siren talk - are we the only ones?

[Marcvirtuoso]

hey everyone, ive been a member of this board for about 2 years now, i just dont say much (if anything at all). i prefer to listen to what is said between yall and take in the information. im 20 years old, and realized my obsession with sirens at age 17 when i stumbled across the J Marcoz sirens archive!

this morning was test day for waco and woodway texas. in waco, there are over 30 sirens (i dont know the official number because more have been added over the past few months while i was away at college). it is a uniform system made up of american signal T-128's. in woodway, my hometown, there are two whelen wps 2810's and two wps 2806's. for a couple of years now, ive been trying to get footage of the mighty tempest 128 sounding, but for some reason i never seem to be in the correct testing zone. waco tests its sirens by turning on random zones every month, so you never really know where to be.

anyway, i decided to view the whelen 2810 at a local park this morning. around 10 am (testing time), the park was full of mothers with their children. as i was waiting for the siren to come to life, i overheard a child asking her mother what that "big thing on the pole" was. so, i am positive that children are aware of the looming beast. well, around 10:15, the siren started its whole "this is only a test" thing, and then started wailing. at the loudest point of the test, i turned around to see if the children and their mothers were running or covering their ears. to my surprise, it was like they didnt even notice the deafening noise coming from 30 feet away. nobody even looked up!

i want to know why... are we, the members of this fine board, the elite few that acknowledge the existence of these warning apparatuses? i know when i was younger, sirens scared me.

[Gil]

Why? Well thats a really tough question. It probably varies from person to
person on here. For me, It was because theres been a siren next to my house longer than i've been alive. When I was 4, i started getting used to
the sound. Then I began to wonder how it worked. My dad told me when I
was little that it was a gigantic vacuum cleaner (Obvioiusly, explaining how
a siren worked was pretty hard to explain to a little kid).

Then back in 2004, I saw a FOX News Chicago special on Tornadoes in the
metropolitan area. They showed a close-up of one of Chicago's 2001s which
distinctly said "FEDERAL" in big letters on the rotator box. So I typed it into
google, and not only found Federal's website, but I found this board too!


Long story short, Its a tough question to exactly determine why I/we like them. I still get massive anxiety attacks when the sirens are about to go off.

[SirenMadness]

Ah, I remember first getting my interest in sirens around the age of four or five. It just so happens that I have been a major weather-fanatic then, too! Watching sirens activate for storm warnings on shows really got me excited, though our E57 has never activated for the severe storms that we use to get. Anyway, when our E57 did activate, I'd just go crazy and look out the window across to the siren. Sometimes, when the E57 a couple of blocks away from the previous one activates along with it, you'd have one hell of a wind-down. At about a year later, I started having a big interest in emergency signals, vehicular excluded. My love of sirens grew unimaginably big when I was six, at around 1997; it wasn't until the early summer of 2004 that I actually got onto the computer to research these things for the first time. I found The Siren Archive, whose links at the bottom led me to this site, which is where I stand to date. Another high point in my history of sirens might be seeing the Canadian CLM siren next Saturday, in Toronto!

[loudmouth]

i was once scared of these sirens becuse A i didnt know how they sounded and some of the shapes kinda scared me. B the ones i did hear sound i was way to close and had no idea it was going to sound so it scared me to death. and C the closet ones near my house if they were to sound basicly it would be the end of the northeast. But this fear has and now reached a peak of intrest and now a hobbie for me and a adventure to find these sirens.

[Marcvirtuoso]

maybe our exposure to loud noises on the TV, movies, and game systems has had some sort of effect on what children perceive as scary today. perhaps early exposure to these loud noises and destruction without the consequences of reality have hardened young kids to sirens. to them 128db is nothing more than a harmless sound effect on a game. (these are just ideas, not my opinion)

[Trey]

Its the noise that I like about them (especially 2T22s/T-bolts/SD10s ). I really can't explain why, but ever since I was little I've aknowledged their existance. I knew they were there and knew what they were.

[CABLEVision]

I read about sirens in a book. It was a book about a city like Boston city changing And it showed a electronic siren that looked like 3 megaphone pointing in each direction.

[Robert Gift]

My Lt. said there was a siren so loud it could ignite fires.
I disputed that claim and read about the Chrysler Air Raid Sirens.

That is what started my descent into interest in sirens.

I mistook "12 port" and joined ARS thinking it was a 12-Step program.

As an organist who has tuned organs and pianos, I like that sirens produce pure (perfect) intervals.
Also, I have always liked the chromatic change in pitch, especially finding the gradual descent captivating.

That air can be chopped and efficiently produce sound is also interesting.

[kswx29]

Well, living in the heart of Tornado Alley, everyone here knows what they are, but other then that people are clueless. My brother in law was stuned to see that a 2001 rotated! I remeber when i was little, we lived a block away from a Thunderbolt, single tone...and if you went 2 houses down you could see it, this was always my dream, but i was like in 1st, 2nd grade so of course i couldnt by my self. But in the summer i would be inside on a monday and i would hear that beast roar to life, loud and clear in the house! Every since then i have been fasinated with them. That same thunderbolt was right beside my middle school, so every monday for 3 years (except 7th grade when i had lunch during the test) i would hear that thing come to life. Now i am in high school and the nearest siren is a Thunderbolt in Downtown Topeka and thats about a little bit more then 3/4th a mile away and the way my school is built you can barely hear even when the windows are open, let alone when your outside. But usually the only time people around here notice or even speak of the sirens is during a tornado warning or on mondays at noon. Also, around here i think its cool people say "Well if they blow the sirens" like "If they blow the sirens go to the bathroom"

[thunderbeam63]

I got interested in them because I used to be so Damn terrified of them.