The Rarest and Creepiest EAS Alerts (Featuring Real Events)

Around 9 a.m. on August 31st, 2023, a convicted murderer escaped from the Chester County Prison in Pennsylvania. The man was Danilo Cavalcante, and he was considered armed and very dangerous. As he lured the residential streets of Pocopson Township, police and other officials were eager to get a warning out to the general public. For this reason, they issued the very rare law enforcement and shelter-in-place EAS warnings. They also issued several WIAs, or wireless emergency alerts that were sent to locals' phones. The alert pleaded residents to go inside, stay inside, and lock all doors and windows. There is police activity in your area. Residents are asked to stay indoors until the all-clear is sent. Report any suspicious activity to 911. Only an hour after he escaped, several residents had seen him lurking on their street. He was also captured on several doorbell video cameras. Despite the efforts of dozens of police officers, they were unable to track down Cavalcante throughout the day. Local residents, families, all stayed hidden within their homes as they continually got EAS and WIA warnings throughout the night. And despite the efforts of local officials, they wouldn't end up capturing Cavalcante for over two weeks. He was eventually found on September 12th in the woods with the use of an aerial thermal camera. Can you imagine that dreadful feeling these people felt every single time one of those EAS or WIA alerts went off? Absolutely terrifying. People are used to these going off during weather events, not necessarily manhunts or escaped convicts, but they do exist for that reason as well. While rare, EAS alerts can be used for radioactive hazards, chemical spills, and yes, even murderers on the loose. That's the topic of today's video. We're going to talk about Whenever I hear that sound, I get so excited. I shouldn't get excited. That's not the proper way to respond to these kind of noises, but I do. It's always funny when you're listening to like something like really upbeat. Like if it comes during a happy-go-lucky song, that's always a fun experience. I've talked about before in the past, so check out my other video. I go into more detail about the same code and all that stuff, so be sure to check that out if you're interested. Today, we're just going to cover real-life creepy and rare EAS scenarios. But before we get to that, today's video is sponsored by American Financing. What if you could delay your next two mortgage payments? That's right. Imagine putting those two payments in your pocket and finally getting a little breathing room. It's possible when you call American Financing today. If you're feeling stretched out by everyday expenses, groceries, gas, bills, all piling up, you're not alone. Most Americans are putting these expenses on credit cards, and there doesn't seem to be a way out. 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Obviously, it's the most common. Now, interestingly, there's actually several levels of Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. The normal Severe Thunderstorm Warning is just called a Base Severe Thunderstorm Warning. If winds are over 70 miles per hour, you get a Considerable Severe Thunderstorm Warning. There's also the highest category of Severe Thunderstorm Warning, which is Destructive. This is when wind speeds are over 80 miles per hour. Interestingly, you actually won't get a Wireless Emergency Alert unless it's a Destructive Severe Thunderstorm. So, if we're talking about rare EAS alerts, the Destructive Severe Thunderstorm Warning is obviously rarer than the Base Severe Thunderstorm Warning. Here is an example of a Destructive Severe Thunderstorm Warning. This occurred during the August 10, 2020, derecho as it was heading towards Chicago, Illinois. The National Weather Service in Chicago has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Lake County in northeastern Illinois. This is a very dangerous storm. Hazard, 80 miles per hour wind gusts and quarter size hail. This storm has a history of producing widespread wind damage across western and north central Illinois. Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter. Expect considerable damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles. On top of all this, you can also get a PDS Severe Thunderstorm Warning, which is just like an extra level where they're like, hey, this is not good, if it's going towards a large population or something. Here is an example of a PDS, Potentially Dangerous Situation, Severe Thunderstorm Warning over Des Moines. This severe storm will be near Polk City and Sylarville Lake around 145 p.m. This is a dangerous storm. Prepare immediately for large destructive hail capable of producing significant damage. Severe weather has been confirmed by trained spotters reported baseball-sized hail. This is a rare and very dangeroon situation. Take cover now. People and animals outdoors will be severely injured. Did he say dangeroon? I think he said dangeroon instead of dangerous. This is a rare and very dangeroon situation. Sometimes with Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, you can have a rare tornado warning embedded. This is when rotation is seen on radar, or if the tornado is actually observed, and then the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning. These are pretty rare. I usually see about one, maybe two a year in where I live. I also kind of storm chase a little bit, so that doesn't really count, but where I live sees about one or two a year. I do live in Tornado Alley though, so if you're out chilling on the beach in L.A. or if you're up in Maine or some weird place, a tornado warning could actually be quite rare. If a tornado is on the good, you might get a PDS Tornado Warning, which is an even more enhanced tornado warning, which is more rare than your typical tornado warning. But there is one more level that we should discuss, and that is the super rare, super terrifying, super serious tornado emergency. This is when the National Weather Service knows for sure there's a tornado on the ground. They know that it's for sure destructive and large, and they know that it's for sure heading towards a major populated area. You know an EAS alert is rare when there's a list of tornado emergencies on Wikipedia. The very first tornado emergency was issued on May 3, 1999 during the Bridge Creek Moor, Oklahoma F5 tornado. This tornado ended up claiming 36 lives, and it's considered one of the most destructive, powerful tornadoes weather events in general ever recorded. In 2025, there have been eight tornado emergencies thus far, but we'll likely get a couple more towards the November, December, SEC tornado season, because down south they have they got two tornado seasons. One notable example of a tornado emergency came on April 27, 2014 when an EF4 tornado struck Bologna, Arkansas. Another tornado emergency example from Alabama has some even more extreme wording. Take a listen. Tornado emergency for East Limestone and Northwest Madison County, 5 13 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Doppler radar and storm spotters were tracking a large and extremely dangerous tornado near Athens. This is an extremely dangerous tornado with complete devastation likely. You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter. Do not delay. Seek shelter now. The you could be killed line is pretty intense. You could be killed if not Of course, I'm not done talking about weather EAS scenarios. You have blizzard warnings, ice storm warnings, freeze warnings. There's also the pretty significant flash flood emergency. This is the next level after flash flood warning, and these can be very deadly as well. Of course, there was that recent event in Texas that had a flash flood emergency, but these occur all the time with hurricanes. Another rare EAS alert is the elusive snow squall warning. These are only issued a few times a year, so we did talk about tornado emergencies earlier, which tend to have wind speeds over 150 miles per hour, and we did talk about destructive severe thunderstorm warnings that have winds over 80 miles per hour, but there's actually a special category for super strong winds that aren't really related to tornadoes, and that is the extreme wind warning. These are only issued when sustained winds are over 115 miles per hour. Most often, they are with hurricane eye walls, so when the hurricane eye reaches the coast, the winds are insane, and if they're over 150 miles per hour for a sustained period, you can get an EWW. Now, in a super rare circumstance, you could get an emergency wind warning with a severe thunderstorm, maybe a derecho even, although this has never occurred, and it would be a very destructive storm. All right, let's actually move on from weather events to natural disaster events in general, and I want to start off with the volcano warning. Volcanoes, in case you're unaware, are pretty rare events. In fact, the only volcano event that I can think of that happened within the continual lower 48 states is Mount St. Helens in 1980, so the volcano warning EAS alert has actually never been issued. There's been some advisories in Alaska. There's a few volcanoes in Alaska that have steamed up a little bit or however that works. I don't know, but they had advisories, but never an official warning. However, there was a volcano warning issued once in Nebraska, so on July 31st, 2022, in the middle of the night, residents of Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska were awoken by a volcano warning. Now, if you've ever looked at a map, you might realize that there are no volcanoes in Nebraska. What actually happened was there was a wildfire, and they issued a wildfire warning, but instead of hitting the wildfire warning button, they accidentally hit the volcano warning button, so it said volcano warning. Now, the text itself read, hey, there's a wildfire near this road, stay away from it, but it said volcano warning at the top. It's pretty crazy. The fact that this is the only time a volcano warning was issued in the U.S. since they started the EAS system just goes to show how rare of an event it is. Another rare and quite urgent EAS alert is the earthquake warning. These are supposed to be issued like literally seconds before an earthquake, so with early earthquake warning systems, if they issue these out really quick, it might say something like, yo, within a few seconds, there's going to be an earthquake, take shelter immediately. In September of 2024, the ShakeAlert system detected an earthquake near Malibu, California, and 20 seconds before this earthquake occurred, millions of people got a warning on their phone. The earthquake only ended up being 4.7 on the Richter scale, so not a big deal, but still pretty crazy. Another related event occurred in Bakersfield in that same year. During this event, 5.4 million people were informed of an upcoming earthquake. This felt a lot of us even getting that emergency alert on our phones telling us that that big earthquake was on the way. That specific earthquake ended up being 5.4 on the Richter scale. In terms of other natural disasters, there's the rare tsunami warning, which was recently issued in Hawaii and Alaska during that 8.8 earthquake in Russia, usually their advisories, but having one of these issued on the actual U.S. coast is extremely rare. We can't forget about the dust storm warning. I mean, who remembers the dust bowl? Yeah, this is not good. Dust storms were a major problem in the 1930s, but due to us changing up our agricultural methods, they're a lot less common. These days, they mainly occur only in New Mexico and Arizona. So let's move on from weather and natural disaster EAS alerts to the more creepy, the more eerie non-weather civil disturbance related EAS alerts. Let's actually start off with the rare and kind of vague civil danger warning. This is one of the rarest and more serious EAS warnings. Civil danger warnings are issued during super urgent events. Sometimes they don't even say what the threat is. They'll just say, hey, if you're getting this, please shelter in place and refer to media outlets to see what's going on. Sometimes, instead of saying, hey, shelter in place, they'll actually say you need to evacuate, or you might need to avoid a specific area. These have been issued with riots, civil unrest, a potential active event, and they're also issued for less scary situations like contaminated drinking waters or a industrial accident. Here is an example of a manhunt civil danger warning that was captured in Minnesota in 2022. The civil authorities have issued a civil danger warning from over MN, beginning at 2.36 p.m. and ending at 3.06 p.m. Looking for a black male, dark clothes, white shoes, a baseball hat. If seen, do not approach and call 911. I'm not exactly sure why the voice sounded so scary in that specific example. If seen, do not approach and call 911. Sometimes, civil danger warnings, CDWs, can be connected to weather events. If there's some insane flooding that's occurring and things are getting wiped out really quickly, they'll issue a CDW. Also, in the aftermath of natural disasters, when infrastructure is down, there's no police, emergency systems in general are cut off, you might also get a CDW in that situation. One civil defense warning was issued during the 2011 Groundhog Day extreme blizzard, one of the most significant blizzards in U.S. history. Now, in the middle of the night, at 2.30 a.m., they had to issue a civil danger warning because conditions were so bad that if anyone was caught out in this blizzard, law enforcement wouldn't even be able to reach them and they would likely die. The following message is transmitted at the request of the Wisconsin Emergency Management Agency, Milwaukee, Sullivan, Wisconsin. Driving is extremely hazardous tonight on all roads in southern Wisconsin. If you become stranded, emergency vehicles may not be able to reach you. If you are stranded, do not leave your vehicle. Run the vehicle 10 minutes per hour and crack a downwind window for ventilation. Similar to the civil danger warning is the LEW or law enforcement warning. This is the more appropriate code for the kind of more creepy situations that could happen in everyday life. These are meant to be used during bomb threats or bomb explosions, riots, and gel breaks. One insane example of a LEW or law enforcement warning sounds like it came straight out of a movie. On June 13, 2017, two inmates escaped a prison bus. Residents received EAS alerts that urged them to remain inside and lock all doors. They said two escaped inmates are considered extremely dangerous and may be attempting to steal vehicles or take hostages. The police put out a $90,000 reward to capture these two inmates. These two men wouldn't be apprehended until two days later. This LEW was issued in Spokane, Washington when an inmate had escaped. This is the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office with an area alert reporting that an inmate has escaped from the Lincoln County Jail in Davenport at approximately 8 p.m. this evening. Inmate is described as a white male, 37 years old, six foot five, 210 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes. He was last seen wearing a dark brown t-shirt and orange and white striped pants. Please call 911 if you see any suspicious activity in your area. If you see anyone matching this description, please do not approach him and immediately call 911. That one is not quite as scary because it doesn't have the robotic voice, but you get the idea. Another example occurred near Charleston, South Carolina. What's creepy about this one is it has a robotic voice, but at the end it says this. Last seen near 202 Mitten Road if seen call 911. Please lock your doors. Suspect is dangerous. Do not approach. Anytime a robotic voice over my TV tells me to lock my doors, please lock your doors. I'm getting freaked out. 100% lock your doors, close your windows, turn out the lights, and stay quiet. Oh, that'd get me. The shelter in place EAS alert is kind of connected to the law enforcement warning, but it can be used for a wide variety of situations. A chemical spill, a virus, or some sort of biological hazard. All these events can create a shelter in place warning as well as like a jailbreak or an escaped convict. This was used quite a bit in 2020 during that one specific epidemic that we went through. I don't know if they still demonetize videos for even mentioning that event, but just in case I'm not going to mention it. So yeah, that was a real life example of using shelter in place. But speaking of a virus, there are other invisible agents in the air that might try to kill you. I'm talking about two different scenarios, chemicals and radioactivity. One EAS alert that has never been used is the NUW or the nuclear power plant warning. None of these have ever actually been issued in the United States, but one was kind of issued on accident in New Jersey in 2017. On May 23rd, this was shown to local residents near the Hope Creek and Salem nuclear power plants. They made it seem like there was some sort of nuclear meltdown that was occurring and they wanted people to evacuate as soon as possible. Of course, this was not actually a real event. This was, I don't know if it was a mistake or a test, but this didn't actually occur. A warning mistakenly broadcast in New Jersey residents leads to thousands of 911 calls. The New Jersey office of emergency management sent out this tweet last night. You may have seen this message on your TV tonight. There is no emergency. This message went out in error. A spokesperson says a drill last night at Hope Creek nuclear plant in Salem County was a regularly scheduled event. Now, someday an event like this could actually happen. If EAS existed back in 1979, they probably would have issued a similar warning during the Three Mile Island incident. This was a partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station in Londonbury Township, Pennsylvania. In terms of chemicals, we should talk about the hazardous materials warning. These are pretty rare, but they do occur from time to time. They often occur when a tanker or a truck full of chemicals gets into a car accident on the interstate. One of these happened not too long ago on August 28th, 2024 in Rochester, Minnesota. A tanker near an exit ramp flipped over and spilled chemicals. These chemicals were sodium chloride, salt, and hydrogen peroxide. So, not the deadliest chemicals of all time, but still enough to issue this warning right here. A message from Rochester Emergency Management. Authorities are on the scene of a hazardous materials release on the highway in the vicinity of Interstate 90 and Highway 52. Stay away from the area and remain upwind to avoid possible exposure. Again, avoid this area and remain upwind. I think when he says remain upwind, that part's kind of creepy. I don't know, just the idea of like, hey, stay away and remain upwind. Now, before we conclude today's video, we do need to talk about one more EAS alert. The National Emergency Message, aka code EAN, which used to stand for Emergency Action Notification. This code is meant for the worst possible scenario. If Canada and Mexico decide, hey, we're gonna invade the United States, if that occurred, they'd probably use this alert. It would be used for a national mass casualty event. This would be used if like China and Russia sent a bunch of nuclear bombs at us. It's actually this kind of scenario right here that led to the creation of the EAS. Originally, it was the EBS, Emergency Broadcast System, and then that evolved into the EAS. Actually, it was originally Conrad way back in the day, but the point is it's a relic from the Cold War. The reason why you get your severe thunderstorm warning is because back in the day, back in the 50s, people were worried that a bunch of nuclear bombs were going to head towards us. So, they started implementing these emergency notifications. A National Emergency Message, or Emergency Action Notification, can only be issued by the President of the United States or someone, you know, if he's knocked out, someone who's, you know, second in line. That's how serious of an event it is. Thankfully, this has never occurred, at least not on purpose. There have been several tests, some that haven't gone too well, and there have been a couple of false alarms. One such false alarm occurred back in Illinois on June 26, 2007. Apparently, while they were setting up some new satellite equipment, they had the wrong cords mixed up and they wanted to do an internal test of the Emergency Action Notification, and that internal test ended up being broadcasted to networks in the area. Viewers were frightened by a signal that sounded like an emergency alert. Here's CBS 2's Katie McCall. If you were watching CBS 2 at 7 30 this morning, you heard something unusual. This is not a test, this is a real alert that the President's going to talk in a few minutes, so do not disarm this alert. People were definitely freaked out by this message. I was actually thinking of calling all my relatives and waking them up and telling them to get down in the basement. She thought the country was under attack. In 2011, they did a national test of the Emergency Action Notification, and it didn't go super well. There was some reverb, there were some issues with the test. Thankfully, since then though, they've kind of polished it up a little bit. If this does occur, make sure you have a plan. My plan is quite simple. I know where the local fallout shelter is in my town, and if that's full, I'm going to drive to a cave. That's my plan. I don't know what I'm actually going to do. Maybe you don't even want to survive this, you know what I mean? It's kind of one of those scenarios where maybe it's just better off, maybe just be better off dying. Anyway, with that said, thank you for watching. On that note, that lovely note, thank you so much for watching. If you have an EAS experience that you want to share, do so in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.