Also in this thread:
tHERE wAS A dIsASTer anD THa fANCEE waRnINGS neVer rINGEDD MY PHONE! i wANt mY tAx MoNeYS baCK!!!!11111
LOL That's how the system is designed. You can pick and choose what you want to be alerted about. You've never, ever been able to hide from a Presidential Alert. They pre-empt all teevee, all radio, and as newer technologies came along (cable teevee, etc), those got rolled up into it as well.
By Federal law, if your station doesn't transmit the PEA, it used to have to cease broadcasting period until the alert terminated.
To make sure this rickety old thing works, they are supposed to do increasingly complicated tests of it on a rolling basis. Local and state get the RMT's (Required Monthly - HONNNNK HOOOONNNNK).
They don't do the end-to-end big one very often because... it never works right. It's too complicated, then techs have to go unfuck things that refused to let go.
They still don't know what to do about tv's, radios and phones that are turned off*, or if all of the things with screens in your house like the fridge and bidet should have to carry the alert, either...
Instead of being pissy about one type of test, you should all be pissy that bidillions (that's biden billions) have been dumped into this ancient 70's relic, and it to my knowledge has never worked correctly, completely, once.
I turn all the other shit off except haz mat disaster and like one other. The rest, I don't need it bothering me, someone else's phone will go off.
Wait until they realize that the satphone capability of the new phone devices could be used to send an alert and bother you on vacation, way up in the hills where the cells used to not work!
(because, they aren't really off, and the mass chaos that would ensue from the general public finding out Big Gov potentially, maybe with a firmware upgrade could activate your smart device without your permission apparently isn't worth the warning power it could provide in a Real Emergency).