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

[Tping]

When the alert went off did you, for a fraction of a second, think Vlad had finally snapped and pressed the button?

Disappointing if he had because I if I’d known, I’d have added more loo roll to the Tesco delivery.

Mine went off twice, I had to google how to shut it up. No more alerts for me whether it's Putin or not!

I didn’t get it.

What happened??

I wondered what in the hell this noise was that my new phone was subjecting me to!

No, that didn’t occur to me. We were having drinks outside and spent some time saying ‘what’s that noise?’ to each other. (Phones were inside)

I have only had the first one which we all knew about. Then yesterday's one.

No, I thought ‘what’s that noise?’, picked up my phone and read the alert.

God no. People are 'anxious' enough. How about a ring tone like Woody Woodpecker laughing or the start of GnR Welcome to the Jungle?

I thought the noise was coming from my (extremely aged) laptop and did a sigh that I would finally have to replace it! Then later I checked my phone and saw the alert. Complete non event for me.

Not for a second

there is an episode of The Simpsons where the power plant goes wrong. Everyone running for their lives. Homer saves the day but he did start the issue!

Not at all. I was mostly focussed on the unpleasantness of the noise, and was mildly embarrassed because I was outside in public. Soon as I looked at it it was clear what it was about, but by that point I'd hit okay so couldn't read the full message and was a bit annoyed/concerned in case I'd missed anything I needed to know in it.

I think I missed the opportunity to have a response. I was in Morrisons without my phone queueing for the self check out. It was really busy and I was next, so I was focused on that. I didn't register all the alerts going off immediately, a shop assistant held up his phone and announced what it was.

Is interesting the folks who's 1st thought was war or terror. I wonder if I would have thought that.

I had been altering the settings on my phone earlier in the day and put it on to 'find my phone' I thought that had gone off as the noise was similar and that id done something to make it happen.

I missed it as was upstairs but my daughter did. She was trying to translate the Welsh abd it totally panicked her.

We were outside having a bbq with neighbours. Friends phone went off first so I thought it was something peculiar to her phone and so did she. Mild curiosity on her part, then read it out to everyone. The rest of us got ours in the next few minutes. There was no panic at all and I can quite confidently say we were left unperturbed. Obviously as we were having a bbq it was quite well timed but we were already aware of the dangers of such.

No. I thought it was a virus or something, touched the screen and inadvertently deleted it. Had to ask DH what it said!

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)

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 did! Actually really did.

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.

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.

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.

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

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