And if the disaster is an Electromagnetic Pulse?

[Skean Dhude]

They actually said only certain messages would be sent. If they considered it worthwhile. I don't think you have to sign up either. They can just transmit to everyone on the tranmitters in the area.

This would be handy for a local issue, flooding, nuclear/chemical leak, fires but most of the stuff we want won't ever get sent. Still worth it for the chemical/nuclear info though.

[Skean Dhude]

(17 September 2013, 09:56)Scythe13 Wrote: Yes, I get what you're saying LS. Only problems: a sim is still trackable once out of the phone....but costs millions. A phone is trackable without the sim. Best thing is to put the whole lot into a microwave and make it pop.

If it is a national thing, the first thing I'd do is use that system as my sign to bug out. Drop the phone part way, or keep it with me with the battery out, and then just hope they have better people to track than myself.

A sim is not trackable when it is out of the phone.

If you want to disable a phone, remove the battery and the sim. To test put it next to a radio. When a phone gets a call you can hear it on the radio. Remove the sim and battery and there is no noise.

[Geordie_Rob]

With regards to the mobile network being available/unavailable during incidents, I was caught up in the London July 7th bombings (well not the actual bombs going off, but the immediate chaos afterwards) & mobile phone signal was zero. This was across multiple networks.

I'm not sure if this was shut down or simply clogged by too many people trying to use mobiles, but either way there was just no signal on anyone's phone. On the plus side, the Bt phone box that everyone was ignoring worked great & I was able to ring home to report that I was safe.

Apologies for going off track.

Back to the topic, I would welcome such notification. Surely it's another source of info. If used wisely (and the info is double checked to confirm its genuine rather than some shady people-herding) then it can give you an early warning of something you might not of heard about otherwise until its too late.