27

THIS IS A TEST of the Galactic Emergency Alert system

No action is required.

Type: Milkyway Empire

The World

In the near future:

  • we discover FTL
  • we run into some friendly aliens that are part of a benevolent galactic "empire"
  • in order to join, we must have a global emergency alert system that can reach >95% of our population

Most areas can be covered by cell phone/tv/radio alerts.

It is getting the alert out to the remote areas that concerns me

"remote areas"

  • Areas without cell service and no other alert method (radio,etc)
  • Areas with a warning system that we can't automate/hook into
  • Areas without a warning system at all (and no radio/etc.)
  • Areas without electricity

Partial Solution

I believe we can mass produce a simple pole with

  • antennae
  • Raspberry Pi
  • solar panels
  • batteries
  • loudspeakers

I can see deploying these in remote areas via B-52. The pole is dropped, it will jam itself into the ground and activate (pole is designed to manage terminal velocity)

Question

Including manufacturing time, how long would it take to ensure that >95% of the population would hear the global alert?

Assume that all major countries want to contribute.(The empire has a LOT of benefits when we join)

Philipp
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Michael Kutz
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    It might be cheaper, easier and have many unrelated benefits to invest into a proper permanent GSM network. Global mobile phone ownership is on the rise, especially in developing countries. 95% of the world population either owning a mobile or having someone nearby with one isn't unrealistic in the near future, especially when governments would be willing to subsidize them. – Philipp Oct 03 '18 at 19:43
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    vaguely related, Hughes is working on a system that relies on LEO satellites to provide internet to everyone by 2027 oneweb and Elon Musk/Space-x seems to have a similar idea called starlink – depperm Oct 03 '18 at 19:54
  • It depends on how loud the loudspeakers are and how much manpower you can devote to their construction. The louder they are, the further apart they can be and the fewer you will need. In any case you're going to need a tremendously huge number, and it will take a similarly huge number of man-hours to make them. I think you're better off just requiring by law all new cellphones to be able to connect to satellites. It doesn't have to be a good connection, just enough for text. Combine it with loudspeakers in cities and billboards on highways and you're set. – Ryan_L Oct 03 '18 at 21:46
  • May I as well add that most of the population of earth does not speak english? – Mr.J Oct 03 '18 at 23:57
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    Would methods of reducing the rural population be acceptable? Giving everyone a free cellphone and building out a global cell network is the boring approach. Killing everyone we can’t reach with existing systems would be a more novel and interesting solution, if it’s permissible. (I mean, you floated the idea of dropping speaker poles into remote areas from B52 bombers... why not just drop bombs?) – HopelessN00b Oct 04 '18 at 00:26
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    @Mr.J - I've already thought of the language barrier problem. Earth is given access to the Galactic Empire's version of Google Translate. You can receive the alert (on your phone) in Klingon or Elvish if you so choose. – Michael Kutz Oct 04 '18 at 01:52
  • @HopelessN00b again, as I have stated in an answer that pertains exactly that, its logically correct as it checks everything that is required, but seriously, how can you people think about mass killings as a way of accepting things? there are a plenty of ways to get everybody on board. – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 02:08
  • Do you also want to build a wall around the Solar System, and get Alpha Centauri to pay for it? – Barmar Oct 04 '18 at 02:12
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    phones. just end poverty worldwide so that everyone can afford one. doesn't even require any new technology or resources, just more equal distribution. – user371366 Oct 04 '18 at 03:51
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    Given that over 5% of the world's population is apparently deaf, I think it will be hard to create an effective system using loudspeakers – A C Oct 04 '18 at 05:02
  • Q1: What would cause a real alert? Spontanious Borg invasion? Q2: What is the expected response time from triggering the alert to the reacion on ground? – Alexander von Wernherr Oct 04 '18 at 06:59
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    Why not ask the benevolent galactic "empire" how they do it? They will probably appreciate your efforts at compatibility with their systems. – Real Subtle Oct 04 '18 at 11:46
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    @Mr.J Killing people is often easier than convincing people. More fun, too. Say what you will about the morality of a genocidal mass murder of millions of people, but it’s bound to generate more appealing pyrotechnics than air dropping a bunch of cheap cell phones would. – HopelessN00b Oct 04 '18 at 12:36
  • @HopelessN00b It will be more appealing if your the one KILLING, I'll do appreciate it more if you find the same appeal if your the one to be KILLED. – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 23:32
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    How fast are we required to get the message out? If it can wait up to 28 days, maybe we turn the moon into a giant electronic billboard. – workerjoe Oct 05 '18 at 02:07
  • The aliens know this is impossible (they have 64% coverage) and are just using this as a means to deny club membership or cause self extinction, either solution suits them fine. – KalleMP Oct 05 '18 at 09:30
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    @Joe yours is the only remotely viable answer, It would not take that many days, setting off a massive explosion on the moon every hour for 48 hours should have covered all regions that are not under total overcast. Those isolated under ground and under ice need to have their friends call them. – KalleMP Oct 05 '18 at 09:32
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    You may want to read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Alert which covers like 99% of Japan's population with loudspeakers. It was deployed in a few years, with slow adoption by local authorities at first due to installation and maintenance costs. – Nicolas Raoul Oct 05 '18 at 10:03
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    I guess the system has to efficiently wake up heavy sleepers too? That might be above the capacities of a normally powered smartphone. – Nicolas Raoul Oct 05 '18 at 10:19
  • What's the delay between the alert going off and the point where we need to have notified 95% of people to pass their test? – Cort Ammon Oct 05 '18 at 19:08
  • You need to specify what you mean by "alert". Is it just an attention-gathering event? (Like a really loud bang and big flash, nuclear-detonation-like?) Do the people have to realize it is an emergency alert? Does it have to pass on a message, if so how much information must the message be capable of carrying, and must the message be understandable to everyone who perceives it? (Could it be in Chinese and English only? If it's written what about illiterates, if it's spoken what about the hearing-impaired? – Wayne Oct 06 '18 at 14:33

10 Answers10

32

Reduce the Population

95% gets a lot easier if you can chop off the long tail. Now that you can move things faster than the speed of light, kinetic kill weapons can devestate the world. While world leaders debate how to achieve the goal, a rogue faction secedes to the moon, cracks the earth in half, and neatly qualifies for entry into the galactic fold. Then, they emigrate somewhere nicer than this galactic backwater.

Daniel B
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  • And then there's people like this, mass murder everybody else just to save themselves, then justify their actions as heroic. While this answer is logically correct, annihilating a whole civilization for your own good, is like murdering your own parents for the sake of your own peace. AND, if this kind sir/madam can murder his parents. Then this answer qualifies as valid. – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 01:22
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    I agree, the rogue faction that enacts this plan will be highly immoral. – Daniel B Oct 04 '18 at 01:28
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    But take note, I have to emphasize this, this is highly logical. Immoral, yes, but logically correct. – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 01:30
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    @Mr.J , etc. - I'm already killing off at least 50% of the population at the end of "Chapter 1" because of a massive multi-brood infestation of Space Locus in our asteroid belt. I don't want/need any more needless killings. ( https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/102010/how-to-destroy-a-star-system ) – Michael Kutz Oct 04 '18 at 01:35
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    @MichaelKutz You forgot to add that detail, this changes things. If your period is post apocalypse, do you think most of earths facilities are still intact? – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 01:57
  • @Mr.J - The warning system is pre-apocalyptic. The system is needed in order to give the world a 3 hours notice to GTFO (Get The F***k Out). It is the reason why I'm not killing off >95% of Earth's population. (logistics of escape is reserved for a different question) – Michael Kutz Oct 04 '18 at 02:10
  • @MichaelKutz But you're just spreading a test message as per OP? – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 02:11
  • @Mr.J - The text is a paraphrase of today's (2018-oct-3) text message sent by our National Wireless Emergency Alert System (USA). In the story, a real message is sent out. The story does incorporate a test message, but since it happened at an odd-time, some off-planet visitors suspected (correctly) that the test was actually a preemptive move for an actual planet-wide alert. – Michael Kutz Oct 04 '18 at 02:24
  • The morality fo killing off a significant fraction of the Earth's population to meet some arbitrary population coverage imposed by an alien race may not even be an issue fo the aliens. What is highly immoral to us is largely determined by culture and is highly variable (few English people today would find bull baiting exciting or moral, but their ancestors 500 years ago did). If they are "Starfish" aliens or practice "Blue/Orange" morality, then the issue may be mooted. – Thucydides Oct 04 '18 at 03:49
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    The problem is that killing off the people in remote places is much harder than killing all the people in Tokyo, Shanghai, and Jakata (which is about 0.1 billion). Apart from anything else, people in remote places often live much more self-reliant lifestyles, so a collapse of civilization will tend affect them less. – Martin Bonner supports Monica Oct 04 '18 at 11:02
  • @Mr.J, I see the issue.. 350Million people is a lot, alerting them all of the mass murder emergency can be hard. Especially if they are randomly spread on the planet. Simplification will be spend minium effort finding a brunch of people, kill everyone else. adjust the number of people to match 95% killing. Remember for decimal you can chop limb or finger. – Drag and Drop Oct 04 '18 at 13:52
  • @MartinBonner, Travel close to the ground at FTL. The expanding plasma will take care of your "self-reliant". – Drag and Drop Oct 04 '18 at 13:57
  • @martinbonner you must have missed the “cracks the earth in half” bit I mentioned there. Not much worry about survivors after you throw 3222-Florence at the earth at 99% of C. – Daniel B Oct 04 '18 at 18:44
  • @DragandDrop I don't really understand your point (even if its sarcasm), but this answer simply is killing of everyone you don't know, reducing the population of earth to lets say a one hundred(100), at this point, you can now declare that the population of earth is just 100 people, and you saved them all. To answer the topic, just give them any media that can receive radio signals such as a radio or phone, or you just hold one speaker phone, shout the message and 100% of the population will hear you, that is... because you just have 100 humans. – Mr.J Oct 04 '18 at 23:39
  • I got really shocked about this... +1 : – frarugi87 Oct 05 '18 at 12:25
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    When in doubt - go with the evil answer. – papirtiger Oct 05 '18 at 16:55
  • I will summon Thanos. – maguirenumber6 Oct 06 '18 at 07:43
26

First off, >95% coverage means that, with a worldwide population of 7 billion, you can ignore 350 million people. Which I feel like gives you some wiggle room.

Second, when you say 'near future,' what do you mean?

If you mean anything longer than the next few years, you may not need to do anything other than use cell phones. As of 2017, about 70% of the world's population owned one, and that percentage is rapidly increasing. In many areas of the world, mobile phones are the way you access the internet.

Additionally, about a quarter of the world's population is under 14 years old. The vast majority of these children, I believe it's safe to say, will be within hearing distance of an adult.

So, 70% of the world has cell phones. 25% are close enough to an adult to hear one in an emergency. Adding those together gives you 95% coverage.

Now, that's cutting it a little close as of 2017, but with the increasing ubiquity of mobile devices, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume in your 'near future' scenario that more than 95% could hear a cell phone if it went off.

But what if you wanted to be even more sure? Well, as we're all aware, humans are not evenly distributed across the planet. China and India each have more than a billion people, and many of those are among the poorest in the world... and they also live in large cities. By hooking up your raspberry pi to some airhorns in those large cities, you can pick up whole percentage points of the world population.

Want to be even more sure? Require phone manufacturers to donate a few tens of millions of devices, for the good of the planet. Ship those devices to every village in Africa and rural community in India, and voila! Even better coverage.

So, even assuming you're not happy with the current growth of cell phone usage worldwide, which within the next few years will easily take you over 95% coverage, manufacturing and shipping those cheap mobile devices for rural areas would take, what, a year? At most? We're already making hundreds of millions of phones now, so it wouldn't take long to redirect them where they're needed if necessary.

Elliot Schrock
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    What percent of cell-phone users are also under 14 years old? I agree with the validity of the rest of your answer, but if there's any chance of overlap between two groups, you can't get an absolute percent, just lower and upper limits. – DqwertyC Oct 03 '18 at 23:53
  • @DqwertyC Good question! I briefly considered this, but decided that the number of kids who have a phone would balance those who were out of earshot. In fact, back in my day™, I wasn't allowed to go out with friends alone unless one of us had a cell phone. But you're absolutely right, we can't know for sure, and there is definitely a potential for an overlap that messes up my numbers. – Elliot Schrock Oct 04 '18 at 00:20
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    I think that you are mixing things up with the percentage addition part, kids with phones will not cancel out with kids out of ear shot, those two categories will actually both decrease the percentage. – vero Oct 04 '18 at 07:52
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    As far as I know even villages in Africa usually have a few cellphones in them. The users often have to go to the next city to get a connection, but many have one. There's even a pretty popular payment method there that uses SMS. – Fabian Röling Oct 04 '18 at 09:52
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    @DqwertyC Considering the rate at which cell ownership is increasing, I think it's fair to say that overlap won't matter within a few years. I don't have any hard numbers to calculate it out, though. –  Oct 04 '18 at 19:25
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    Shipping the devices isn't the problem, coverage and airtime is the issue. A lot of backwater Africa villages have at least one cellphone if not more. The people will barter for airtime and then travel to a coverage area to call family etc. If we shot up satellite's that could transmit emergency alerts and standardized the protocol and communication methods to target 95%+ we would achieve it with current technology. – Nathan Goings Oct 05 '18 at 19:01
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Detonating nukes in very high altitudes causes a lot of noise and brings along some nice pyrotechnical effects:

In general, nuclear effects in space (or very high altitudes) have a qualitatively different display. While an atmospheric nuclear explosion has a characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud, high-altitude and space explosions tend to manifest a spherical 'cloud,' reminiscent of other space-based explosions until distorted by Earth's magnetic field, and the charged particles resulting from the blast can cross hemispheres to create an auroral display which has led documentary maker Peter Kuran to characterize these detonations as 'the rainbow bombs'.

If we have the tech for FTL, we have the tech to blow some nuclear fireworks up high. That should gather a lot of attention. We could do it around the globe.

The Square-Cube Law
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22

Is the scope of the system to only be on Earth? If that is the case, then satellites should suffice, as we have had 100% coverage for decades now. The old Iridium constellation, famous for its satellite flares, was able to completely cover the Earth, as shown below:

enter image description here

Simply use a satellite alert system for phones, or use those pole thingies you mentioned but hook them up to a satellite.

KITTENDESTROYER-9000
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  • But how long would it take to manufacture and distribute the pole thingies to ensure >95% of the people can be reached? – Michael Kutz Oct 03 '18 at 21:30
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    @MichaelKutz Depends how dedicated you are. I doubt if we have FTL travel greater than 5% of the population would be disconnected from the internet, so this question may not even be applicable. – KITTENDESTROYER-9000 Oct 03 '18 at 22:08
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    Iridium is still going and launching new satellites. – Schwern Oct 04 '18 at 03:07
  • The only real issue with using Satellites is that they have trouble connecting if there is too much between you and the sky - but, that's mostly an issue in urban settings (tall buildings, etc) where we already have phone masts. Mandate a change of all phones to support both satellites and masts (since the necessary antenna are different), then run a global "subsidised trade-in" scheme to encourage everyone to upgrade (the new "basic model" might be free with any trade-in) – Chronocidal Oct 04 '18 at 07:31
  • What's old about Iridium? I've used it two weeks ago. – gerrit Oct 04 '18 at 10:07
  • @gerrit they are deorbiting the original satellites and replacing them with NEXT satellites. It's a bit a of a bummer for people who like watching flares as they will become much less common and less predictable now. – KITTENDESTROYER-9000 Oct 04 '18 at 10:37
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    @MichaelKutz If money is no object (and lets face it, you're joining an intergalactic community here, it's worth shelling out!) then you could probably contract a few manufacturers and churn out a few million of the things in a matter of months at most. – Ruadhan Oct 04 '18 at 11:34
  • @Ruadhan exactly. If you have FTL, then launching LEO satellites should be much less than trivial for even the remotest planet. – RonJohn Oct 04 '18 at 11:57
  • @KITTENDESTROYER-9000 On the other side it is a huge boon for the astronomers who will not have to deal with the flares ruining their measurements. – zovits Oct 05 '18 at 10:50
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Low Frequency Radio

Remember those radio-controlled clocks? They get the current time from a radio signal. The entire United States is covered by one broadcast tower in Fort Collins, Colorado. It operates on 60 kHz band. This tower broadcasts at 1 bit per second, but you could presumably increase the baud rate a bit...

What you would do is give every citizen a little device that would listen for this broadcast. This antenna could also be placed in cell phones, clocks (duh), and other devices. So for the technophobes that don't want phones or whatever you could use that arduino setup you mentioned, deploying them in strategic areas, instead of all over the world.

As for the broadcast towers, to build in redundancy, I'd go with two per continent.

As for the message, unless you want to ignore the 1 bit per second part, it could just say "get to a tv/radio/Internet access point!"

johnVonTrapp
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8

Induced Gravitational Harmonics

You didn't mention if you have artificial gravity to go with your FTL or not, but if you do, and depending on how it works, inducing fluctuations in the planet's natural gravity at a frequency audible to humans could make every loose object on the entire planet vibrate out your message all at once.

As a bonus, more targeted manipulation could be used to crush flat anyone who doesn't want to join the galactic empire.

Solar Thermal Transducer

If you don't have sufficient artificial gravity power to pull this off, set up a solar laser array. Pumping a few gigawats of thermal energy into the atmosphere at the proper frequency and dispersement pattern should let you create arbitrarily loud sounds at arbitrary points on the planet's surface. You'd just have to keep your message short to avoid, shall we say, unpleasant side-effects...

As a bonus, any dissidents who don't want to join the galactic empire can simply be vaporized in the middle of the night. No muss, no fuss, no witnesses!

Radio

There is a school near where I live that is less than a mile from a 50,000 watt radio transmitter station. As it turns out, you'd be amazed what kinds of things can be used as AM receivers if the signal is strong enough... Lockers, desks, telephone lines, people's fillings... Anything conductive and capable of vibrating is potentially susceptible to being driven by a sufficiently powerful signal. The energy budget to blanket the globe this way is probably cost-prohibitive given that you'd have to convert it to radio waves, and the damage it might do to sensitive electronics would also be expensive, so the other options are likely better.

Perkins
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    Sounds similar to how the Vogons announced their intentions to destroy earth to make way for a hyperspace lane. But, how do you overcome the multiple Language barrier? – Michael Kutz Oct 05 '18 at 01:56
  • @Michael Kutz Why not simply repeating the signal in every known language ? – Freedomjail Oct 05 '18 at 12:47
  • @MichaelKutz The technical requirement is for the message to "reach" 95% of the population... That doesn't necessarily require that they understand it. But you could use multiple languages for the messages if you want to be nice. – Perkins Oct 05 '18 at 19:15
  • @Perkins just send a black-and-white skull and crossbones flag :P – user253751 Mar 12 '21 at 22:57
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What about projecting the message on the moon? Everybody can see it, you only need one powerful enough projector rather than a global installation, you can cover the costs through ads.

The problem however would be language and the fact that the message would not be instantanious for everybody.

Or instead of projecting on the moon, set up a (or multiple) sufficiently large screen(s) in higher orbit and project on those.

Subbies
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  • The moon would be too small. It's not that big of a screen. Also any screen that could be visible from the night sky as described could also be used as a weapon to block out the sun. – HSchmale Oct 05 '18 at 14:01
  • The moon is big enough, but that is also the problem. "One powerful enough projector" has to outshine the Sun (!). Your worst-case scenarion is the full moon, in which the visible disk of the moon is fully lit by direct sunlight, unattenuated by any atmosphere. – MSalters Oct 05 '18 at 14:12
  • @HSchmale you could always just project letter by letter, thus making it readble. As for using screens as weapons, yes but a country with the capacity to launch such satellites most likely has better weapons than a giant flying target. Plus it seems that Earth is fairly united in this question. – Subbies Oct 05 '18 at 14:26
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    The power requirements are something of a hurdle here, https://what-if.xkcd.com/13/ – Bomaz Oct 05 '18 at 16:05
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    @bomaz - GMTA :) – Fattie Oct 05 '18 at 19:14
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    Projecting the image onto the moon would require ridiculous power, but putting down a few billion "pixels" on the surface that can be changed between reflective and non-reflective would work during the full moon, and they could be illuminated brightly enough to be visible during the new moon relatively cheaply compared to a projector. A solar array of similar size on the back side should be sufficiently large. For bonus points, name the construction effort "Project disco ball". – Perkins Oct 08 '18 at 18:05
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Regarding the viability of purchasing a phone for every person in the world:

https://www.nbim.no/no/ - 8 468 829 792 352 nok (about a trillion dollars)

That is the savings of Norway, a small european country of 5 million people. That is more than enough to buy a smartphone for the last 30% of the world who are still disconnected from the internet.

I am sure we could figure something out.

Daniel Vestøl
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    The Norwegian state savings are hardly typical as its the result of squirrelling away oil money for the last 30+ years. Norway may be a small country - but its has vast natural resources. – papirtiger Oct 05 '18 at 17:03
1

This would be trivial with today's technology because,

Fortunately in our real world there's a near-duopoly on device OS.

Couldn't be easier. In five minutes the 2 major device OS, and the few minor device OS, could be forced to add more "emergency alert" functions than they do now.

Step 2, governments would simply mandate that older versions of the OS don't work, which is easy to achieve.

None of that is any harder then, say, that you "must have brakes on a vehicle" and so on - any regulation.

A tiny number of people don't have a device currently; it would only cost a few billion to make a minimal one for those folks.

Note that a few nutters would want to avoid being contacted: your 95% rule easily covers that case.

Easy! Thanks to the current duopoly on device operating systems.

Community
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Fattie
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  • I don't think that the roughly 65% of Android users that aren't using some version of 8.0 will be happy that they will need to buy new phones. A lot of people don't upgrade their phone until it's broken, and a lot of Android manufacturers stop updating older and cheaper models after only a year or 2. However, it would be a LOT simpler to just have the government develop a couple of apps that are compatible with all version and force the manufacturers to push a non-removable version of that app to the phone similar to how some manufacturers force Facebook or TripAdvisor on their phone. – Nzall Jan 14 '19 at 10:04
1

There seems to be two assumptions that people are making that I want to unpick:

  1. That a warning signal must be in a spoken language.

  2. That "urgency" means getting the message to people in minutes rather than days.

Put a set of nuclear-powered satellites in low-earth orbit, such that their orbits cover the globe. Fit each with an incredibly a bright light source - perhaps an array of thousands and thousands of LEDs?

Take the time to contact the hard-to-reach population areas the slow way - by mail or in person - and tell them where to look in the sky each night for the signal. Give them training on what action they should take if they see the emergency light.

Oddthinking
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