Are WW2 sirens going off near anyone?

[FlickyEyeliner]

I think I would be properly shitting myself

I thought they would have all been removed! Did you all get warning or did they just start going?

We live near a military base who use them now and again, I just assumed during practice for whatever. We get a lot of weird noises, gunfire etc coming from there. The siren went off the other day which is the first time I've heard it for a little while though.

I once had an incredibly vivid dream about being in the middle of the Blitz and it really freaked me out when I woke up and the siren was still going.

I used to live near a chemical plant and once a quarter they would test their warning siren. Glad that they had it but I hoped very much I would never hear it used for its intended purpose!!

They go off once a month for testing where I live. Creepy as hell, you'd have thought they'd have changed the bleddy sound by now !!

Last place I lived it was the call out for the Auxiliary Fire Brigade.

Fawley esso is loud!

Flood warning sirens here too. They're a lot less irritating than the Sunday afternoon test of the local shopping centre, which goes woop woop and then has the voice of a woman who sounds like she's asking a three year old through gritted teeth to please put their shoes on for mummy, announcing that there's an emergency going on, (it's still going on), please run for your lives.

She does say something slightly more sensible, but not by much.

Sirens go off on the river Severn sometimes and that is one eerie sound!

used to hear them in Portsmouth quite a bit in late 80s early 90s. something to do with the docks or the navy base I assume. you get used to them.

Used to have on at 11.55 every day by my school as we were next to a quarry. You just got used to it (and knew it was nearly lunchtime!)

If my mother heard them she'd have a massive panic attack, she was in a big city during the war and has awful memories which she can't cope with when she hears a siren going off - we heard one in France on holiday one year and her reaction was shocking to pre-teen me who'd never seen anything like it before.

We grew up just down the road from Broadmoor, test siren went off at 10am every monday morning. We used to get excited when it went at any other time, not so adults remember being on school lockdown twice too.

Similar here. If the alarm went off, even in the middle of the night- you got up to check all the windows and doors were bolted. Scary!

They test then in Denmark on the first wednesday in May. The up and down is the alarm and the one at the same pitch is the all clear. Its in case of chemicals in the air. Scared the shit out of me the first time because I had no idea what was happening but everyone else carried on as normal, so I followed.

The Sheffield one is a Time Signal and has been there for over 100 years. Goes off at 1pm and it was to ensure everyone knew the correct time - comes from a time when people's own timepieces weren't very reliable.

Another Broadmoor local here! Although not that local so it depended on wind direction. Between that and Concorde Monday mornings were interesting.

I went on holiday once to a farm that had an old air raid siren which they started off when food was ready - it could be heard all over the farm. And on the surrounding footpaths, which must have caused a few panicked tourists

I'm not mainland Britain, we were occupied during WWII. The sirens sound the take cover and all clear every Liberation Day on the 9th May. We used to hear Concorde heading into Paris at 6pm each day.

Had two near me when I was growing up, both gone now but I remember the sound and it was chilling. Like nothing else.

We live very close to 2 nuclear power stations so if the sirens go off anytime other than Thursday at 10am it’s a slight worry (understatement!).

The Broadmoor sirens have only recently been decommissioned with the move to the new hospital. They accidentally set it off during the testing of the new systems in the transfer. That caused some local anxiety attacks!

I grew up around the Severnside sirens. Which warn you if one of the several I industrial sites around the Avonmouth area have had a chemical leak. They test them on set days every week/month.

To my knowledge they have only ever gone off once when it wasnt a test. However iirc it was a false alarm in the end.

Ours is in case the nucleur power station has problems, tested once a month and hope they never go off for real!

The sirens left over from WW2 were morphed into Cold War sirens, giving the mythical "four minute warning" if Britain was attacked by nuclear weapons.

Following the end of WW2 in 1990* we thought the cold war had ended, and the UKWMO closed down the system. Most were removed between 1992 and 1995, but there are still some remaining on rural post offices and police houses, plus others that nobody has bothered removing. Some of them may still actually work but are likely to be used for warning of floods, factory fires, chemical accidents and so on.

*this is not a mistake. The treaty was signed in 1990, to come into effect in 1991

For those interested, here is a test

The noise is deliberately made spine-chilling by generating two discordand notes at the same time.

Where my sister lives you hear them daily. Chemical plant warnings.

I work near a BAE airbase. I hear similar multiple times a day. It's to warn people to get off the runway apparently.

It's to warn people to get off the runway apparently.

I think it'd be more likely to make me stop still and scream!