Germany's nationwide emergency warning day sees bumpy rollout

Found on DW on Tuesday, 15 September 2020
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At 11 a.m. sharp (0900 GMT) Germany carried out a nationwide test of its civil alarm systems — with everything from sirens to push notifications on smartphones being tested. The test was slated to run for exactly 20 minutes.

"The nationwide MoWaS [Modular warning system] could only be received after a delay. The reason for this was an unscheduled simultaneous triggering of a large number of warning messages via MoWaS," the BBK wrote on Twitter.

Air raid sirens sounded for one straight minute starting at 11 a.m., testing their tones full blast before varying the pitch of the tone.

So you operate an alerting system for the entire population, but you did not plan for a large number of messages in a short timeframe. Maybe you should look for another job. What does work are old-fashioned, mechanical air sirens; but those are oh so uncool and not digital, so they get decommissioned. Smart Dumb move.