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America Needs A More Effective Warning System

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has appointed a 17-member board to review and evaluate the Homeland Security Advisory System, the familiar, if often ignored, five-color terror-alert warning. The system is long overdue for review and should be improved.

Editor’s Note – I agree that there are long overdue changes needed to the current Homeland Security advisory system. But as pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of the color-coded system. The color coded system is an widely recognized and could be very useful if specific actions were tied directly to the threat level. I also agree that the appearance or potential opportunity to use it politically needs to removed. A neutral agency or organization could administer the alert according to a very specific criteria, removing any doubt from the public’s mind as to the actual severity of the threat.

The system was established in March 2002 as a readiness measure for state and local law enforcement and the public generally.

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4 Comments

  • Need to cut the committee and go for the updates State by State. The Threat Levels are going to be different for each State. The State that is going to be effected by the Threat and those States which are around the State should be placed on Alert.

    SRT teams should have access to multistate agreements so that Quick Reaction Teams with Homeland Security and LEAS can coordinate to face the challenges.

    Sincerely,

    SSG Ret. Mark W. Crawmer

  • The current US / UK system — if correlated by internet multicast zone by threshold and intensity and expected impact is fine. It would be made even better if the color levels were correlated with NASA’s five level tone based messaging system for the blind and smart device vibrational levels for the deaf. For the rest of the population, use multicast IP defined zones (i.e., Verizon Vcast) to alert populations by increase / decrease color levels by intensity level set by thresholds given the FCC has been working on a intensity / threshold levels scheme. Correlate the color levels with meaningful, qualitative threshold levels combined with other agency’s approaches e.g., FCC and NASA.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/18224352/Heart-Beacon-August-2009-Concept-Paper

  • The best early warning system is human beings and how they feel. This is true of the animal kingdom as well. Many people wonder how it is that animals are not around when an earthquake hits. Well, this is very easy once you understand it.

    When mass die offs occur, animals feel headache pain. Normally they will feel this pain prior to the event, perhaps a day before. They merely walk in the direction that causes the least headache pain, and, before you know it, they are out of the disaster area.

    Unfortunately humans use aspirin and other NSAIDS to treat headache pain, this is why so many died from the Tsunami in Sri Lanka, whilst most of the animals evaded the event.

    Twitter, or something like it, where people register their feelings, like “I have a headache right now” rather than what they are doing, when fed into a supercomputer database analysis program, would provide ‘flags’ of upcoming events, not only by terrorist attack, but also by mother nature. If, for example, a lot of people in San Francisco all feel bad, this data might be correlated with earthquake predictions and a probable attack or disaster site could be targeted ahead of time.

    This system would, of course need to be adjusted accordingly as new information is learned by the database until fine tuning allows for accuracy in corroborating the various data bases including the new human detection system.

  • Interesting i definitely agree. there is some correlation that can be derived from nature and we can always learnfrom the habitats of creatures who cal almost sense when these events are about occur!!

    There is one such ealry warning system that thew world ahs failed always seems to bypass though: the bible and it’s prophecies!!

    there are plenty events that have been already prophecied to take place but the eprson would have to be so intune with the spirirt of God to see it happen and bible history teaches us that the simplest of thigs can be missed by the five senses hence the reason for things like faith, revelation, salvation.

    But anayway I don’t think you guys are at all ready for this so don’t worry or stress about it too much, just go with the flow and pray God is on your side when the proverbial “sh+t” hits the fan..

    have a blessed day..

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