Terrifying Siren Scenarios (Featuring Tornadoes, Nuclear War, Broadmoor Escapes and Others!)

Civil defense sirens are creepy beyond belief. First of all, the sound is so jarring. That dissonant tone sounds like it's straight out of the end times. In the Book of Revelations, it talks about trumpets being signals for a variety of apocalyptic events. Are sirens supposed to be the seven trumpets of the apocalypse? They're also so ambiguous, they can only tell you that something's wrong. That's it. When you don't know whether it's bad weather, an escaped crazy person, or literally the end of the world. And that's what we're talking about in today's video. Terrifying real-life siren scenarios. Also, this video features content that's slightly darker than usual, just FYI. And by the way, there is going to be a lot of jarring sounds of sirens. Actually, I turned the siren into a synth. Check it out. That could be a creepy tone. Maybe like a... They could have made it happy. They could have been like... But no, they had to make it scary. 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Visit helixsleep.com slash Swaggle Studios or tap the link in the description to take their quick sleep quiz. Also, you want to take advantage of their fall savings event, 20% off site-wide. Again, visit helixsleep.com slash Swaggle Studios. Click the link in the description to take the quick sleep quiz. Thank you so much to Helix Sleep Mattress for sponsoring the video. It's two in the morning on what seems to be a normal night. You're sound asleep, unaware that the life you've lived thus far is about to change forever. As you rest in your bed, you suddenly wake up to an eerie sound coming out of the darkness. It's the sound of a siren, the pitch slowly going up and down. While the siren seemed faint at first, it was slowly getting louder and louder. You assumed it was no big deal. It's just a test, or maybe a bad thunderstorm was approaching. But the siren would not cease. The wail would not stop. So you begin to get a little concerned. You decide to go to the basement just in case it's a tornado. Little did you know, the real threat was actually much worse than a tornado. You turn on your TV to see this. We interrupt our program at the request of the White House. This is the emergency broadcast system. All normal broadcasting has been discontinued during the emergency. About 10 minutes ago, China and Russia had begun a joint attack on the United States, and several hundred nuclear ballistic missiles were inbound targeting nearly 100 different cities. You freak out. You try to contact your loved ones, but there's no signal. You run outside, look up to the sky, and see dozens of lights flying overhead. You wonder if any of them are heading towards you. There is one light in particular that does seem brighter than the others, and it was descending rapidly. Off in the distance, you see the skyline of your city. The light seemed to be approaching it, and within an instant, night became day. This was a scenario that 40 years ago, during the Cold War, many assumed they would encounter eventually in their lifetime. To them, it wasn't if, it was when. And while the Cold War may be over, the threat still remains. Currently, there's an estimated 330 ballistic missiles in Russia, and 375 in China. Each one of these missiles having numerous warheads, not just one. And just one of these warheads can destroy an entire city. And while there have been several close calls, thankfully, this horrifying scenario hasn't happened. But given enough time, whether it's 40 years or 400 years, it will happen. And it's terrifying. And it all begins with the sound of a civil defense siren. If you're in the US, your local siren was likely initially installed during the Civil Defense Act of 1950. With the Soviet Union in possession of atomic bombs, the US needed to prepare for a worst-case scenario. But air raid sirens in Europe have been in place for a long time. I honestly think the use of air raid sirens during World War II is so terrifying. In 1939, in Great Britain, war was just on the horizon. Many knew it at the time, so films were produced to help prepare citizens. Every town is a target. Any town is a target. This is Nottingham. Unfortunately, their fears of an attack would become reality in 1940 with the Blitz. The Blitz was a bombing campaign by Germany over mostly London, and it began on September 7, 1940 with Operation London. And you might be thinking, oh, that must have been a terrible night. That must have been so terrifying for all the people who lived in London. Well, it wasn't just one night. Notice, the Blitz actually had two campaigns, and the first campaign alone lasted 57 nights. While the main targets of the bombing operation were meant to be industrial, obviously civilians in residential areas were heavily affected. One specific bad night was October 14. Nearly 400 German planes dropped bombs over London that night. In September and October alone, approximately 13,000 civilians have been killed and 20,000 have been injured. Not to mention all the vast amount of destruction all around. It's very difficult to imagine the pain and the terror felt by Londoners as well as other residents from other British cities at this time. To hear this constant air raid siren, day after day, week after week. To have to seek shelter in a makeshift trench that you built in your yard pretty much every night, never knowing if a bomb was about to hit you. Terrifying. The Blitz would last until May, so they essentially spent a year dealing with this. And it obviously just wasn't England. I mean, it was all of Europe. If many of these survivors heard that dual tone air raid siren from World War II later in their life, I'm sure it would cause some major PTSD. In general, we have it pretty good today. And let's hope that this overall peace continues because the next time, it's not going to be those tiny World War II bombs. It's going to be nuclear missiles. A single bomb that can destroy an entire city. While the use of sirens during a nuclear bomb strike is scary in a global sense, sirens are in some ways more terrifying when the threat is much closer to home. The use of sirens in the event of an escaped inmate or mentally unstable patient may be the most unnerving. Knowing that within your vicinity, there's an immediate threat whose whereabouts is unknown by authorities. Perhaps they're in the woods. Perhaps they're driving down the highway, or perhaps they're lurking down the streets of your neighborhood. One prominent example being the Broadmoor sirens. In Crawthorne, England lies a multi-purpose health facility called Broadmoor Hospital. The facility's main purpose is psychiatric treatment. Broadmoor is a place that we would have historically referred to as an insane asylum. Now, many don't see that term, that title as being politically correct. So today it's just referred to as a psychiatric hospital. Nevertheless, it's a high-security facility that features watchtowers, a fenced perimeter, and lots of barbed wire. It's really a hybrid between a prison and a hospital, because the patients that are seen at Broadmoor can be dangerous, and on rare occasions, they can escape. For example, John Strafin was a severely mentally ill man who lived in Bath, England in the 1950s. When he heard about the murder of a local girl, he was inspired to commit similar acts. He was, in a sense, a copycat killer. So that's what he did. After murdering two girls on two different occasions, Strafin was caught and arrested by police. Since he had a long history of mental illness, police stationed him at Broadmoor Hospital rather than an actual prison, and he was referred to as a patient rather than an inmate. Now, since Broadmoor typically dealt with lower risk individuals when compared to a prison, the facility had very low security measures. This led to Strafin escaping the hospital at 2 20 p.m. on April 29, 1952. He did this by scaling a 10-foot wall. While he was successful in his escape, the guards noticed almost immediately. They then contacted all local authorities. In the meantime, Strafin had managed to travel seven miles by foot to a local village where he began to pester random shopkeepers, and then unfortunately he managed to murder another young girl. He was finally caught and arrested by police that evening when talking to several children behind a pub. Strafin had now murdered three different girls on three different occasions and the public was outraged. How could the security at Broadmoor let this happen? How could a man who was obviously a danger to society escape custody? With all the outrage, Broadmoor security was heightened to the same level as a prison. One major change in the hospital security was the installation of 13 sirens. These were installed around the prison and in nearby small towns. The sirens themselves were all CS-8s and they were installed in the event of another escaped patient. Since other civil defense sirens were in place around the area, the Broadmoor sirens needed to sound different. They needed to have a different tone so you could know whether it was World War III or whether it was an escaped convict. The sirens produced two different tones, the escape tone and the all-clear tone. The escape tone was a high-low signal similar to this, and the all-clear signal was a single tone similar to this. That high-low tone is terrifying. I mean think about it, you live in a small town close to an insane asylum and then you're just chilling one afternoon, you're riding your bike or whatever, and then you hear that go off, meaning there's a crazy person on the loose. Definitely a scary situation for those who had to go through it. So how often did this happen? Well thankfully their use was rare. Several local residents were called several times they went off in the 70s and 80s, but I couldn't find any specifics about those incidents. The last time they went off happened in 1991 when another serial killer known as the Wolfman escaped. Thankfully he was apprehended two days later, but really put yourself in the shoes of someone who lived near Broadmoor in 1991. You hear the sirens go off, you see on the news that a crazy man who goes by the Wolfman escaped. He's on the loose. Lock your doors, lock your windows, turn out the lights. Truly a suburban nightmare. In 2018 it was decided that the Broadmoor sirens were no longer needed. Since you know we have social media and Facebook and phones and all that stuff, there's really not a point in having these sirens. So they were decommissioned and have been slowly dismantled over the past few years. Probably a good idea. I'm sure a lot of local children suffered from severe anxiety due to these sirens. I can kind of relate. We used to have like a like a stop light in our cafeteria when I was in elementary school. It was up on the wall and during lunch if we got too loud, at first it would go to like yellow like you're too loud. It's like a little warning. Then it would go to red and go and then kids would cry. They got rid of the stoplight eventually. Too many parents complained. But I'm sure in Broadmoor, around Broadmoor, there were a lot of local kids who got scared from these sirens because they were tested every Monday at 10 a.m. They also accidentally got triggered during a thunderstorm in 2014. So that obviously caused some problems but thankfully it was the all clear tone rather than the escape tone. Broadmoor wasn't the only institution to implement sirens in the event of an escape. Another example comes from the Carstairs State Hospital in Scotland. The state hospital is essentially the same thing as Broadmoor, a mid-tier security facility for the mentally insane. Unlike Broadmoor though, the state hospital still features several sirens in neighboring villages. The sirens featured at Carstairs State Hospital are the same make and model as the ones featured at Broadmoor, the CS8s. They also use the same warning tones for escape and all clear. They are currently tested on every third Thursday of the month, just in case someone escapes. One such escape happened in 1976. Two inmates, Thomas McCall and Robert Munn, murdered a nurse, a fellow patient, and a police officer in the process of escaping. The men somehow managed to steal a car and then during a car chase with police, they crashed in a roundabout. After much struggle, they were finally arrested and sent to a proper prison this time rather than the state hospital. But changing gears a little bit here to the modern day, because in the modern day, the main use of what we typically think sirens are used for is of course weather slash other natural disaster threats. Now most of these aren't quite as scary as nuclear war or an escaped inmate, but there have been a few instances that are pretty eerie. Now the least scary is probably the level three out of three destructive severe thunderstorm warning or a particularly dangerous situation thunderstorm warning. This is a thunderstorm that features winds over 80 miles per hour. They usually occur during derechos. This is the only thunderstorm, if you will, that can produce a WEA alert as well as initiate the sirens. And then you have tornadoes, and tornadoes are at their scariest when they occur at night. I did a whole video on nocturnal tornadoes, so I'm not going to get too much into it, but they really can be quite frightening, and they can be deadly. One of the most infamous nocturnal tornadoes was the May 4, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas EF5. Unfortunately, this tornado claimed 12 fatalities, and it also pretty much destroyed the entire town. It even destroyed the town's tornado siren, a federal signal thunderbolt. If you're seeking shelter and you hear the tornado siren going off, and then it suddenly stops, that is never a good sign. Real quick, let's actually talk about the tones we've discussed so far. There's the attack tone used during warfare and a potential nuclear strike. We also have the high-low tone that has been used for prisons and other mental institutions in the event of an escape. But perhaps the scariest siren tone is the alternating wail, a rare tone, but you will hear it every once in a while, and it can make any severe weather event quite terrifying. Here is an example. Now, the city I live in has a federal signal modulator siren, not cheap, but these can produce the alternating wail signal. They test the sirens, I think, the first Wednesday of every month, and they hardly ever use the alternating wail. But one time, they did. I was shocked. Okay, I actually wasn't there, but my wife was there, and she sent me these texts. She was clearly creeped out. Here's the video that she sent me. Yeah, if my wife is creeped out, then they are clearly a bit sketch-sounding. One city that used to use the scary alternating wail during tornado warnings was Chicago. In fact, the alternating wail has also been called the creepy Chicago siren. Tornado warnings aren't super common in central Chicago, maybe one every few years, but on occasion they do occur, and you might hear that haunting tone. But a lot of people think it's too creepy, and I think a lot of people have complaints, so it's possible that they no longer use the tone. I'm not actually sure, so I guess we'll have to wait until the next tornado warning to see what they do. The alternating wail is also one of the main tones of Siren Head, the classic creepy pasta monster created by Trevor Henderson. To end this video on a lighter note, my grandma told me the siren in her hometown of Cordon, Iowa, what she called the noon whistle, went off to signify the end of World War II. She said everyone went to the town square and then the church to celebrate, and I think that's amazing, a siren being used for good news. Anyway, thanks for watching. Be sure to check out Helix Sleep. Click the link in the description for a high quality mattress. We'll see you next time.