“This has been a joke of the EAS”

I was in the middle of a race on iRacing, which is a motorsports racing simulation game, when my phone did the emergency alert system noise. The noise so often now is associated with an amber alert so there's a bit of a desensitization to the noise from, say, when threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a daily fear, but as I looked down, I didn't see the usual "amber alert" message but instead "Emergency Alert." That can't be good" I said aloud to no one.

Special reports and civil defense sirens have always invoked mortal dread in my heart. I, for one, don't think there's anything scarier than the intro to a special report on NBC as worst-case scenario thinking runs amok when that's heard. 

I used to be much worse at the worst-case scenario thinking. Here in Saint Louis the civil defense sirens are tested on the first Monday of the month and each time at 11AM on those Mondays my fear of tornados, bombs, or perhaps an alien invasion of Narwhals from Neptune were going to change life as we knew it. Then, I'd see the time and realize that all was well and we wouldn't be overthrown by our new overloads from space.

The race was quickly over and I was able to see the alert. "Gotham City, Missouri"? This sounded more like a "same bat time, same bat channel" tease at the end of a 1960's Batman broadcast. The purple/green color scheme also seemed a bit of either a riddle or perhaps a joke, and then the license plate was also in the realm of fantasy. However, questions still remained.

Was this legitimate? Had there been an extreme event with someone attempting to recreate a Joker incident from one of the later movies? There was no indication that this was a test so the mind could go 1,000 different directions as to what this was. Also, the link provided went to the Missouri Highway Patrol Twitter page furthering the legitimacy of the alert. 

About 15 minutes later the EAS went off again saying the previous message had been a test and that the test had been concluded. There was no danger, no 1978 Dodge purple and green Dodge terrorizing the state of Missouri. All was well. 

I haven't seen a story on if this was an intended test or a mistake like the 2018 North Korea missile alert in Hawaii. I did see a story on Facebook by the local NBC affiliate last night and the comments were all over the place. Those that said they were worried were instantly chastised by other commentors. I think back to a decade ago when the fears of every alert were paralyzing, and I have no idea what I would've done with an alert like the one that was given yesterday. Anxiety of this nature wasn't a choice and the "flight or fight" mechanism, when engaged, isn't a simple off switch which would've made actually seeing that the message wasn't real based in reality difficult or downright impossible.

Those that were confused or concerned shouldn't be ridiculed. I used to be that way, still can if you go back to the blog from last week, and furthermore do we want to desensitize people to what an alert means? Someday a person might be in a situation that the message on the screen labeled "Alert..." might save their life but if they think it's just another "joke of the Emergency Alert System" then they may not heed the lifesaving advice and that, truly, is the danger of whatever happened yesterday across Missouri.