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After the Virginia Tech shooting, Georgia Tech, like many other universities, went to work on implementing an emergency broadcast system involving email and text message alerts designed to freak people the hell out and add to the chaos. Today, we tested that system. About half an hour ago, everyone who had opted into the system got a text message:

ATLANTA CAMPUS, EMERGENCY ALERT. Evacuate campus immediately and tune to local media for additional information. To opt out reply STOP.

An email went out campus-wide as well.

In my lab, we all started milling about, making sure we were getting the same info, and gradually came to the conclusion that our work day had ended (and it had just started for some of us! shucks). But what to do next was not exactly clear. A lot of us are basically looking at bicycles and our own two feet to “evacuate,” and if the threat is some crazy emo kid with his grandpa’s guns, evacuating is not a great idea. Our labs have nice, thick doors that lock, and we have plenty of power tools and big steel rods and crap to throw at any nutcases. We can even irradiate the bastard with our mobile X-ray unit if push come to shove. “Ha ha, take that! You will get cancer someday, if you don’t kill yourself first!” So as I weaved in and out of general clusterfuck traffic, I and every other student on the street had an eye out for random commando kids while trying not to get run over by a car.

I only subjected myself to that risk because my building is also next to a giant 40-foot tank of liquid hydrogen that would probably bury us in the rubble next to our X-ray machine if it went pop. Clearly, Georgia Tech is going to have to send out a little bit more detail in future alerts. “Crazy kid with gun” = stay in the damn lab. “Bomb threat” = go the hell home.

They went with the third option in follow-up messages:

Disregard The Previous Message / To opt-out reply STOP

So we all went back to work, or pretend-work as the case may be (hi there).

Except for people in the environmental sciences building. Another message a few minutes later said

ATLANTA CAMPUS, DISREGARD PREVIOUS EMERGENCY MESSAGE TO EVACUATE CAMPUS. EVACUATION NOTICE WAS ONLY FOR THE FORD BUILDING.

Those people must be thoroughly annoyed by now.

I wonder how many people they just got to opt out?

ETA: An undergrad just raised an excellent point. Do on-campus dorms count as that part of campus that has to “evacuate” under such a vague-ass order, and if so, where the hell are they supposed to go? Something for the dorm dwellers to figure out for themselves, for sure, because Georgia Tech sure as hell ain’t gonna tell ya. I would recommend the Vortex.