Sirens
Posted: Sat 25 March, 2006 Filed under: Weirdness 3 Comments »One thing that struck me as very odd when I came to Bracknell was the sirens. Every Monday at about 10am (but rarely on a completely regular/punctual basis – I suspect it has to be set off by hand, and is thus reliant on people not doing other stuff) the area is covered by a wailing two-note siren, eventually followed by a one-note ‘all clear’ siren. It took me ages to find out (OK, ask) what it was, and it turns out that because we’re close to Broadmoor (BBC Profile here and WikiPaedia here) and it’s a siren that gets sounded should anyone escape from there.
What surprises me more now about the entire thing is how little anyone reacts to it. Yes, OK, it’s a regular test signal, but for the most part people don’t seem to react to it at all, not even looking round to see what the hell it is, or anything. To me it always sounds like the cliched “Three Minute Warning” siren, so you know, if I heard it and didn’t know what it was, I’d at least ask, or try to find out where it was coming from. (Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?)
Maybe it’s yet another instance of “it won’t happen to me” or “it’s not happening” syndrome. I don’t know.
An ex-colleague of mine grew up in that area and from time to time the siren would go off and controlled panic would set in at the school, knowing that it meant an escape. Perhaps they don’t have escapes these days. It was a Tory thing, prison escapes…;-)
All we need now is a Patrick Allen voiceover…
The sirens are, in fact, three minute warnings in response to my repeatedly thwarted attempts to nuke Bracknell and wipe it from the face of the planet. I’m sorry that you happen to be in the vicinity and it’s nothing personal. I’m afraid you’ve been categorized as expendable.