Test emergency alert at 3pm but could surviving a nuclear blast be worse than dying?

At 3pm today, all compatible mobile phones in the UK should simultaneously emit a high-pitched whine while vibrating and displaying a test message from the Government’s emergency alert system. The test is just in case, but in case of what?

Well, a bit of everything ranging from floods to terrorism to the ultimate worst-case scenario: nuclear attack. When this system was first tested nationally, in April 2023, it was met with mixed reactions. Many people did not receive the alert at all. Others took to social media to mock and meme-ify it. Some, like me, were deeply unnerved.

My fear was not because I thought it was real, but because I was writing a thriller about the effects of a nuclear attack warning and it felt like reality was overtaking fiction. The alert ringing out from my family’s phones that day was a sharp little reminder that this really could happen one day.

To a child of the 1980s, nuclear fears are nothing new. I was too young to watch the 1984 TV drama Threads when it first came out, but Raymond Briggs’s 1982 graphic novel, When The Wind Blows, and the 1986 animated film adaptation, did enough to both terrify me and leave me feeling that ‘preparing’ for nuclear war was a misnomer.

When I finally watched Threads many years later, it had not lost its potency. It is available on BBC iPlayer for one more month. For anyone who thinks they would want to survive nuclear war, I recommend watching it to disabuse yourself of the notion.

Throughout the Cold War, the UK was braced for worst case scenarios. And if nuclear missiles had been sent our way between 1962 and 1992, it was the ‘HANDEL’ system that was responsible for letting everyone in Britain know. As with the use of the mobile phone network today, the HANDEL system was reliant on another phone system – the speaking clock.There were two HANDEL operating sites known as injection sites at RAF High Wycombe and the Royal Observer Corps bunker in Goosnargh, Lancashire. Alongside TV and radio broadcasts from an emergency studio at BBC Broadcasting House – these sites would have been responsible for alerting the nation in the case of nuclear attack.

Each of the HANDEL injection sites had simple key-operated consoles. If an enemy attack had been detected, the key at one or both of the injection sites would be turned. Two lights would come on, and then the operator would press and hold down a red button and announce: "Attack Warning Red".

The “Attack Warning Red” alert would be sent – via the speaking clock telephone system – to 250 ‘carrier control points’ (CCPs) based at major police stations across the country. The CCPs would then forward warning messages to 7,000 powered sirens – many of them the same air raid sirens that had alerted the public during World War Two.

In rural areas, around 11,000 hand powered sirens would be operated by volunteers including rural police officers, postmasters and even pub landlords. This same system would be used to warn the public about fallout levels after the attack.

So why can’t we use this robust siren system now, especially as people with older phones or those not connected to 4G or 5G networks may not receive the text alerts?

Because it no longer exists.

Just four years after the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War was deemed ‘over’ and the whole system was decommissioned. One of the HANDEL consoles is now on display at the Imperial War Museum.

It was a bold move, and arguably foolish. We have always needed a warning system – not just for potential acts of war but also extreme weather events and other disasters.

Although the first siren was invented by Scottish natural philosopher and physicist John Robison around 1799, they were not used in World War One. Instead, in 1917, the Metropolitan Police introduced a system of maroons (a type of very loud firework) to warn Londoners about approaching German bombers. The ‘all clear’ alert was then sounded by boy scouts with bugles.

Fire was an even earlier method. In 1588, when the 137 ships of the Spanish Armada were sighted off the coast of Cornwall, a system of beacons was lit across the south coast and all the way to London. The rapidity of this fiery system allowed the English time to mount a defence.

In 1988, on the 400th anniversary, another chain of beacons was lit throughout England and Wales to celebrate. Many of the historic beacons can still be seen, particularly in Sussex.

While nowhere relies on manually-lit beacons anymore, the UK is far from the first to adopt emergency mobile phone alerts. When it was hit with a disastrous 2010 earthquake and tsunami, Chile’s national authorities failed to provide safety information to the public fast enough. The Sistema de Alerta de Emergencia (Emergency Alert System) was created in 2012 as a result and rolled out in 2017. It’s now law that all mobile phones in Chile must be compatible with the SAE.

The EU-Alert system is available to all national authorities in the European Union and is based on the same system as NL-Alert which launched in the Netherlands in 2012.

As with the UK system, the same notification format and sound is used regardless of the threat level, from missing children to catastrophic attack. In some national versions, people can opt out of the lowest level alerts but serious alerts will be sent to everyone.

While text alerts are increasingly popular around the world as the fastest technique for mass population warning systems, there are still an interesting variety of methods. In Japan, the J-Alert system has been operational since 2007. This is partly akin to an updated version of previous British systems, including the use of loud sirens.

The satellite-based system is able to broadcast alerts to both media and the public via a nationwide network of loud speakers, as well as via email and cell broadcasts. Japanese officials say it takes just one second to inform local officials, and between four and twenty seconds to get the message to people. These alerts cover everything from severe weather and earthquakes to attacks. In the case of ballistic missiles heading their way, a Civil Protection Siren sounds across loudspeakers.

None of these systems, however, is foolproof. In 2018, an incoming ballistic missile alert was mistakenly sent out in Hawaii. The public was warned to shelter, and given this was at the height of tensions between North Korea and the US, a large number of people believed the alert. It took 38 minutes to send a second alert to smartphones confirming it was a false alarm. The panic that spread through the islands included motorists parking inside tunnels, multiple evacuations, people sheltering in official bunkers and unofficial spaces.

Phone lines and data services were jammed, and one man suffered a heart attack after saying goodbye to his children. He survived, but sued the state. Of course, tests like today’s are intended to prevent such disastrous mistakes.

People have asked me if researching 59 Minutes, which is published on September 25 and opens with an alert of imminent nuclear attack, has turned me into a ‘prepper’, stockpiling water and rations, or building some kind of bunker in the cellar.

In fact, the opposite is true. If the worst were to happen, I would not want to survive and live through the horrors of what would follow. So, this time, I choose not to be scared by this test. Instead, at 3pm, I will give my family a very big hug and be grateful that we have another normal day together.

• 59 Minutes by Holly Seddon (Orion, £10.99) is published on September 25