You actually have to opt-OUT of these alerts on almost any modern smartphone made in the past 5-6 years.

I had to “hack” my phone to disable them (using the term loosely; you need to connect it to the computer and use a terminal).

Disabled them because in my country, they abuse the system and send all alerts at the “Presidential” level (aka. top priority and everyone might die unless you do something soon). My phone manufacturer helpfully decides not to have Presidential alerts respect my volume settings (like Do-Not-Disturb).

I also live in a particularly large region.

All this combined means that I have to live without alerts that say “Tornado incoming” because I don’t want monthly alarms blaring in the middle of the night to tell me that a child is involved in a custody dispute somewhere about a 7 hour drive away from me. Guess they wanted me to keep my eyes open and call the police when I see a “white vehicle” because it may contain the “missing” child, whose entire description is “7, last seen wearing a red shirt and jeans”.

So yeah, I opted out. Against all alerts, against my will.

Also, in my country, when there was an active mass/spree shooter who was masquerading as a cop and pulling people over before shooting them, they DIDN’T use the emergency alert system. They used Twitter. Remember to like and subscribe!

Depends on the system

The “Yo dog, a tidal wave is hitting right now. That is why it looks like it is super duper low tide.” alert? Yeah, you’ll get that. Whether that is time to meaningfully act or not depends.

But most regions have additional services you can and should sign up for that will give the early warnings. So “Seismic activity detected a mile or three off shore or however tidal waves work. We are monitoring the situation” is a good indicator of “maybe today is not the day I go to the beach”. And “We are no longer monitoring the situation. Please proceed as normal” is a sign that maybe you do want to go for swimmies after all.

Same with other disasters. I live in a region that has a lot of wildfires. We tend to get the early warnings and even the “We might say to evacuate in a few days” through a different service. We get the “Get the fuck out of town immediately” alerts through the normal emergency alert system.

How do you opt out of them? I mean, I probably don’t want to, but I feel I should know how, if only to feel I own my device, rather than the government.

I use a Motorola Android phone for reference.

In my country, you have to opt-in to get alerts by installing corresponding app.

Since iOS 18, I have recognised, that state level weather alerts are now distributed through the apple weather app as well (before it was only through state weather app AND state warning app… Now I get it 3 times 🤣😅)

I appreciate this article for telling me how to disable amber alerts and silence the others.

Yes but at least you’re now aware of the incredibly mild issue.

I’ve had, “warning a tree has fallen over and is blocking a minor road”, and “there is some fog”.

The software is on all phones but your local government has to make use of it. For the longest time the UK government didn’t use it and now they’ve adopted it and are obsessed with it.

They’ve now fortunately realized that irritating everyone with it means that they just turn it off eventually, so they’ve calmed down with it somewhat.

But I believe they are on by default so if you’ve never had an alert it’s probably because your local government don’t use it.

I ain’t a fan of the corporate tracking device but how people acted before a technology existed says little to how best to act now. Even if it did the past is littered with the corpses of those unaware of incoming danger from natural disasters.