[EAS] FCC NPRM on improving EAS just issued

[Tim Stoffel]

Clay,
    You just did a fantastic job of contradicting yourself and proving my point ;)

We don't just need a daisy chain; we don't need just the internet; we need both systems.

You gave a number of human-induced 'failures' in your original response. We can't eliminate all of them, but we can mitigate their effect.

First of all, every station has at least two, if not three monitoring assignments. They listen multiple places to break a SPOF. Second, adding some additional entry points mitigates the 'one-pep-per-area' problem. If we were to bring back the AT&T system, or at least part of it, that is another mitigation. Working through major broadcast networks (and PBS still does this, at least in part) is yet another way. Encouraging non-broadcast entites to participate in EAS was part of the original EAS design, and I see no reason why it should not still be pursued. So with a few fixes, I think we can make the daisy chain considerably more reliable.

That said, the internet-based delivery system has lots of functional advantages over the daisy chain. A number of very useful enhancements have come by way of the internet based CAP/IPAWS system. But the internet is at least as fragile as the power grid. There have been many more widespread internet outages than there have been widespread power outages in the last 20 years. And although the power grid has some significant vulnerabilities, the internet is routinely hacked from within.

When the m9+ earthquake strikes in the Cascades, the internet will be wiped out, orvery nearly so. Some broadcasters, being simple beasts compared to the internet, will either stay on by some miracle, or quickly get back on (because they haven't fired their engineers!).

 Small segments of the internet might stay up, but they may not work well if they can't see a root nameserver, etc. But just like the cell phone network, what's left will be quickly overloaded by facebook posts, tweets, and videos of the bookcases swaying. The first people providing communication after an emergency are the amateur radio operators. Why? Hams are 'buried in the infrastructure'. They have their own radios, their own power systems, and they are everywhere. Broadcasters are the next, and most public tier. Many of them have their own power systems, and smart people who can get them on the air and keep them on the air. The internet, and the cell phone networks are last, because of their fragile, easily overloaded infrastructure.

So, in a major emergency, I want to hear duck farts, as well as see data scrolling on the screen of my (emergency backed-up) computer.

Tim Stoffel

--

Pick up a copy of the last edition of Discovery Magazine - There is a piece about just how fragile the power grid is - 

Out this way we are doing a lot of planning for the eventual Cascade Subduction Zone earthquake (Google Cascadia Rising to see what we are up
to).   

The bottom line - We are very poorly prepared for a disaster of the
magnitude of these events.   Their cost in terms of infrastructure and lives
lost will make Sandy, Katrina etc mini-events.

Clay Freinwald