This morning, I was jolted awake by an emergency notification on my phone, warning of an impending earthquake. As has happened so many times before, the warning amounted to nothing. Frustrated by the numerous false positives disrupting my sleep, I went into my phone’s settings and disabled emergency notifications.
Japan’s Early Earthquake Warning System is an incredibly sophisticated mechanism, originally launched in 2007 and significantly upgraded after the Great Tohoku Earthquake in 2011. It’s lauded as the most thorough and responsive warning system worldwide, a testament to the immense effort and expertise invested. The system collects data from over 4,000 seismometers across the country and on the ocean floor. When two or more stations detect seismic activity, algorithms assess the quake’s intensity and potential. If it exceeds a certain threshold in populated areas, notifications are sent out via cell towers, warning residents to brace for shaking.
The first round of upgrades around 2012 was groundbreaking; receiving a notification up to 10 seconds before feeling the tremors seemed like science fiction come to life. However, over time, the majority of notifications I’ve received have been false positives—earthquakes that turned out to be far less severe than the warnings suggested. My home has generally shaken more from passing trucks than from the quakes the EEW has alerted me to. While this doesn’t render the system useless, it does mean people might start taking these warnings with a growing dose of skepticism.
The adage "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me," and the tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf come to mind. People tend to heed warnings until they notice a clear pattern of exaggeration.
We see a similar issue with storm warnings. Recently, it feels like every storm is trumpeted as “the worst X in Y years!” only for it to be no more intense than typical seasonal weather. Thanks to advances in engineering and building standards, Japan’s infrastructure is incredibly resilient. Houses withstand severe weather, riverbanks rarely overflow, highways flex to absorb shocks, and the power grid seldom fails. By many measures, Japan is arguably the safest and most prepared country in the world.
So why all the dire warnings?
I’ve pondered this for a while, and the most realistic theory I can come up with is that our safety has led to a paradox: the very experts who have made us so secure now feel compelled to justify their roles by amplifying warnings. This isn’t to say we should ignore all warnings, but we should be wary of professionals overwhelmed by excess information, leading to greater inaccuracies than a decade ago. Too much of anything—information or caution—can be counterproductive.
Given the unlikely prospect of a retreat from constant warnings, I’ve decided to disconnect from these public service systems. I’ve disabled emergency notifications on my phone and scaled back my daily visits to news websites. If something truly important happens, I’ll find out eventually. Otherwise, it’s probably not something I need to know.