Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake • Hacker News Board

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#41

Post by Scoundreller » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #40

Because of this alert I actually learned that Ontario Power Generation and the city of Toronto offer free Potassium Iodine pills to anyone living within 50km of the reactor in case of a radiation leak: https://preparetobesafe.ca

> How many pills should I have on hand?

> Each adult in the household should have 4 pills available, and each child should have two pills available. This is enough for 2 days supply.

Is this enough? The radioactive half life of I-?131? is 8 days. Or is the dose so high that you won't uptake any from the environment for a while?

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#42

Post by gpm » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

The initial alert happened at 7:24 aim.

Between 8:06 am and 9:12 am a number of government officials, starting with the Pickering Fire Chief via CP24 [0] started announcing that the alert was sent in error.

At 9:12 am we were told the alert was sent by mistake via the alert system.

At 12:55 pm we were finally told that there actually was no nuclear incident, and the alert was sent by accident during training [1].

Why the hell did it take 42 minutes for any sort of public information to be broadcast after the initial alert.

Why the hell did it take an additional hour and 6 minutes to realize they should send that information through the official system, instead of letting people wonder what information is accurate and what information is caused by the fog of war. Note that the same places we were told it was a mistake were previously telling us people were responding to an incident [2].

Why the hell did it take an entire 6 hours after the alert for the authorities to inform us that there hadn't actually been a nuclear accident, instead of a nuclear accident that was contained enough they didn't feel the need to alert us via emergency systems?

[0] https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216345708971929600

[1] https://news.ontario.ca/mcscs/en/2020/01/statement-from-the-...

[2] https://twitter.com/CP24/status/1216337813957947393

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#43

Post by Scoundreller » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

Deinumite wrote: post #39

tenpies wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to sh…

I don't believe this is true. I received these alerts this morning, but as my phone is only on vibrate it did not produce any audio.

I think if it's set to silent/vibrate, it won't generate audio on most phones.

But as I'm on-call for my organization, that's not an option.

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#44

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

Deinumite wrote: post #39

tenpies wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even that, the deaths and injuries are immediate for drivers. Canada implemented this in the worst way possible so that any alert gets the highest alert setting possible (Presidential: what would normally be reserved for an imminent attack) - bypassing silence, do not disturb, and any volume or device setting. So Imagine a truck driver at 3 am being suddenly startled by the blaring alert and then scrambling to sh…

I don't believe this is true. I received these alerts this morning, but as my phone is only on vibrate it did not produce any audio.

[deleted]

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#45

Post by gpm » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #41

52-6F-62 wrote: post #40

Because of this alert I actually learned that Ontario Power Generation and the city of Toronto offer free Potassium Iodine pills to anyone living within 50km of the reactor in case of a radiation leak: https://preparetobesafe.ca

> How many pills should I have on hand? > Each adult in the household should have 4 pills available, and each child should have two pills available. This is enough for 2 days supply. Is this enough? The radioactive half life of I-?131? is 8 days. Or is the dose so high that you won't uptake any from the environment for a while?

Or are they counting on their ability to distribute more pills within 2 days.

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#46

Post by Scoundreller » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

GhostVII wrote: post #11

Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.

> wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.

They're LTE only, so I've disabled them by disabling LTE and sticking to 3G.

The speeds are fast enough (15mbps peaks). And with $10/gig data prices, it's not like I'll ever down/upload large files over wireless.

The problem is that I was used to getting a push notification almost immediately from every news source on Amber Alerts, but not this time.

I think news orgs didn't know how to handle it. Especially since the public was directed to listen to them, but they had no messaging.

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#47

Post by smabie » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #22

na85 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Canadian government is pretty much uniformly incompetent as an institution. I honestly can't think of a single thing in my lifetime they haven't bungled.

Not going into Iraq.

Canada did get involved: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Iraq_War

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#48

Post by gpm » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

blondin wrote: post #37

GhostVII wrote: post #11

Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.

i am not sure i understand the reactions here... why are people mad? the first message was very reasonable. it even said there is "no danger". to check with media and authorities. the second said the first was human error. if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way. instead there is now an investigation, and someone who is…

> if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no

They weren't saying "no", they were saying "we have no idea". If everyone called 911, they would be totally swamped, please don't do that.

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#49

Post by Scoundreller » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

blondin wrote: post #37

GhostVII wrote: post #11

Even if it was not a mistake, why would they send a presedential alert to the entire province just to tell them that people 10km away from the nuclear plant are in no danger? Pretty absurd, wish I could fully disable these alerts until the government is actually competently using them.

i am not sure i understand the reactions here... why are people mad? the first message was very reasonable. it even said there is "no danger". to check with media and authorities. the second said the first was human error. if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way. instead there is now an investigation, and someone who is…

> if i were driving, i would stop the car, call 911 and ask if anything was going on. they would probably say no, then i would be on my way.

9-1-1 would've said: "We don't know either. We know as much as you do". Which would only be more concerning.

Re: Toronto area sent nuclear alerts by mistake

#50

Post by Scoundreller » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

interestica wrote: post #31

jpdaigle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Gatineau, Québec and we got it too, so it even got broadcast to neighbouring provinces.

I was wondering about this today. How granular are the 'zones' used for these alerts? Is it just by political boundary? For something like Pickering, it would be useful to have a more geographical zone -- including parts of the US. Could the alert be sent out and limited to cell towers within a selected zone? Is the current system using tower location?

They have the ability to geotarget them, but fail at it regularly.

From what I understood from spectrum auctions, Gatineau Quebec is a part of the Ottawa area, so they're probably a part of Ontario side when it comes to cell system back-end.