complied with their edict because the cell phones of journalists started buzzing with the annoying alert sound.
However, that wasn’t the only place in DC that got interrupted by the alert.
While speaking about semiconductor chip manufacturing on Wednesday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s cell phone sounded the alert [3]. Somebody laughably said, “I think your time is up, Senator.” Cruz held up his phone with a smile and said, “We have an emergency in semiconductors.”
Some conspiracy theorists have said that the cell phone messages were used to verify and track everyone. Others have said the test would activate nanoparticles or put some kind of virus into everyone’s phones. One concerned X/Twitter user named Misha [4] warned that the alert was going to be used to activate the mRNA in our bodies, She X-ed/Tweeted, “I am BEGGING you to turn off your cell phones today. The government is activating the MRNA strains in our vaccines that increase violent tendencies using special frequencies broadcast by the emergency alert test.”
Some on X/Twitter posted their own alert memes on what the alert SHOULD have said including the Millennial Conservative [5] who X-ed/Tweeted, “EMERGENCY ALERT – We f*cked the economy, massacred your elderly, poisoned you with killer jabs, flooded you with illegal invaders, destroyed your livelihoods and your kids’ futures. YOU ARE LIVING UNDER TYRANNY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”