Re:You would have to really trust it (Score 1)

In fact, we already have a system like this here in Japan. Have had for a while. A couple of years ago, I was woken up at 6 in the morning when my mobile phone started making an ungodly banshee screaming noise, even though it was set to silent mode. I'm sure it would've made a hilarious YouTube video with me running around like the proverbial headless chicken trying to find out where the fire alarm was coming from until I realized it was the damn phone I was carrying making the noise! (well, it was early, remember...) Now it turned out that there was a false alarm from somewhere out near Choshi, Eastern Chiba - a sensor wasn't calibrated right. However, we did have a small earthquake, it just exaggerated the magnitude from a 5.5 (no alarm, normally) to a 6.5 or something similar (hey, it's only a single order of magnitude, right?). Long story short - one false alarm in 3 years isn't so bad in my view. Of course, correlating a couple of sensors would have been more robust but delay the warning... They use something called "Area Mail" which is really a Cell Broadcast to get the news out to everyone nice and fast. Google "NTT Technical Review Early Warning “Area Mail”. BTW from the article: "...first-in-the-world earthquake early warning system..." umm...