Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!cs!acrux!jxxl
From: jxxl@acrux (John Locke)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Disaster Planning
Keywords: doom naysayers death destruction
Message-ID: <362@cs.nps.navy.mil>
Date: 26 Oct 89 21:34:49 GMT
References: <103@farcomp.UUCP> <35944@apple.Apple.COM> <14806@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Sender: news@cs.nps.navy.mil
Reply-To: jxxl@cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
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Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA
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In article <14806@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:

> The other thing to add would be an "emergency broadcast system" (ebs)
> hierarchy, to be used only in emergencies.

It could only work better than the real EBS which, in the recent quake,
failed completely and was switched off to avoid further annoyance. It
was blasting out a tone in anticipation of information about which radio
station to tune to. But the info never came. The observation that
interested me most was that the EBS was designed to work best when the
government has more info than the people, i.e. missles are on the way.
The quake was the opposite situation: the people in the field had better
info and could get it to the radio stations. The net, it seems to me,
leans toward that side of the distinction. We are in the field. However,
in the recent quake there were wide-spread power outages. Many installations,
including this one, were without power. We were down for almost 24 hours--
so I'm not sure what practical purpose a net facility for emergencies would
serve in the event of a serious, debilitating disaster.