OK, apologies for the slight click-bait title, but it's all I could think about when reading the article.

Very, very reminiscent of the TV ads in the 80's warning people how to recognise a nuclear attack warning and what to do in such an event, the modern day equivalent is that the government will send an alert to all mobile phones warning them of a danger to life through flooding, fires, extreme weather, public health emergencies and potentially terror attacks.

"Officials would not discuss the arrangements for warning the population of an impending military or nuclear attack on the country."

Maybe it's just me, but it seemed the article was written in such a way as to not alarm people, by focussing more on the less alarming events such as fires and floods, but I read it as the start of preparations for alerting the public to more serious events. Anyone who lived through the 70s / 80s will probably know what I'm talking about.

Things are heating up out there...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-62549122

In case of a war / nuclear attack sms, that would make the whole country a panicking spot.
Local floods sms, local panic only.

That is, if you're in the 85% AND have signal.

settle down poms its not that hot

xX.TROPA.Xx wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 12:50 pm settle down poms its not that hot

It’s “catastrophic floods” now mate, try and keep up

The system is in place already in the US .... Hawaii at least .... it wasn’t so long ago an SMS was sent out to all its Islands saying nukes were inbound ..... oopsie .... just a glitch in the matrix .... please return to your normal activities after you’ve changed your soiled undies !!

I seem to remember false tsunami warnings being sent out in Alaska in the last year as well .....

At the start of the 1st covid lockdown in Britain I got a text from the government. Not everyone got one but most did. Does that mean that if there's a nuclear disaster I will be one of the chosen ones to be warned and hopefully survive?

It's been operating in NZ for a while now. As far as I can recall there haven't been any false alarms, hoaxing, spam, scams etc... I'd imagine they have pretty good controls in place to safeguard against that because if it became a pain in people's arse they'd just turn it off and it would be pointless having it.

It's a good idea in my opinion,well worth having. NZ is prone to flooding, bush fires, and earthquakes, and a lot of the east coast is in a tsunami zone. The faultline that could set off a tsunami is overdue for a massive upheaval so any heads up you can give people before a tsunami or bushfire hits would be better than nothing.

It's obviously not perfect, every time there's a trial or it's actually used there are reports of people not getting it for whatever reasons but I suppose every time it's used the system is fine-tuned to fix those errors.