Personally, I think they should go back to the old Brit idea of a bell and the town crier: "Oh yea, oh yea, oh yea, all hear this, all hear this. The French are coming, the French are coming... hide under your beds, hide under your beds."
Though with all the traffic noise these days, he's gonna need a much bigger friggin' bell.
Seriously, the DHA must have rocks in its head if it thinks Facebook and Twitter is the way to convey emergency alerts. I mean, there has to be a few million people like me who think both are a total waste of time and don't have accounts to either.
Do I hear a variation on a theme? Big Brother comes to mind. Manipulation through ersatz reporting or a deliberate inaccurate one. Half truths and such. Its called propaganda. Certain governments are good at putting the spin on things.
Yep, McCarthyism and "Reds under the Bed" come to mind. See, it's much easier to control the populace if its living in fear... and Big Brother is there to protect it.
And what a waste of time, energy and resources the Cold War was! Neither side was going to attack or invade the other, not with the threat of nuclear extinction hanging over their heads. More to the point, when you have paranoid leaders, you have a paranoid people, and they can be manipulated to do just about anything... like go to wars that are NONE of their business, etc. Sure it kept a lot of people gainfully employed making bombs and war machines, but surely they could have been gainfully employed making peace time machines.... harvesters and farm equipment, etc.
War, it's a politicians game.... and like my dad used to say, there'd be no wars if the politicians had to actually fight them.