30 years ago(Civil Defense)

[CrabbyMilton]

I have a question that I have been trying to obtain an answer for about 30+ years without much success. Back in 1978-79 when I was in 8th grade, we had a loudspeaker in our classroom(Milwaukee, WI.) that was silent with the exception of 12 noon when a siren like noise came over and a voice then stated(paraphrase) This is the civil defense national network the time is 12 noon. Then the siren noise again. I also heard this if I was in some grocery stores at noon as well interupting MUZAK or other background music service. I was once told that this was part of CONNELRAD which sounded logical to me at the time. But upon further research, CONNELRAD was discontinued in 1963. So much for that. Was this perhaps an example of the government officall discontinuing something only to keep part of it alive? I came to this forum first to see what is out there so I await some imput. Please tell me that I'm not the only one that heard this. Thanks.

[hoser147]

CD was pretty active back in the 60s thru the 80s That I can remember. Cant say a year that it was done away with the feds pulled the plug on the funds, I know it was in the later 80s that in our area the equipment they had was distributed out to the other agencies in the county and or sold/trashed. I Don't remember any alerts in the schools, there is a member that is on here that was a Asst. Director for this county, maybe he will chime in.

[elzebub]

Civil Defense was at it's height in the 50's and 60's, I remember the middle school I went to in Philadelphia had a huge rotating siren on the roof that had the civil defense logo on it, they would test it on a regular basis, man that thing was loud! It was quite loud at my home several miles away, the Civil Defense Museum has a pretty cool web site that has a lot of info on it. They used some interesting posters back in the day.

[tfgeocacher]

CrabbyMilton:

I cannot speak for your area, but you are not imagining this. There were several different means to notify communities in the event of a nuclear attack, which was the primary focus of the old Civil Defense programs that followed WWII into the Cold War era. For the most part, the CD Directors in each local community wouldn't receive notification in time, so alert systems were created by the Feds.

CONELRAD was started under President Harry Truman and continued until replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System in 1963. However, some areas still used the format of CONELRAD until 1976, which is before the years you mention, but not so far out that some carry over is entirely possible. The President allowed local governments to broadcast local and state level emergency information on the EBS, thus a local station may have broadcast the time as a way to again "test" the system. the Emergency Alert System, which replaced the EBS is now administered by the FCC, NOAA and FEMA.

You may want to visit these websites for more information.
CONELRAD: All Things Atomic | The Golden Age of Homeland Security
Civil Defense Museum-Main Page

David
TFGeocacher

[redhelmet13]

Well at least one of the remnants of the cold war is alive and well... NAWAS. It is a private land line circuit that ties the state and county EMO's to a common communications point. The NWS has a terminal at each WSFO as well as SPC, Watch and warning info is disemenated over this circuit as well as the other parts of the Integrated Warning System (Mostly for weather issues but also in time of national emergency).

This completes this test of the Emergency Warning System (Hows that for another dead relic?)

[mdulrich]

VictorySiren.com™ - The Internet home of the Chrysler Air Raid Siren

Mike

[CrabbyMilton]

You guys are great so THANKS AGAIN. You confirmed what I thought that it is possible that this was the tail end of the so called defunct CONELRAD system. My school's(Lutheran) PA system was in our eight grade classroom as our prinicipal also taught part of our class. This unit was old back then and it did have a broadcast radio built in though I don't know if that included shortwave or not. Yes, the cold war is an interesting subject and as a kid, I pictured the people behind the voices on those noon tests in military uniform in a bunker somewhere. But obviously now, things are different. We have NOAA radio which can be used to broadcast such alerts and then alerts on your PC and cell phone and then we mustn't forget 24/7 TV news networks but there was something facinating about the old ways. Come to think of it, that whole exposure of that plus a growing interest in fire trucks may have gotten me interested in scanners to which I am as hooked as ever and loving it.

[kb2vxa]

No, it was NOT the tail end of anything, sounds like a test of some sort of local CD alert system I never heard of. I grew up in the NYC/NNJ metro area and our CD tests consisted of sounding the air raid sirens at noon on Saturdays, the perfect time for those nasty old Russkies to drop one on us. (;->)

The CONELRAD (EBS) tests were nationwide and only involved key AM broadcast stations, the test announcement was followed by dropping the carrier several times, then another announcement. It went something like "This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Had this been an actual emergency you would have been instructed to tune to 640 or 1240 and await further instructions, this was only a test." The purpose of dropping carrier was to set off alarms at other stations monitoring the key stations alerting them to the test for logging purposes. This simulated all but stations operating on the two CONELRAD frequencies going off the air or switching to one of them.

Here is your typical EBS receiver which could be in a cabinet for stand alone operation or rack mounted at a broadcast facility. Normally muted, loss of carrier operated a "squelch" circuit which would unmute the audio and operate a relay that could be used to trigger an external alarm.

[rfradioconsult]

During that era, when you filed for an FCC Land Mobile license you had a box on the form to list the call letters of the broadcast station you would monitor for CONELRAD alerts. Motorola sold a receiver that had the alert function so you would not be chatting away on 42.96 and giving a homing signal for those Russian Bear bombers to home in on!

One of our local AM stations was an EBS outlet; they had a separate transmitter on 1240 and a semi-hardened site with a big generator and fuel supply.

[Net-5]

Those were the days...

YouTube - Mock Emergency Broadcast System Test WHEN Syracuse 1970s

[Astrak]

Originally Posted by elzebub

Civil Defense was at it's height in the 50's and 60's, I remember the middle school I went to in Philadelphia had a huge rotating siren on the roof that had the civil defense logo on it, they would test it on a regular basis, man that thing was loud! It was quite loud at my home several miles away, the Civil Defense Museum has a pretty cool web site that has a lot of info on it. They used some interesting posters back in the day.

Those are still around, I don't know about Philli but when I was in Nebraska they of course were all over the midwest still in use as tornado warning sirens and I would assume they would be used for other purposes if they had to be. In Lincoln they tested the first Wednesday of every month during the spring and summer. It's weird though I went to high school with one on top and even during the last few weeks of school when they would test them I wouldn't hear it but when I was in grade school across the street they would stop class because it was so loud and shake the building.

[DaveNF2G]

In western NY, fire house sirens were/are used for audible warnings. Some dispatch centers can send a group call over the main fire dispatch frequency to activate all sirens in a county simultaneously. This is how some "noon siren tests" are performed.

There are separate warning sirens for nuclear power plant emergencies that are activated over the same frequencies but using digital codes.

[elzebub]

After looking at some of the photos on the CD Museum web site, the one that was on my school was a Thunderbolt 1003, they used to test it every Saturday at 12:00 PM, I remember there were sirens mounted on the top of telephone poles also, we lived on the outskirts of Philly, it was very rural, lots of open land and farms, I haven't been back to Philly in a long time but I looked at the school on Google Earth and the siren is gone.

[Thayne]

Didn't they used to drop the carriers on the 640-1240 transmitters in either a random or controlled pattern to to throw off incoming bad stuff? I seem to think I remember listening to that and it would get stronger-weaker but the audio was a common feed. I was only about 12 then---