[EAS] CONELRAD

[Sean Donelan]

On Tue, 7 Feb 2012, Bill Ruck wrote:
> Stumbled across this link
>
> <http://coldwar-c4i.net/CONELRAD/Plan-1952-11-19/p01.html>http://coldwar-c4i.net/CONELRAD/Plan-1952-11-19/p01.html
>
> That is the real McCoy CONELRAD Plan #1 and #2.

You can also visit your local government depository library to look for 
similar historical artifacts. Some interesting things in the original 
plans (the 1952 plan replaced the original 1951 plan)

    No presidential message or activation

    Initiated by the Air Force, not civilian authorities

    Warning the public was not a primary objective

      The over-the-air signal was for tier 2/3 stations that didn't have a
      dedicated notification phone line (money was an issue in the 1950's
      too), of course the public could hear it too and eventually did
      become a public warning signal

    Only designated AM stations could join; every other AM, FM and TV 
went off the air

    Stations had to meet several qualifying conditions to participate, and 
several hundred AM stations did volunteer

    National emergency action tests took several hours between Midnight and 
sunrise about once or twice a year, eventually shortened to 15-30 minutes 
for the last few daytime national emergency action tests

> Looks to me like the FCC has been writing vague and confusing rules
> for a long time.

The 1952 plan was mostly written by industry, replacing the 1951 plan.

The previous 1951 plan was very clear and simple.  When notified by 
officials, every AM, FM, TV station shutdown their transmitters.  No 
640/1240, no rotating transmitter towers, no civil defense messages, just 
turn off the transmitters.

As you might expect, the 1951 plan didn't last long.  There was an 
immediate disagreement between industry, civil defense officials and 
military defense officials.  The FCC has been stuck in the middle the 
referee since the beginning.

Some of the artifacts from the early plans continue to exist to this day, 
in the EAS rules.  Reading the original documents can be interesting, 
because they help explain some of the seemingly weird decisions had
rational reasons at the time.  But the world does change, and its a good 
idea to re-visit some of those old decisions in case there could be
better decisions today.