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September 15, 2021 6:49 PM Subscribe
"The Federal Signal Thunderbolt siren is one of the most famous 'older sirens' in the history of sirens." Check out the high-low fire signal on this one in Sarnia, ON, one that's flooded, in Maysville, OK, one on full alert in Seminole, OK, an alternate wail in Saint Paul, NE, an unwell example in Riceville, IA, or watch private owners of various Thunderbolt models test out their siren in the yard, demonstrate the Thunderbolt's "chopper" levels, the hi-lo solenoid, its "pulse signal," a decoupled "blower" in action, extra blower action, or dual Thunderbolts in concert.
Civil Defense Museum: The First Siren Project - Federal Thuderbolt 1000 Restoration
Google Maps: Thunderbolt Sirens Still in Existence
Fandom: Thunderbolt Siren Series
Civil Defense Museum: The First Siren Project - Federal Thuderbolt 1000 Restoration
Google Maps: Thunderbolt Sirens Still in Existence
Fandom: Thunderbolt Siren Series
Those sound utterly demented. I have a new ringtone
posted by scruss at 7:40 PM on September 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by scruss at 7:40 PM on September 15, 2021 [5 favorites]
the alternate wail in St Paul is my personal favorite. I just imagine one of those things on top of an ice cream truck just hauling down the road trying to out race the two-tone insanity. won't even mention clowns with Dirk teeth, caustic balloons and red nose made of clay.
posted by clavdivs at 7:49 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 7:49 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's an emotionally deep siren.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:52 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:52 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]
Talking of sirens, Soviet composer Arseny Avraamov was a fan:
"Today, his most famous work is Simfoniya gudkov (Гудковая симфония, "Symphony of factory sirens"). This piece involved navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, the foghorns of the entire Soviet flotilla in the Caspian Sea, artillery guns, machine guns, hydro-airplanes, a specially designed "whistle main," and renderings of Internationale, Warszawianka and Marseillaise by a mass band and choir. The piece was conducted by a team of conductors using flags and pistols. It was performed in the city of Baku in 1922, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, and less successfully in Moscow, a year later."
Here's a recent reconstruction.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:02 PM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
"Today, his most famous work is Simfoniya gudkov (Гудковая симфония, "Symphony of factory sirens"). This piece involved navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, the foghorns of the entire Soviet flotilla in the Caspian Sea, artillery guns, machine guns, hydro-airplanes, a specially designed "whistle main," and renderings of Internationale, Warszawianka and Marseillaise by a mass band and choir. The piece was conducted by a team of conductors using flags and pistols. It was performed in the city of Baku in 1922, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, and less successfully in Moscow, a year later."
Here's a recent reconstruction.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:02 PM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]
Shit. Forgot to include this one:
Mini T-bolt 1003 Siren Solenoid Test
It would make an effective alarm clock.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:08 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mini T-bolt 1003 Siren Solenoid Test
It would make an effective alarm clock.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:08 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty sure that first one was the warning siren for my neighborhood, which stood behind my childhood elementary school but could be heard for a mile or so around. It was extremely eerie, especially when you forgot it was the first Wednesday of the month and you were hanging out alone in a quiet house. As a DC suburb, it wasn't a tornado siren, it was the nuke siren.
posted by tavella at 10:57 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:57 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh, they definitely did the full alert one too, at least some of the time, now that I listen to it.
posted by tavella at 10:59 PM on September 15, 2021
posted by tavella at 10:59 PM on September 15, 2021
I lived pretty close to one in Homestead, which, being near both a significant AFB and a nuke plant, got a lot of testing.
I have a lot of respect and joy for mechanical sirens. Such a simple, and elegant, way of making a shitload of noise.
If you can have a two tone siren, why not more tones? Why not a couple octaves. With a keyboard. The loudest damn organ you ever did hear.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:38 AM on September 16, 2021
I have a lot of respect and joy for mechanical sirens. Such a simple, and elegant, way of making a shitload of noise.
If you can have a two tone siren, why not more tones? Why not a couple octaves. With a keyboard. The loudest damn organ you ever did hear.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:38 AM on September 16, 2021
private owners of various Thunderbolt models
Oh, these guys must be really fun at parties.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:00 AM on September 16, 2021
Oh, these guys must be really fun at parties.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:00 AM on September 16, 2021
Oh, these guys must be really fun at parties.
Especially the block party, as this guy with one in his suburban back yard proves.
posted by hwyengr at 6:09 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Especially the block party, as this guy with one in his suburban back yard proves.
posted by hwyengr at 6:09 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
We were out driving Santa around on the fire truck a few years ago and I was in the officer's seat. This means that I was resposible for navigation as well as operating the air horns and siren. It's after 8:00 PM and we're about to wrap-up for the night, deep in a residential area. I take my foot off the siren pedal...and it doesn't stop. That Federal Q just kept winding up, louder and louder. People were coming out of their houses, not in anticipation of seeing Santa but in curiosity that quickly turned to displeasure. Someone eventually had to crawl under and cut something. Back at the station the Chief said, yeah, that happens sometimes, a solenoid gets stuck. It's immortalized in the log book since repairs were necessary. tl;dr: Y'all think y'all know how loud sirens get, but probably not. :-)
posted by wintermind at 6:29 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by wintermind at 6:29 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]
From April: Covering Chauvin trial, CNN spooked by Minnesota's tornado siren test (which includes a couple of active Thunderbolts)
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 6:54 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 6:54 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Great post. I would totally make a ringtone of the Thunderbolt, but I got in trouble with my spouse for having a number station as a a ringtone in the past—too dissonant and creepy.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 8:03 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 8:03 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]
The restoration link has sirens that came from Abilene, TX when the local weather service office was closed. The city rumor is that nobody in town wanted the responsibility to hit the siren button in a likely, but unconfirmed tornado so they were decommissioned (the weather service moved responsibility to an office 100 miles away). I remember seeing them all rusted and dented, lined up on a parking lot at the city auction when they were eventually sold.
As a point of comparison to hitting the panic button, a local hero who saved lives.
posted by tayknight at 9:00 AM on September 16, 2021
As a point of comparison to hitting the panic button, a local hero who saved lives.
posted by tayknight at 9:00 AM on September 16, 2021
Growing up in our small town, the volunteer fire department had one installed atop a steeple over the firehouse on main street, next door to the only movie theater. Yep, we had impromptu intermissions.
posted by maggieb at 9:49 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by maggieb at 9:49 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
The building across from my Minneapolis dorm in college had a classic bright yellow Thunderbolt siren mounted on the top of it, and the rotating horn was pretty level with my particular floor of the dorm building. So during the monthly test, it was full blast rattling-windows feel-it-in-your-chest LOUD. My past experience with tornado sirens involved little small town sirens faintly heard from miles away, nothing at all like the Thunderbolt, and so when this terrifying sound came out of nowhere, my first instinct was to shout WHAT THE HELL IS THAT and run into the hallway to see if I was about to die. Nope, just the first Wednesday at 1 PM.
Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs have been taking down a lot of the old Thunderbolts in the past decade (that one across from my old dorm is the only one left within the city). I get it, it's not feasible to keep aging emergency equipment around for nostalgia, but the sound of the newer ones just doesn't tap into that same primal fear. It's historic, the sound of the Cold War.
posted by castlebravo at 9:56 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs have been taking down a lot of the old Thunderbolts in the past decade (that one across from my old dorm is the only one left within the city). I get it, it's not feasible to keep aging emergency equipment around for nostalgia, but the sound of the newer ones just doesn't tap into that same primal fear. It's historic, the sound of the Cold War.
posted by castlebravo at 9:56 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
Anyone else having a Pavlovian reaction to duck and cover under their desks or is that just me?
posted by loquacious at 10:45 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by loquacious at 10:45 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Thanks to this thread I've discovered that my town has a ton of videos of its sirens, none of which are the Thunderbolt, so it's off topic, but I love discovering fanbases of things I never once thought about.
For anyone curious, "my" usual sirens are:
1) An ASC OM-120 Siren Fire Signal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gajF2v_3fGg), which goes off every time the Chevron refinery has a fire, which is apparently once every 2 weeks or so- always disconcerting, since these things never make the news or even nixle.
Apparently they have more than one kind of siren going in a real emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_snU3qk9enY Though they could be the county's plus their own siren.
&
2) And ACA Cyclone 125 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBP03wFr0HY) which is the county's emergency system. I only hear these at the first Wednesday tests. However, one of them is very near my office, so it can be unsettling.
It never crossed my mind to wonder how many types of sirens might be in modern use.
posted by small_ruminant at 5:22 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
For anyone curious, "my" usual sirens are:
1) An ASC OM-120 Siren Fire Signal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gajF2v_3fGg), which goes off every time the Chevron refinery has a fire, which is apparently once every 2 weeks or so- always disconcerting, since these things never make the news or even nixle.
Apparently they have more than one kind of siren going in a real emergency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_snU3qk9enY Though they could be the county's plus their own siren.
&
2) And ACA Cyclone 125 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBP03wFr0HY) which is the county's emergency system. I only hear these at the first Wednesday tests. However, one of them is very near my office, so it can be unsettling.
It never crossed my mind to wonder how many types of sirens might be in modern use.
posted by small_ruminant at 5:22 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
It never crossed my mind to wonder how many types of sirens might be in modern use.
Heh. The post started as a post about siren enthusiasts and the various types of sirens they travel around filming or collecting, but I would have been at it for days because there are just so many different ones. So I chose to focus on the one siren that really spoke to me. The cool thing about the Thunderbolt is that it's kind of a kinetic-sculpture-meets-warning-device that's pretty interesting to watch in action (or in action while partially disassembled).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:19 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
Heh. The post started as a post about siren enthusiasts and the various types of sirens they travel around filming or collecting, but I would have been at it for days because there are just so many different ones. So I chose to focus on the one siren that really spoke to me. The cool thing about the Thunderbolt is that it's kind of a kinetic-sculpture-meets-warning-device that's pretty interesting to watch in action (or in action while partially disassembled).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:19 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you can have a two tone siren, why not more tones? Why not a couple octaves. With a keyboard.
Them Duke boys "borrowed" the county tornado siren, and got the ol' General Lee rigged up like the Bluesmobile. Now, when they go off a sweet jump, that car really plays Dixie!
posted by xedrik at 7:31 AM on September 17, 2021
Them Duke boys "borrowed" the county tornado siren, and got the ol' General Lee rigged up like the Bluesmobile. Now, when they go off a sweet jump, that car really plays Dixie!
posted by xedrik at 7:31 AM on September 17, 2021
some friends of ours got an old Golden Gate Bridge fog horn and it turns out those are really too loud to use for any damn thing.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:47 AM on September 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by small_ruminant at 10:47 AM on September 17, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by clavdivs at 7:01 PM on September 15, 2021