When the total eclipse of the Sun occurred last month, I was in a nice rural area in Oregon which was an excellent spot to be in the path of totality. It was a quiet spot, plenty of trees, wild turkeys and other forest creatures in the area. Just prior to totality, everyone in our party that had smart phones were alerted by the familiar tone of the Emergency Alert System.

Watching the sun being enveloped by the moon is chilling enough but having the EAS tone blaring out of your phone, radios and televisions was unnerving. The EAS alert system was warning people about parking their cars on busy roadways to view the eclipse. They were also warning viewers that there was an eminent fire danger and that it was important not to build small fires if people were camping.

A few days ago, Portland had rare thunderstorm activity which triggered three tornadoes in the state. One was seen in the water near Astoria and the other two were near Lebanon, the same area where I witnessed the total eclipse of the Sun.

When the torrential downpours and tornadoes took place we heard the EAS tone without the indication that it was a test. It was a bit scary.

I know that with the inclement weather and the hurricane season that several areas in the United States are getting used to the sound – the tone is getting some good use and soon it will be activated nationwide in a mass test of the Emergency Alert System.

Federal regulators have said they want to make national testing of the Emergency Alert System more routine and to that end the government has set the date for the next such test. It will be held Wed., September 27 at 2:20pm ET. If that fails there is a back-up date of Oct. 4th, 2017 has been slated if there’s any need to delay the national test, such as if a hurricane is approaching the U.S.

The timing of these tests couldn’t be more suspicious.

While we all know that the test tones and the experience are routine all over the country, and that the FCC has required these tests as far back as 1951 with the Conelrad civil defense operation. The tones and official information have been a part of our lives since then, especially with those who lived through the cold war and the paranoia of a nuclear conflict from Russia.

The nationwide test scheduled on September 27th, 2017 comes at a time where the nation is concerned with North Korea and their capability to launch a nuclear weapon or detonate and EMP over an American city.

Russia is also busy with nuclear and missile tests and have been active in conducting war games something that has NATO on edge. Russia successfully test-fired its second nuclear missile in 10 days on Wednesday as the Zapad war games in Belarus came to a close.

The countryundefineds defense ministry said it fired an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, north of Moscow, which struck a target 3,600 miles away on the Kura testing range with dud warheads.

The launch brought the Zapad or Zapata games to a close, which involved up to 100,000 Russian and Belarusian troops performing drills in Eastern Europe. NATO chiefs had warned the exercises could be a dry-run for an attack on Europe.

The allianceundefineds defense chief warned earlier this week that the games appear to be undefinedreal preparations for big war.undefined

Today NATO launched the Dragon-17 war games with Poland in response. The exercise will involve some 17,000 land, air force and navy troops and 3,500 units of equipment and will run through September 29.

The EAS national test in the United States will run during that time, which seems to be beyond coincidental.

Furthermore, the backup EAS test scheduled for October 4th, is also beyond coincidence because NASA has scheduled a drill to see how well its planetary defense system would work if an actual asteroid were heading straight for Earth.

While these sorts of drills have been done in the past with pretend asteroids, this one will feature a real asteroid; one that astronomers are confident will miss the Earth as it zooms by on Oct. 12.

The asteroid has not been seen since its 2012 discovery, when it sped past Earth at about one-fourth the distance from Earth to the moon. Itundefineds been too distant and too faint to be detected over the last five years.

The space rock measures somewhere between 30 and 100 feet long, roughly the same size as the asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 14, 2013.

That asteroid showed up as NASA was tracking another near earth object labeled 2012 DA14 that made a close pass over earth. They weren’t expecting the Chelyabinsk object at all.

When it exploded it was at a height of 12 miles above Earth, releasing 500 kilotons of energy, approximately 30 times the yield of the nuclear bomb over Hiroshima. It caused a shock wave that broke windows in six Russian cities and caused some 1,500 people to seek treatment for injuries, mainly from flying glass. Later, about five tons of meteoritic material reached the ground, including a 1,400-pound meteorite that was recovered by divers from the bottom of Russia’s Lake Chebarkul.

Ground Zero was the first American news program to inform the public about the explosion and just last month I was able to hold in my hand a piece of that meteor.

This new asteroid that will be monitored during the NASA drill is known as 2012 TC4, could come as close as 4,200 miles to Earth, NASA said. At that distance it can be seen as a potentially dangerous asteroid when you consider that the moon is about 239,000 miles away.

Meanwhile, NASA is now having a public relations nightmare over the proposed Virgo convergence on September 23rd, and the prevailing buzz that Planet X will be arriving for the due date for the end of the world.

It has been reported that Christian numerologist David Meade is claiming Planet X is heading in our direction. Meade believes October could see the start The Rapture and a seven-year tribulation period of wide scale natural disasters.

In December of 2015, we reported that two well-respected scientists created a model suggesting a ninth planet might be orbiting on the outer edge of our Solar System. Since then, there’s been a lot more scientific evidence that Planet Nine really exists. Now, scientists are trying to track down and get direct observational evidence.

Many believe that this planet is in reality Planet X and without much fanfare we may get a glimpse of it in October through December and only in the southern hemisphere.

No one who is involved with Planet 9 is saying that doomsday is coming.

However, if you turn on the nightly news you would think that doomsday is here as Hurricanes and earthquakes have been reported, and we see the carnage and aftermath reminding us of the fragility of our existence.

Mexico had to major earthquakes within 11 days. Then, a 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit New Zealand on Wednesday followed by others off the coasts of Japan (6.1), Vanuatu (6.4), and Indonesia (5.7) early today.

These quakes are happening on the Ring of Fire which is alarming many people who live in Canada and the Pacific North West.

Scientists are now saying that recent quake swarm at Mt. Rainier does not necessarily mean that it is about to erupt. However, similar quakes happened during the summer of 1979 at Mount St. Helens — it later erupted in the Spring of 1980.

More than 20 small quakes have struck under Mt. Rainier which is an active volcano in the past week, a rate that’s higher than usual.

Rainier experienced similar upticks in the past two years, and a more sustained episode of seismicity in 2009. It is not uncommon to have earthquakes like this but while the world is on edge, it is certainly unnerving.

Yes, I know – everyone worries about the Yellowstone Caldera, one of the world’s dormant super volcanoes because an eruption there would devastate the country and much of the world for a multitude of reasons.

But, Mount Rainier actually has better chance of blowing its top before Yellowstone.

Rainier last erupted back in the 19th Century, but far more powerful eruptions took place up to 5,000 years’ earlier. It hasn’t done anything major since, but scientists know its building up to something big.

If it wasn’t near a huge city, this would still be a problem to passing aircraft and for anyone hiking nearby but it sits beside Seattle, a city containing around 3.7 million people. If Rainier erupts powerfully enough, respiratory system-chocking ash would smother Seattle, and although pyroclastic flows would likely not reach it, the nearby Puyallup River valley would be covered in lava and ash. When this mixes with water, it forms fast-moving and ultra-thick mudflows called lahars, which often kill more people than the eruption itself.

Those that have studied Mount Rainier tell us that there is evidence that the mountain has produced at least 60 lahars in the past.

And according to the Seattle Times, there is a “one in seven” chance that Mount Rainier will produce another one within our lifetimes.

But we all know that these are not normal times. Mount Rainier lies along the Ring of Fire, and right now volcanoes all along the Ring of Fire are waking up.

Mt. Rainier is a silent but violent volcano and is considered to be so dangerous that it’s on the Decade Volcanoes list, which means that scientists consider it to be one of the 16 most threatening volcanoes in the world. Fortunately, this one’s monitored quite heavily, but there are dozens like it in the US that aren’t.

So are we beginning to see just how creepy it is that a national Emergency alert will be conducted at this time, when all appears to be falling apart?

This seems like it would be like a really cruel psy-op – like a one note War of the Worlds scare.

Tests like these have happened before –and they have been known to cause panic and confusion.

The EAS regulations and standards are governed by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the FCC. Each state and several territories have their own EAS plan. EAS has become part of IPAWS -– the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, a program of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). EAS is jointly coordinated by FEMA, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS).

The EAS is used on AM, FM and Land Mobile Radio Service, as well as VHF, UHF and cable television including low-power stations. Digital television and cable providers, along with Sirius XM satellite radio, IBOC, DAB and digital radio broadcasters have been required to participate in the EAS since December 31, 2006. DirecTV, Dish Network and all other DBS providers have been required to participate since May 31, 2007.

Despite its regional successes, the EAS is increasingly under fire by critics who charge that its national mission is obsolete in an era of instant 24-hour news coverage, and who deride its quaint reliance on analog radio and broadcast and cable television.

There is an historical incident that backs up this argument and that is the attacks that happened on September 11th, 2001. While our country was under attack there was no EAS broadcast that was cleared by the White House for the president to speak.

The excuse was that the media gave a quicker warning than the EAS system. It was also reported that during the tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear facility in Japan, their country’s Emergency news network system tones were not used at all.

There was no explanation for this. It was later that the United States Government announced that there would be a nationwide EAN blackout test for three minutes on 11/9/11. It was authorized by the President to test its effectiveness be used in times of crisis. That EAN reboot in 2011 failed and caused more confusion and more speculation as to what was really going on.

There have been many occasions where the EAS has been used outside of official parameters. In the video game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, during a Russian invasion of the United States, one of the loading screen videos is simply the Emergency Alert System. A message scrolls across the screen giving evacuation instructions for residents of Prince George’s County. Strangely, the scrolling message says “EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM” when the tone is actually the EAS tone.

In the 2009 science fiction film, Knowing, when “Diana” pulls in at the gas station and goes to the clerk for gasoline, the television in the background is displaying 24 hour news broadcast, when suddenly the screen changes with both the “Emergency Alert System” alert tones and an alert message stating, “This is an Emergency Broadcast Transmission!” “This is not a test!” The message repeats again and you see a portrayal of a fictionalized presidential cabinet alerting the public of the impending solar flares.

In the 2005 film version of War of the Worlds, the test version of the EAS warning can be heard playing over the radio on repeat during a scene in which the main characters are driving through the countryside, fleeing an alien invasion of Earth.

The 2013 film, World War Z, the Emergency Alert System was used by New Jersey State Police, instructing residents to seek shelter and to pack food enough for at least a week due to a zombie invasion.

In the 2013 film, The Purge, the “Emergency Broadcast System” is used to inform the populace that the yearly Purge will be starting and lasting for twelve hours. The warning signal is also played in the trailer. The producers used the EBS instead of EAS to avoid legal ramifications.

Tones from the EAS were used in the trailer for the 2013 film, Olympus Has Fallen, Cable providers were fined $1.9 million by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 3, 2014. An event similar to this previously occurred in November 2013 when TBS was fined $25,000 for simulating tones from the EAS in a Conan advertisement.

The FCC has cracked down on unofficial uses of the EAS tones and has issued fines to radio and TV stations that have used them for commercials and promotional announcements.

Three years ago, Ground Zero was asked to remove any and all EAS tones from our montages and intro music as our show dealt with subject matter that would be misconstrued as an actual emergency. The original Ground Zero intro has an EAS tone and an electronic voice that said “This is not a test – this is reality.”

Well, the reality as I see it is that this national EAS test and the timing of it as a psy-op that will most certainly play on the psychological fear that is bottled up inside Americans now.

The entire world has been psychologically impaired as other warnings have been given and emergency signs have been seen appearing everywhere in the form of omens and harbingers; namely, missile tests, war games, troop movements and worldwide catastrophes.

We are now just beginning to understand just how the mind is reacting to day to day pressures and fears. With nightmares awaiting us, from plague, pestilence and eventual death we may not understand how traumatic things are becoming more prevalent and how we must find a way to light our spiritual pathway in order to cope with such dismal events.

The mind is a powerful tool, and we can conclude that there are all sorts of realities behind us simply imploding as what is in front of us is the reality we know just beyond our feet.

It can be argued that the nation needs this emergency test in order to guarantee that people will be informed in the event of national emergency or martial law.

It also reminds us that as we cross into darker territory, believing that our world is ending, we must understand that this is not a test but reality.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/this-is-duress-for-the-next-sixty-seconds-september-22-2017