Why This Sound is Illegal to Play 

Haven't even watched it yet, but I know I'm getting my weekly dose of stock footage

Part of the reason it's illegal to play that tone is because it can trigger other stations that are listening to start broadcasting the EAS signal too, causing a chain reaction.

I had to testify to an FCC investigator in college when I messed up an EAS test. I was trying to play the whole this is only a test message but the only thing that got broadcast was the attention signals. No context. Fortunately, I and the station got away with a slap on the wrist.

The term you’re looking for is called “alarm fatigue”. They don’t want people to get used to the tones because alarm fatigue is a very real thing. The other term you’re looking for to describe how bad it sounds is “discordant”. Two tones producing a harsh sound due to lack of harmony.

"Conspiring to kill the president is a job best left to the government." fair enough, still hillarious

It’s perfectly legal to play on RU-vid. There’s an entire community of people who make fake EAS scenarios like nuclear war with valid tones. The only rule is that you need to put a disclaimer to not play any tones over the radio or TV. Playing them would activate other real stations and could cause mass panic. Sweet baby jesus 5.8k

Ahh, the sounds of my youth. I remember the speech quite well: "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Stations in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would have been followed by news or other information. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."

I used to work at a tv news station where one of the reporters put the tone in one of his packages on a tornado that hit in our coverage area. It was like a full-blown scandal. After it happened every single employee at the station had to send a written acknowledgement to the station vice president that we knew to never play the tones, and there signs posted in the newsroom about never playing it, and like once a month we got an email about "remember to NEVER to do this". Pretty wild stuff, honestly shocked the reporter didn't get fired.

I thought this being so illegal was absurd until the Geico ad scenario was brought up. Lots of radio ads are disguised as breaking news or weather reports, so they would 100% do this if they could.

Oh, THAT sound. If you live anywhere that frequently frequently has (or had) tornados then you'll recognize that eerie sound. I find the sound more unpleasant from the associated memories than I do the actual tones. It's pretty easy to search "attention sound EAS sample" and find it.

I like how you mentioned desensitization to the alert, which is actually very serious, especially if you watch EAS scenario videos all the time.

its actually the SAME HEADER that’s illegal to play on live air. Not the attention signal. The SAME header contains important information and can trigger EAS equipment if the station that broadcasted that header was specifically being monitored by that said EAS equipment.

The EAS tone when it’s tested on TV is always jolting and a little unnerving

A note: The SAME header is actually more illegal than the attention signal. The attention signal is just a tone; still protected on air. The SAME header, however, if played over the air, can activate the Emergency Alert System, and that's what makes it illegal. It's only illegal if you cause damage with it.

Here's what Sam didn't mention: A. Correction to 4:00 - these two tones are played for television broadcasts. Radio broadcasts over NOAA NWS weather radio frequencies use a 1050hz activation tone. Also, it's called an activation tone because it activates consumer and federal recievers. The activation tone plays for 10 seconds on NOAA weather radio frequencies. 2. SAME is an acronym for Specific Area Message Encoding. Generally each county is given a SAME code. (I'll speak on NOAA Weather Radio terms because that's easier to understand.) When the Weather Forecast Office issues a product - warning, watch, advisory, forecast, discussion, etc. - the message is broadcast over the internet with SAME codes. These codes line up with the areas that the product covers. When a product requires EAS activation, the NOAA Weather Radio transmitters look for the SAME codes. If their broadcast region includes the counties with those SAME codes, it interrupts the broadcast to play the emergency message. Other U.S. government agencies can issue EAS products to specific areas and even the whole country, which would mean ALL the SAME codes included on a messsge. III. How does an EAS activation actually work? Consumer weather radios listen for both the leading tones and activation tone (as well as ending tones) before EAS activation status begins. BOTH ARE IMPORTANT! While they do grab human attention, the activation tone is mainly for the computer in a reciever to confirm it is recieving an EAS product and take appropriate action: sound a siren, broadcast on another frequency, or activate an alarm if it's a consumer radio. The leading tones are indended to distinguish an EAS broadcast from a superfluous activation tone, since other radio channels might broadcast these tones and may accidentally bleed into the NOAA frequencies. I have heard EAS broadcasts where the leading tones were not played (back when the new Paul voice was introduced to NWS radio) but only during bands of thunderstorms when multiple EAS activations were issued in a short time frame. Sometimes the computer doesn't seem to get it all right!

When he made that nuke tsunami joke a producer at SyFy was like “write that down, write that down!”

"Back when everyone was concerned that Russia was gonna start a war for no reason." Wow, so glad we're no longer afraid of that 😐

One note. Under CONELRAD the radio stations didn't actually switch frequency. The antennas and transmitters are tuned to a specific frequency, and can't easily change that. What did happen was that everything but the 1240 and 640 stations would go dark. The 640 and 1240 stations would alternate in a sort of chain, only staying live for a few minutes at a time. The idea was to keep enemy missiles or bombers from being able to use these stations as fixed navigation aids. Early AM radios actually have little civil defense triangles at 640 and 1240 to make it easy for users to switch back and forth as the stations switched on and off. I worked at a 1240 "relay key" station in the 70's before EAS took over. At that time, EBS had replaced CONELRAD. We had a red phone with no dial mechanism, and a red folder in the DJ booth. Occasionally the red phone would ring, and we'd answer. The person on the other end would give us a code (just like you see in the movies) and we'd open the appropriate envelope and read a code back to him. Once authenticated, we'd run an Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) test, which was basically playing those tones for 10 long seconds, followed by the standard script, then back to programming. There were actually two different scripts. One was for the 640 and 1240 stations, and said, (quoted as close as I can from memory) "If this had been an actual emergency, this station would carry instructions and information on what you should do". For non-CONELRAD stations, the script instead said, "if this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune for further instructions. Fun fact, the folder also included a sealed envelope with very specific instructions to never open that except as instructed during a national emergency. That envelope contained instructions on what to tell people and what to do, and even had helpful advice on how to permanently disable the station in the event that it was about to fall into enemy control. (yeah, we read one) The way the new EAS works is basically a cascade system. in Atlanta WSB radio and TV is the primary station. So they get the message to send an alert. They activate the EAS system. Other stations are actually monitoring WSB's radio frequency. The two sounds at the start (we call them duck farts) are the Specific Message Area Encoder" information that tells the receivers what areas are included. If your station is included, the EAS system will open the audio and either play the WSB signal for the DJ, or if your station is automated, take over the signal and rebroadcast the WSB audio. And so on down the line.

The SAME Header sound may be the most terrifying sound ever. I remember waking up to it when my mom was driving us through Dayton OH where there was a tornado warning a few years back. I know it’s important to make sure people are alerted, but that sound is a great way to get people to panic.

Yeah I remember that tone from periodic EBS test messages broadcast by radio stations way back when. I also remember the weekly air raid siren tests, every Tuesday at noon, that’s how many of us used to set our clocks. In San Francisco grade schools we would have periodic combined earthquake/ air raid drills, where we had to get away from windows and dive under desks.

I used to think we lived in the worst timeline until you mentioned the theoretical Geico car insurance emergency commercial. Because corporations _absolutely_ would do that.

It's not just "unpleasant to the human ear" to get your attention. It's also because that makes it much much less likely to be a sound which would ever happen to occur in any other contexts (music, etc), which could cause false-alarms, etc. If you're playing that sound, it's pretty much guaranteed it's only because you intended it to be (or at least sound like) an EAS broadcast.

Since I get a few of those sounds by them conducting a "test" of the system every week, my immediate response is to change the channel.

Fun fact: Local broadcasting stations are required to perform routine (weekly and monthly) tests of this system. The header used during tests specifically encodes that it is just a test, and any accompanying audio message similarly identifies that it is a test.

"Young Sheldon" is on CBS. A radio station in Las Vegas played the SAME Tones 3 seperate times, within the span of a day, for a bit on a talk show in 2021 and got fined $20,000. The talk show host that knowingly aired the clip that contained the tones (after being told by a board op that it was illegal to do so) was also fined $20,000.

I used two tone generators in two tabs in my browser to play the two tones simultaneously and they sound exactly like Apple's NL-Alert tone. In The Netherlands, we have a system called - you guessed it - NL-Alert that the government can use to alert citizens in certain areas for upcoming extreme weather, power outages, large fires with toxic smoke, a murderer on the loose, etc. They test this twice a year and all phones receiving this alert go on high volume and you can hear this sound all over the city since all 'connected' devices play this sound as loud as they can. This sound is unmistakably weird, penetrating and loud, even if you play it at a low volume. By the way: my sound processor (Stereo Tool) goes berserk after having played this sound for more than ten seconds. It jumps up and down and starts sounding like some kind of digital jumping. After a while, it doesn't sound like the original sound at all anymore. I've played around with other frequencies and I've not found a combination that does this. Weird but intersting!

That portion of the alert tone that you did play is something I will always despise, because it is used for weather alerts. My stepfather had a weather alert radio setup in our home growing up, and I always hated when it came on during the night to inform us of weather that was "near" us but wasn't actually near us. To double dip in my hatred of it, we have one of those radios as well at the hospital I work at, and on nights when it goes off, it goes off a lot, and we can't silence it until the human message comes across that tells us what counties the alert is actually for to know whether we have to call out a weather warning to the hospital on the whole, so we have to sit through the whole thing quite a lot.

Are emergency siren noises allowed? I swear I've heard them in both ads and songs on the radio. Seems those should be protected as well.

"...a silly antiquated age when everyone was worried that Russia was just gonna start a war out of nowhere for no reason..." yup, that's it

This is really funny. Thanks for incorporating humor for those of us who don't laugh as often as we should.

What's with the 15 star (?) flag at 1:05 ? Random movie footage with cars but from before 1818?

Learn something new everyday. I just took a look at the instructions for an old Motorola radio I've got and sure enough it describes the CONELRAD civil defense markings on the dial. Haven't heard the two-tone attention signal in so long, I'd forgotten what it sounded like - the sound of my youth. I can't quite recall the sirens on the firestation I assumed were also part of the emergency alert system.

If you want to hear the attention signal its basically the noise your phone makes when you get a weather warning notification. Just checked on wiki and my hair stood up. That is a horrible sound to hear for reasons 🤣

After being terrorized in a car by a tornado as a kid that EAS tone on the TV would send me into hysterics. Sounds definitely connect to memories .

1:24 Caligon is, in fact, a real state, and I've been lied to by and by about it. Thanks, Half as Interesting!

When I saw "why this sound is illegal to play" as the title, I knew it was going to be about the EAS

Fun fact: your smartphone can play this sound as well, scared the shit out of me several times last year when my area had an unusually high number of AMBER alerts

It sounds like that one case from Ace Attorney Chronicles where Ryuunosuke Naruhodo needs to play a music box with encoded government information to the jury for the acquittal of his client.

Desensitisation is the exact reason why most Australians haven't heard the SEWS (EAS for Aussies). It is heavily regulated, and is only to be played for actual emergencies. It isn't used for amber alerts, minor flooding or a pretty bad thunderstorm 100km away. It's really only used for cyclones and bushfires, because people in the US are already desensitised to the EAS tone.

When I went on Wikipedia to look up the sound, it only took me half a second before I realized I've heard this sound many times before. I had only ever heard it when I had gotten Amber Alerts on my phone, which surprisingly happens around where I live more than one would expect. I hadn't heard it used for any other kind of alert though, but I can see why that particular tone was chosen. No matter how many times I've heard it, it's still completely jarring and grabs my attention right away. It's a totally unpleasant sound, and I'd say it's nearly impossible to ignore.

I don't live in the US, but the first time I heard the sound was while playing CoD MW2 that has one of the missions play that sound. Fast foward a few years and I was with my family on Florida on vacation and immediately recognized the sound on the radio, I told everyone to listlen, it turned out to be a severe weather alert.

"I broke 8 of the US' weirdest laws" doesn't sound like something you'd wanna say on a public video website

0:55 this aged so poorly that the reason it aged poorly happened before the video came out

My phone has played this sound you won’t play before, back when BT was messing up some emergency broadcast tests. And I’m in the UK.

"When everyone was worried that Russia was just gonna start a war out of nowhere for no reason" That sounds familiar

Let's not forget that Siren Head (a creepy-pasta horror) plays the EAS alert tones while stalking prey or wandering, though I don't recommend entering that rabbit hole unless you're ready for some spooky nightmares.

Yup, I know that sound... Besides hearing it for weather alerts on multiple occasions, our local science museum used to use it on an earthquake simulator. I loved that thing, but the motor eventually wore out and I'm pretty sure they just ditched it. rather than bothering to fix it. It had a lasting effect on me though: I can't hear "I Feel the Earth Move" without fond memories of hiding under a chair in a little simulated room with an old-fashioned radio. Still froze up when an actual earthquake hit when I was 9, though.

2:33 I love how the people just start celebrating once all of the screens change to the EAS logo

For anyone wondering what the two-tone sound is, it's right here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Emergency_Alert_System_Attention_Signal_20s.ogg

As a meteorology student and avid storm chaser that sound is amazing to hear. It means I did something right and I'm in the right spot to see storms. It probably doesn't have the "bite" it's supposed to for me though. I'm definitely not as sensitive to it anymore

It is illegal and punishable to say these phrases together in this order... *proceeds to recite phrase verbatim... ...Waits quietly still for knock at door... ... did you guys hear that?... Shhh... i think there's something out there... I'm gonna go check, *sneakily Crosses floor... 💥BLASTS SHIN ON SMALL TABLE... PROCEEDS YELLING & SWEARING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS...

Correction: 5:19 Young Sheldon is on CBS, not NBC.

For those who don't wanna read too much: SAME headers are even more of a problem than the attention tone! *Disclaimer: I am not a licensed radio technician, and this information is only as good as my understanding of the subject. The equipment I mention is part of a hobbyist collection and does not broadcast to a radio station.* The funny thing is that I own equipment that powers the Emergency Alert System. Granted, the equipment is not compliant with the current FCC guidelines, but it has the same core functionality. It's just as illegal (if not, more illegal) to broadcast SAME headers as it is the attention tone, as those can actually trigger alert equipment depending on how the station has theirs set up, and god forbid if someone transmits the EAN code mentioned in this video, as all of the EAS equipment will retransmit the alert regardless of what time and what location it was encoded for. This is according to the settings on both of my EAS encoder/decoders, though, and may be different for others. I should mention that one of my units does have an indicator for when an attention tone is being received, but it doesn't generate any alerts or log it to my computer. And yes, I'm well aware there are several comments like this already.

The interval between those two frequencies is roughly 4.6 cents sharp of an equal-tempered major second.

Not a subscriber, just stumbled across this video. But I am a big fan of Jet Lag. Didn't even realize it was Sam Denby talking until he actually appeared onscreen near the end of the video.

1:33 absolute f for my boy Oregon who just got annexed by california

I didn't go to Wikipedia to hear the sound. I just synthesised it in Audacity instead. After all, you DID give us all the necessary information to do so...

I absolutely hate this emergency sound, it gives me goosebumps immediately

You don't have to break the sound barrier to make a sonic boom.

I'm from Maryland and I love that one of the reccuring stock footages is of Baltimore

0:46 that moment when immediate realization that this vid's about eas

Interestingly, on smartphones today you will get that tone with an emergency alert notification. You don't get the "fax machine noise", but just the disharmonous sine waves that are for getting your attention. There's no point in playing the fax noises on a smart phone (as far as I know).

As an Australian Radio Announcer (Community Broadcaster) I have been one who has had to play the 'Standard Emergency Warning Signal (SEWS)' to air during a cyclone event, we are taught to read the alert text from start to finish with no emphasis on any part at all and no commentary. That way no matter which radio station the listener is tuned to, the alert has exactly the same information in it.

Goddamnit now my anxiety is peaking because after the two tones my brain automatically put the final tone in and honestly i get legitimately so paranoid with that alert istg

0:23 the CIA approves this message, JFK does not

Living near Arkansas/Oklahoma state line, I hear this test sound quite often... the only time it really bothered me was in April 1996, after the tornado had passed over 10 minutes earlier. They were a little slow calling that one!

well generating tones just a few cycles off and mixing them would be legal. and would serve a similar general idea of the sound. the proof it is different is that the recording could be fed to a spectral analyzer and it will display the two center frequences, which would be slightly different.

I got an Amber alert right at 0:37 and thought you illegally played EAS tones 😅😂

“WE PLAYED THIS SOUND AND ALMOST DIED (OMG!) (100% REAL) 🔊☠️❌” - RU-vid creators be like

Now this is stuck in my head: "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters in your area, in cooperation with the FCC and other authorities, have developed this system in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency ... you'd already be screwed. But again, this is only a test."

This sound is actually not illegal to be on RU-vid contrary to many people here saying. It is illegal on radio and TV since if broadcasted, the other stations will also pick it up, triggering a mass panic situation. But very interesting information, Thank you.

@2:07 that's how I feel every day when I have to deal with idiots that don't know how to use a computer.

As a severe weather "enthusiast" and certified storm spotter down here in Dixie Alley, I hear these EAS tones a lot in the Spring and even in the Fall and Winter. I have the sounds downloaded to my phone and use them as alert tones for some of the weather apps I use because of how unmistakable and obnoxious they are.

I am old enough to associate "that sound" with the possibility of nuclear war. In school, we had nuclear bomb drills where we would huddle under our desks to protect us from the exploding window glass, because that would actually work. A few years later, the same drill was instead taught as "tornado preparedness" and people were distracted by lining up for gasoline according to the last number on their license plate (one day odd, the next day even, I forget what it meant is you had no numbers on your plate - odd or even?).

As a retired broadcast engineer my number one pet peeve what station owners was failure to maintain the electronics used in the emergency alert system properly. Many of them had the wrong date and time set and others were just completely disconnected by the station manager. At the time there was a $9,000 fine should the Federal Communications Commission do a spot inspection and find this deficiency. The other problem is that station operators were not logging their EAS tests the monthly required tests or the weekly tests.

My understanding of this is that this interval is called a just second. It’s slightly different to playing 2 white keys on the piano that are next to each other. Since we are all so used to equal temperament (how pianos are tuned) it makes the alert tone sound weird.

it is easily one of my least favorite sounds of all time. it genuinely brings up childhood trauma of extreme storms in my hometown. makes my spine shiver

You forgot to mention yelling, Fire!, in a crowded theater, bar, club etc. You can be charged with homicide in some states if someone gets crushed in the rush for the exits.

The only time it would ever cause a problem is if you happened to cause a mass panic because people think a fake announcement is real-OR you happen to work for the station in your area that all other stations are monitoring. I used to work in college radio and the EAS thing was locked onto one channel, and the only dial we were permitted to touch was the volume, because the thing had a little speaker in it if you wanted to hear that station. It was in our on-air studio, so that was always kept inaudible unless someone was getting the tour. I don’t know why they haven’t switched to some sort of networked solution with this old tech on backup, but we have phones that do this shit now, so it’s much less essential because almost nobody listens to radio anymore.

First vid in a long time that didn't feel like MatPat wrote and edited it and I loved it 💗💗💗💗

I only ever knew about CONELRAD because of the episode of The Twilight Zone called The Shelter. I always heard it as CONRAD, though it's possible the kid who says it is just saying it wrong.

I grew up to this sound actually. I lived in MS so every spring and fall (tornado season), my PBS kids would be disrupted by the EAS tone

The crack of a whip comes from the tip breaking the speed of sound

This was far more facinating of a subject than i thought it was going to be

That sound is also used in the Netherlands for the NL Alert system. I uses cell towers to send a sort of SMS message to all phones connected to that tower, to warn people for problems/troubles/emergancies. The phones will play that exact sound when they receive a message. They test the system twice a year on the first monday of a month at noon. And if you are in range of multiple towers, you get the message and the sound multiple times!

I’ll bet every American heard the sound in their head before you had to describe it… it’s in our DNA 😂

In case any of You where wondering Sam Denby is an American RU-vidr, best known for creating the edutainment RU-vid channels Wendover Productions, Half as Interesting, Extremities and Jet Lag: The Game.

I live up in mountains southern Colorado in a valley. one Sunday morning i woke up and the power was out no internet. There was many military jets flying around which was not normal for this area. I went out to my ford bronco and turned on the radio ( my radio reception am/fm is also bad) i finally reached a station and first thing i heard was the emergency broadcast sound and an announcer saying this is the emergency broadcast system. next thing I HEARD THIS IS AN ADVERTIZEMENT FOR SURVIVAL FOODS. the announcer went thru the add, then i heard normal broadcasting. I'm retired military not easy to scare but so Luckly i did not need to change my underwear. Never did find out what the air force was doing. Power outage was a tree took the lines down.

Found this interesting as a commerical played this recently and I was amazed it was legal. They probably got a bit screwed for it.

When you mentioned couple of tones, I knew it would be about EAS systems. Pretty awesome. A nice and simple explanation of what’s happening. The tones used are FSK and DTMF. Thanks for bringing some light to what goes on in terms of emergency preparedness. Awesome video of beginners guide to EAS, FSK and DTMF

0:53 That aged well :D

0:33 lol that's a Caterpillar Adem 4 control panel and I think that's a Ariel compressor in the background. Random to find that as B-roll!

"This sound is illegal to play" Every analog horror channel: "I'm gonna pretend I didn't see that"

Hear that initial burst once a week when they do the scheduled test for the EAS because there is a nuke power station a few miles away. Always makes the heart skip a beat until they say it is a test.

As someone who lives in Tornado Alley (Midwest USA) I know exactly what two tone sound he is talking about, I can play it from memory. In 2012 a local town from me was completely leveled due to a tornado and to say the least my these sounds get my heart rate going...

I miss the 1:00PM Monday sounding of the C.A.P. Air Raid siren I grew up with. I don't know when it disappeared, but maybe it coincided with the switch from EBS to EAS. I didn't know EBS disappeared because I stopped watching broadcast and cable 20 years ago. I guess EAS is the same on TV's and smartphones? Anyway as odd as it sounds finding out someone grew up with an air raid siren going off like clockwork every Monday at 1:00PM, in my suburban neighborhood, as a kid, it was kind of reassuring that SOMEone was thinking about these safety things. My oldest sister probably grew up with diving under her desk at school during drills. We didn't do that, but every kid in my elementary school DID know where our air raid shelter was... Even if they didn't know they knew it, we all knew there was a hallway leading from the cafeteria that was a ramp, and that was where we where supposed to go...

As someone that works at a terrestrial television broadcaster, I know these sounds, and the rules behind them, very well

Recently the Hong Kong government used this to broadcast an "emergency" message about a hospital being converted to treat COVID patients only... needless to say, it was massively criticized (desensitizing people of the sound, as mentioned in the video)

Watching this before a eas alarm test

2:36 so we're just not going to talk about this part? 😳