Unbeknownst to many there are sirens set up throughout the city of Dallas, Texas to warn the citizens in case of tornado or other natural disaster, a total of 156 emergency weather sirens to be exact.
These sirens are designed to go off a section at a time if a tornado decides to rip through the city, but at just before midnight on April 7th every single siren in the city started screaming:
Ever wonder what the end of the world feels like? #dallas #sirens pic.twitter.com/dvokKWkZ6N
— ManicPixieDreamGay (@deadlyblonde) April 8, 2017
It took city officials an hour and a half to realize they wouldn't be able to fix the problem- because the system had been hacked:
By 1:20 a.m., flummoxed officials had decided the only way to stop the noise was “to unplug the radio systems and the repeater, and pretty much turn the siren system completely off,” as emergency management director Rocky Vaz explained to reporters the next day.
At that same news conference (ironically drowned out at one point by ambulance sirens) city spokeswoman Sana Syed announced that the 95 minutes of howling had not been a glitch after all.
“It does appear at this time it was a hack,” she said. “And we do believe it came from the Dallas area.”
Officials have ruled out a remote hack — telling reporters someone gained physical access to a hub connecting all the sirens, which may not be turned on again until Monday as the city tries to figure out who, how and why.
Read Someone Hacked Every Tornado Siren In Dallas. It Was Loud. here
Dallas' emergency warning sirens, like many across the country, are radio-controlled and activated via encoded transmitters that act like pagers, sending tones to receivers attached to each siren. In Dallas' case, security experts say, it appears that someone took control of the frequency and transmitted the tones that turned on all 156 sirens across the city.