When the alert went off, be honest, did you think the Russia had launched one?

Nope. I didn't realise it was the emergency alert, so was more concerned it was some sort of device in the house or the motorhome warning of imminent danger or a major fault. I was relieved when it was a phone alert

Would the Labour government be better putting their efforts into banning disposable bbq and Chinese lanterns and bonfires ?

I don’t have stereophonic hearing so didn’t have a clue where whatever the noise was, actually was.

Maybe these alerts should announce ‘this is your phone sending you a government alert about XXX’. Then I’ll know what the noise is, and @Tping will know it’s not bloody Putin.

I was expecting a delivery and have a Ring doorbell that alerts on my phone. I immediately thought my doorbell was having some sort of breakdown in the heat, then looked at my screen and realised it was an alert.

I was on a busy LNER train whizzing towards London. When the carriage filled with the racket of everyone's phones going off. I thought at first it was a train alarm, given that a couple of trains have....fallen over rather recently. And sure enough we started to slow down.

I realised pretty quickly what it was and, having slowed almost to a stop, we picked up speed very quickly again. Which makes me think the driver freaked out and made a similar mistake to me! Far too much of a coincidence. 🤔

I thought someone had left the fridge door open. It beeps to tell you off in a whiny tone. The volume is low on my phone though so I can imagine it would have been different had it been at full blast. I never got any of the practice ones.

I'd been having a conversation with ChatGPT a few minutes earlier (I think I was asking it about the news or something) and had put my phone down to fold some washing. When I heard the alarm my first thought was that I'd said something to trigger the AI to freak out!

Nukes didn't cross my mind. I think if things ever got to that point we'd see more of a gradual cold war style build-up. Why would Putin randomly nuke us now? I fully understand why it's many people's first thought though.

It crossed my mind for a second, and I won't lie.
We are living in unpredictable times where some very unstable people have devastating weapons at their disposal so my stomach dropped for a millisecond.
The wildfires are less of a threat to human lives but what effect will this loss of habitat have on our wildlife?.
Where are they supposed to go now we have 20.0000 new homes being erected each year in our small country?.
None of this is good.

No. I wasn't in earshot of my phone but DH and I were in the same room as his phone. I just thought "why's his phone making that strange noise"? And actually thought he'd set an alarm/timer for something.

I think it would have been different if I'd been somewhere with lots of other people and lots of phones going off. When the "test" happened last year we were sitting in the cafe at Dunwich Heath (the irony!) and it was very odd when all the phones went off together

It went off on my husband's phone first and I just thought he was watching a TikToc and was annoyed at him 🤣

I was whatsapping at the time and just thought my phone had malfunctioned.

No, I thought some sort of malware had got onto my phone - the noise was horrible!

I assumed it was related to the fires, not WW3.

I was quite pleased when I read the message because I remember 1976 when we had weeks and weeks without rain. The moment the Government finally got round to thinking about doing something - appointing a Minister for Drought - the heavens opened!

No,in East Sussex it went off at 7pm. we were watching a crime film, momentarily thought it was in the film, then the inverter alarm on the solar, which does alarm in hot weather.. The way a lot of idiots reacted during the eclipse proved people actually need to be warned. Thousands of people had eye issues, hospitals set up "eclipse clinics". my DD showed me people boasting about their eye problems on there. shame they didn't do one then.

Assumed it was weather related. Maybe bad storms heading our way.
Dd is 19 and did think it was the Russians. Had to explain as a child in the 80s that was all old hat to me.

Nope. I keep hoping for aliens if I’m honest

Yep. That was all I could think of. "Make it stop!" We're bombarded by alerts and notifications all the time, as a curse of the modern age, and most of the time I don't even look at something designed to "grab my attention". If I'm interrupted from doing something by some advert or sales pitch, that makes me even less likely to pay attention to it. I do think that if the government are not careful, and use them very sparingly indeed, over-use of these alerts could make them counter-productive.

"Darling husband, did you mean to install that horrible ring tone on your phone?"

No, but i thought it might be something vaguely important not telling me not to use a disposable bbq

No. I first thought my phone had overheated (!) as our smoke alarm went bonkers this week. When I first saw the word 'fire' in the message I worried there were local fires that would require evacuation. I'm slightly worried the alerts won't be taken seriously if they are used for local evacuation orders/warnings in future.

Complete non-event. We're surrounded by devices which beep and buzz all the time, so many of us tune them out. Which is another reason I think these alerts are a bad idea, except for real emergencies, which this most certainly was not.

If it had been something burning nearby causing toxic smoke, so you should stay inside with the windows closed, that would be worthy of an emergency alert. But if it's merely the government moralising, like they did every day in 2020, people will mutter "whatever", and turn off their emergency alerts. I'd have been severely pissed off I had been woken from a sleep before or after a night shift by some moralising message, disguised as an emergency alert.

Well, if Vlad had set one off, at least the alert would be letting you know you’re going to be dead soon.

Useful stuff.

I did! Actually really did.

No
I thought maybe I'd accidentally set my alarm.
Then I read it and I thought - good, maybe some people will take heed and not have a BBQ or whatever.

I thought wtf has my daughter done now.

(She messes with her ringtone and put alarms on for various things during the day. She does NOT do BBQs or nukes or anything in between)