Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Emergency Phone Numbers

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why emergency phone numbers are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Emergency phone numbers known for being 911. Famous for being 112. Nobody thinks much about them so let's have some fun. Let's find out why emergency phone numbers are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode of Podcast All About Why Being Alive is More Interesting Than People Think It Is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Yes! What is your relationship to or opinion of emergency phone numbers? So I have never had to use one personally. I have, yeah, which is nice, but I did have someone call for me once because I had,

let me back up. I was at a museum for class. Everything was fine. Let me go forward first. Everything was fine. I was fine. Now let me back up. I ran to a museum in college from, I don't know, a few miles away because the buses were messed up and I was going to be late for class. Part two of the story is I woke up late cause I slept in past my alarm, few miles away because the buses were messed up and I was going to be late for class. Part two of the story is I woke up late cause I slept in past my alarm. So I didn't eat breakfast. Uh,

and I really wanted to make this class and it was at this museum because we had this like day at the museum and I was really excited for it cause we got to look at Greek sculptures of people's butts and wieners. And so I was booking it to this museum, having not eaten breakfast, because in college you don't think about things like, oh yeah, eating is not just like a fun thing to do because food is good,

but like you actually need to do it. Also didn't really have any water. So there's a lot of mistakes I made. And I was trying to answer a question that the TA was asking about a sarcophagus that had this design on it. And I was saying like, Hey, this is probably like, you know, sort of a classic Greek family motif. Oh, by the way, I think I'm, I might pass out in a second here. I think I need to sit down. Because like, I was trying to answer this question and basically like my vision started to sort of swim and then all these little black dots came in the sides of my face.

Yeah. Panic broke out with the class because they thought something was terrible. It was wrong and it is the correct response to have, but I really needed to drink some water and I finally kind of like got my head between my legs, which is good. Like it's what you're supposed to do is if you get your head lower so that you can get sort of some blood going there. And someone gave me their water. And so I was already feeling better. What I didn't know is that someone had called 911.

Oh. And it was nice of them. Honestly, like never hesitate to do that because you know, that's what they're there for. They're to save people. And sometimes you might just get a stupid college student who didn't eat their mini wheats that morning and then ran to a museum. But I remember- Too much museum enthusiasm is the medical code.

Yeah, exactly. I was too into classical Greek art and architecture. But the paramedics came and I remember arguing with them because they were trying to get me into the ambulance. They're like saying, look, let's take you to the hospital just in case. I'm fine. I'm great. And they're like, you know what? I think let's just make sure you're fine because you did have sort of a fainting spell. And I was like, I just need some orange juice and cookies and then I'll be good. And I was like, I just need some orange juice and cookies and then I'll be good. And they're like, we'll take you to the hospital.

So I went with the very nice paramedics just doing their jobs. They checked me all out, put the heart monitor on, everything was fine. Doctor comes in, he's like, well, you should just have drank some orange juice and some cookies. I was like, that's what I said. I don't know what the moral of the story is.

It was that the entire, like everyone was very nice to me despite me wasting everyone's time. I didn't mean to. I want it to be clear. I really didn't mean to waste anyone's time. They did the right thing, right? Like a sudden fainting spell could be, there could be some heart issue, right?

Like cardiac issue. They got me all checked out. Everything was great. Nobody got mad at me. That's the key thing, I think. Nobody was upset that I was fine. They were all really happy to see that I was fine when they did. It wasn't like, oh my God, you're just fine.

Why are you even here wasting our time? They're really nice. They were happy that I was fine. Happy that all I needed was orange juice and cookies. So if you're just ever in doubt and you call emergency services and turns out you or the person you called for is totally fine and just stupid in terms of making sure to eat

before running to a museum, no one will be mad at you. Or they should not. They should not be. I can't guarantee that, but yeah, they will be just very pleased and relieved that you're fine. Good. I like that. That's good to hear.

It's also, whoever went ahead and called for you, they operate differently than I did the one time I needed to call 911. Because I called it for myself and I was like hesitant to, even though this may be darker than people expect. But it was like 10 years ago in LA I was walking and I got hit by a car. Oh no, Alex. And I was still like conscious and stuff. And so I like pushed myself out of the intersection. And then even in that situation, my mental instinct was you can't call 911 because you're wasting their time or hogging the lines.

But like, no, it was time. It was time to do that. I was so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Alex, I think you got hit by a car. Right, right. So I called, it worked out. But, and I was fine, as people can hear. You were okay.

Well, yes, but I mean. It mostly clipped me. It mostly hit my lower body and then like the side I landed on after I was thrown in the Air was really bruised up, but I was shockingly fine. Yeah, right. You didn't you didn't break anything. You didn't need stitches Yeah, no breaks. No damages really. Yeah, they were just like you're some pain medicine. You're weirdly fine Yeah, yeah, but in that instance as well, I would assume that they were not upset at all that you called and you were quote unquote only lightly hit by a car.

Yeah, when you tell them that happened, they just get on with it. There's no like, but what size of car? Like I was in my head. Yeah, was it a sedan? Was it one of those little Fiat's? Cause if it was a Fiat, eh, whatever, walk it off. Yeah, and they also, I had to call myself

cause they hit and ran. So someone in LA is a felon and got away with it. But theoretically, theoretically a lot of people don't call for themselves cause you can't, you know? But I needed to and I could. I just don't. I'm okay. It's okay.

I'm so mad, Alex. I'm so mad. Everyone got the flash forward of I sound fine every week. So it's probably fine. The fact you're fine is fantastic, but that doesn't make me not angry at a person who hits an innocent, you know, just native Alex in his natural habitat and then drives off. It's terrible. Well, I'm sorry you went through that buddy,

but I'm glad you're okay and I'm glad you called. I think it's just, yeah, like that's, it's just so important to call. In hindsight, I was like, oh, this is kind of a rare experience, like the ambulance guys were nice and Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, good hospital. They were so nice, the paramedics were so nice. I remember when I was in the ambulance

and I was saying, guys, I'm so sorry. I'm sure I'm fine. And I'm probably wasting everyone's time. And I was really self-conscious about it. And they're like, if you're wasting everyone's time, that's great. We're happy when that happens. That would be fantastic.

We just, let's just get you checked out. You know, you could have something and we just want to make sure that you're all fine. And if you are, that's great. you checked out. You know, you could have something and we just wanna make sure that you're all fine. And if you are, that's great, that's fantastic. They're really lovely people, really, really nice. So I love paramedics. I think they're great and you should not be scared of them if you are, if you think that you are someone

you can see or know is having a medical emergency. They're not scary. They're very nice. Yeah, I'm so glad Folk suggested this topic because it's truly SIF and also it's almost entirely about heroes like the dispatchers, the first responders, everybody. They're just great. And thank you to Alaska Warriors on the Discord for the suggestion, also Court Jester for giving it a lot of support because it's truly stiff. The phone numbers to call emergency services such as 911 in the US, we don't think about the details or origin at all.

Yeah. You know, it's funny because I have now had to learn the emergency numbers in Italy because I'm so used to 911 since a kid, right? You learned 911 and now it's in Italy. Yeah, in Italy for the medical emergency services, it's 118. Okay, for medical. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's another... Kids learn this so young and I think that's part of why I hesitated to call because they also tell you since you're a kid, like, don't fool around with this.

Right. You're like, you're a kid like don't fool around with this. Right. You're like you're a kid Don't don't be goofy like kids are and then as an adult you're like, I'm still not allowed to call it even though you You're just kind of splurting blood out of your your face and your in your Years and yours. Yeah, but they told me when I was a kid that I don't want to you know They're very important busy people. So, you know. Yeah, because if I remember right, also a police officer had to take a statement from me in the hospital because they just do for any incident where a car hits a person.

Yeah. They went straight down a street and turned really fast. Like I had no information for them. I didn't know. Yeah. I couldn't help them catch them. So the police officer is just like, that's fine. That's fine. You don't have the info and yeah. Oh well, you know. Yeah.

They might kind of push that a little too much where it's like, hey, you don't call 911. They'll be mad at you if you prank call them or if you waste their time. It's like, well, what does it mean to waste their time though? I'm not gonna call them about sports or Pokemon or something. Whatcha doin'? Yeah, yeah. What's your favorite Pokemon? What's the weather like 10 blocks away?

It's not what I'm gonna say. No, no, for sure. But, you know, I get it. Kids probably call them all the time just to be like, what's your favorite pizza? Yeah, yeah. Or something where maybe even if you don't know whether it's an emergency, like if you're going like, is this an emergency? That's usually like emergency adjacent and enough to call and certainly they might help

you with that, right? You know? That too. Yeah. And we'll kind of talk about elements of that too, like what these lines are for. And unsurprisingly, a lot numbers this week, because phone numbers and more. We're doing that in a set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called...

I'm counting numbers and statistics. I'm counting numbers and statistics. How to get my dupes in there. Great dupes. Thank you. That was about Bill W. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Miss Silly and Wacky as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. And the first number this week is three because it turns out in almost every country in the world, the emergency phone numbers are three digits long

That has become the global approach that makes sense because that's Enough numbers that it's like you're definitely dialing something and it's gonna be a unique Number but it's not so many numbers that you're like, all right 9-1-1 1 2 4 4 5 6 7 7 7 8 7 1 1 but it's not so many numbers that you're like, all right, 911-124-456-777-8711. Yeah, that's right. Like oddly with every emergency number except one that we'll talk about, we don't really know who coined it

or like what the decision process was for the exact number. We just know that there's a general wisdom that you want it to be short enough to be easy to remember, long enough to not dial by accidents. And except for one big example, it tends to be not just one number three times in a row, it tends to be different numbers, so it's harder to dial by accident.

Right, right. I did still, cause with the dang newfangled old smartphones, I did accidentally dial 911 once. Again, they were really nice about it. Cause it was one of those things where like, it was some version of the iPhone that had this stupid thing where if you like, pressed on a thing.

Oh, the emergency feature? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I, that was a butt dial. And I was like, oh weird, I feel a hear a faint noise coming from my butt. And so I picked up my phone and was like, this is 911. And I was like, ah, sorry.

I'm so sorry. As this phone went off and still, you know, he didn't stop to chat, but it's like, no problem. And just like, so everything's fine. And I was like, yes, everything's fine. He's like, all right, no problem. Just, you know, change that feature on your phone or something. You know, just brisk because he's got to get back to his other work. But, you know, again, like, not like surprisingly polite for what I'm sure happens all the time and it's probably very annoying That's all dead on. Yeah, like one helpful source this week is WCCO the CBS affiliate in the Twin Cities of Minnesota

they interviewed folks at the Hennepin County emergency medical dispatch and Deputy chief of comms Dan Clowater says if you accidentally call 9-1-1 The best thing to do is quote stay on the line and just say it was an accidental call. Yes. Because he says people's other reaction is to see it's being dialed and hang up right away. But if you do that they don't know if you still need help. They need to call you back. It's actually less steps if you just stay on the line politely quickly apologize.

It's better. Yeah exactly. I knew that, and so that's why I stayed and answered his question rather than panicking up. Good, yeah, good job. Better to be like, sowwy than to have them like, cause then they have to, I think they have to, what do they do?

They have to like call you back and. Cause you could have been like starting to dial and then the fire gets to you or the criminal or something. So they have to check. The criminal gets you. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're about to get taken from the movie Taken. And then you start to dial 911, but then you get taken. And they got to know whether to let Liam Neeson know if you got taken and you got took or not.

Yeah. 911 gets police, fire, ambulance or Liam Neeson. Those are the four services. Yeah. Liam Neeson. For Liam Neeson, press five. Hello, this is Liam Neeson. I'm shooting a film right now, of course.

So why would I be in a chair waiting for you? I can't help you with your problems. I'm a movie actor from the movie films. And another quick number that I hope eases people's concern is an estimated 240 million calls. How many oopsies happen? That's how many 911 calls there are in the United States each year and a significant amount are oopsies.

So if you make an oopsie, you're not alone. This happens. Just be cool about it and don't be pranking. Yeah. Just, yeah. Don't be pranking, man. 240 million calls a year, they will get a few false alarms. It happens.

Yeah. It happens. And with the three digit numbers, there are two popular examples in the world. There's 911, which is the main emergency phone number in the United States. USA. According to the US National Emergency Number Association, the digits 911 had no prior usage in the whole US phone system as an area code or office code or service code. So that's part of why it got picked. I see. Okay. Apparently there was a similar situation in the European Union with the number 112. So

112 is for all the services in all of the EU unless they haven't updated yet. And then they're, like Katie said, can be specific numbers for specific services in countries. I also learned 112, which is really useful because I think they also will most likely speak English. So if you're in the EU and you're having an emergency and you do 112, they can either connect you with someone who speaks English and yeah, because it's like, you know, you got to have sort of a neutral language for neutral language, a colonizer language for the EU. Yeah. And another way 112 is useful along with 911 is apparently a lot of mobile phone

networks are programmed to understand those as emergency dials, even if it's not a country where that's the main number. Right. According to Kieran Moynihan of the European Emergency Number Association, a lot of the mobile phone networks, they needed software to set up various emergency numbers in various countries and then it's easy to also code in 911 or 112. And so that'll often work worldwide. You need to check, but it could work. Yeah, you'll talk to someone at least. Yeah. And another number here is the years 2016 and 2017. Years 2016 and 2017.

That is when Mexico gradually switched to using 911. Yeah. So they had a different number first? Yeah. Mexico was a prime example of a country that had three different emergency numbers for three different services. Before 2016, very recent, you would dial 065 for an ambulance, 068 for the fire department, 060 for the police. Yeah, we have a similar system in Italy. I shamefully have really only learned 112,

which is the EU, and then 118, which is the medical one because my thinking is, I don't know. Well, you're impervious to fire, first of all. Right, I mean, I figure I could probably, I could probably, you know, I think also if I connect to 112 and I say there's a fire, can you help me connect to the fire department in Italy? I think that they do that for you. They won't quiz you on what the number is. I don't think so. I think I could also, doing like 111, 112, 113, 114, 115

until I get to the right one for my problem. True. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead. Apparently, it's 115 for fires and 113 for police in Italy. Ah, interesting. But it's also layered under 112 for everything because they're in the EU. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and this is common. Apparently China has 119 for the fire department, 110 for police, 120 for an ambulance, and 122 for traffic incident police specifically. I see. Yeah. The US is almost an outlier with this kind of thing, where we never really had a separate numbers for separate services system. I can see arguments for both things.

The argument for the one number is, obviously it's easier to remember. The argument for the different numbers is you triage things and people like the operators will kind of know more specifically what to do in that situation. Exactly. Yeah. And yeah, in Mexico, in their case, I couldn't find solid info on whether the old numbers like 065 for an ambulance still work. I found various things on various websites, but a lot of countries have like maintained the old numbers

and added a new number, because you can. And apparently Mexico added 911 for two other reasons. One is Americans and Canadians visiting and not knowing that there's different emergency numbers. Because Canada adopted 911 a few years after the US, they have it too. Yeah, that's very us, isn't it? We go somewhere and it's like, wait, it's not 911 here as well? But I'm American.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then also the other reason apparently they felt confident adding 911 in Mexico is that US TV and movies have spread the word about the idea of 911 as an emergency number. Right, right. Yeah.

No, I can see. So we did kind of American in there, you know? We did. We have so much influence with our movies and TV. People don't even know. American movies and TV are so popular worldwide that we just start making other like, it's like we infect them with our culture through our movies and our TV. And it's interesting to see that happening

because I've even seen it like since I've moved here, it seems like kids are doing more trick or treating, which is not an Italian thing, but they see it on TV, in movies. I think especially maybe during the pandemic, they were watching like a ton of TV and movies. And now like, there's a lot more of them doing the trick-or-treating thing. Yeah, like one episode of every sitcom every season, all the characters wear costumes and then... Right. And they're like, wait a minute, why not?

And they're like, wait a minute, why not? The next number here is more than a dozen, because that's how many crisis hotlines are listed on an online index run by the American Psychological Association. This episode will mainly be about the short numbers for police fire ambulance, but I felt like it's worth noticing that there are many, many other emergency numbers for everything from substance abuse to sexual assault. And in the US, most of those need to have a full length phone number. We also have the number 988, which is for the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. It's also a military veterans crisis line. So that one crisis line gets a three digit name.

Right. 988. It does make some sense because I think for some of the other kind of hotlines, it's not necessarily something you would need. I mean, like if you're having an emergency emergency where it's something super urgent that is happening in the moment, then you would call 911. Whereas if you need resources, say for a longer situation that still could be seen as an emergency, but maybe it's something where it's like you have hours or days to kind of deal with it so you could look up

the numbers. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so I'm not frustrated with it. It's just a different approach to those issues because yeah, other than suicide, we seem to think the other ones you can either learn the number or take the time to look it up. Yeah. Right. And then also there's a few other three-digit US numbers where it's not an emergency, but it seems like we're just trying to convince people to use it or know that it exists. Biggest example might be 811. 811 is a service that you call if you're going to dig into the ground.

The nickname is call before you dig. They want people to dig without hitting buried utility lines. Ah. A very similar number to 911 is for this very almost quotidian thing. Right. Construction companies and homeowners. So have they told the dogs yet? How do they get the dogs to do it? They should. Maybe dogs are good at 8-1-1. I don't know. Yeah.

Great. Run, run. I like run. Run, run, run. Dog I don't know. Yeah. Great. Run, run. I like run. Run, run, run. Dog, run, run. Yeah, yeah. And there's also 711 is a telecom relay service that helps people with hearing and speech disabilities use things like 911.

So there's a few other three digit numbers for services that a lot of people just maybe don't know about. And hopefully the short number helps people find out. I'm trying to remember but I thought one thing is a number that you call if you smell gas where it's a you know because I don't know it might be 911 but I thought there was another number you can call if you smell gas. Yeah the the guidance I've seen is either an entire full phone number or 911. Right. Like you can Google what the an entire full phone number or 911. You can Google what the gas company's phone number is for you, or you can just call 911 and get routed.

Right, exactly. And then they, as they understand it, won't be mad at you at 911. Right. Yeah, because gas, it's not good. It's not good to have in your house. Yeah, dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Another year number to mention with these different purposes is 2021. Because 2021 is when New York City launched a pilot program for arranging their 911 system to possibly be able to dispatch mental health professionals rather than police. Yeah, that's I've read a lot of stories about this, right? It can be a huge problem because if someone's having a mental health crisis, sometimes they might have a weapon in hand, right? If someone is suicidal, they might actually have a weapon in hand,

but you want to save them. You don't want to shoot them. And so having people who are trained in deescalation techniques seem really, really important in that situation. Totally. And yeah, as we try to figure out how to do that in general, we're also figuring out whether to fold it into dialing 911 or make it dialing something else. And especially this decade, and especially since the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, just a lot of American cities are beginning to say, what else can we do for people besides just sending cops?

And so that impacts 911, because it could be very helpful with that if we funnel people the right way. Yeah. We understand 911 to only be for cops and crimes in some ways. And so then when people dial it for maybe this other thing, it just doesn't... Like the people on the other end only understand

that the calls are for cops and crime sometimes, you know? It's an interesting problem. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Next number here is the year 2018. In 2018, that's when one part of my county in New York State adopted a system letting people text message to the 911 system. That seems super useful to me because what if you're trying to stay quiet because Freddy Krueger is chasing you down, right? Because then, you know, like it's always that thing in the movies where you're trying to stay quiet

and then there's the bad guy, but you're trying to call 911, or you're trying to be real quiet, and the bad guy's like, I can hear you calling 911, you know? (*laughs*) Well, you have a very bothered cell phone, but for some reason the buttons

make the huge landline noises. Beep, boop, bop, bop. (*laughs*) And click for someop, bop, bop. And click for some reason. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and legitimately, crimes are one of the main situations.

Texting 911 can be the most helpful. Yeah. And apparently, the US is adding this capability in the most piecemeal way nationwide. USA, USA. Cause the other number there is more than 6,000. In the United States, there are more than 6,000 public safety answering points.

That's a technical name. Public safety answering points or a PSAP. That just means an office where your 911 call goes. It goes to the closest PSAP and then dispatchers route it and talk to you. The thing we're doing is every PSAP is individually gradually adding the ability to text message them when they're able to and funded to. Is this a state issue because they're in a bunch of different states? It's because the system is very distributed in a way where, theoretically, your state government

could order all of them to do it or something, but the federal government is not ordering them all to do it at one time or anything. I see. Going to link the Federal Communications Commission. They say that mobile carriers and emergency services, because they also have to work with mobile carriers. They've started rolling this out since 2015. But it depends on each individual PSAP. And if you're curious about whether you can text 911, you can go to the FCC's website and download an Excel spreadsheet that they update monthly with just the PSAP info. I'm sure everyone's going to do that.

That's simple and easy and something my grandma can do for sure. And I really can't figure it out because I tried and it was just listed out by counties in New York. And so I live in Dutchess County in southern New York state. I really can't figure it out because I tried and it was just listed out by counties in New York and so I live in Dutchess County in southern New York State. One of our PSAPs got it in 2018 but then other ones got it later. I don't know which one is closest to me in the county and so... Hostie So beautiful. Jared I just kind of left it there even though I could have kept digging but I think it represents

how hard this is to figure out. Hostie Yeah. I mean, on one hand, I'm a little bit relieved that the federal government can't just sort of snap their fingers and have all of the 911 centers do the same thing at the same time because I don't know, I've seen the federal government lately. So on the other hand, that's a little reassuring, maybe? On the other hand. Right, they might not be good at getting a woke-ism hotline up.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So that's good. But, and there is good news with this texting thing. The biggest is that if you try to text 911 in a place that doesn't have it set up, you will get a reply text

telling you it's not set up. Yeah. Got it. And also FCC's official guidance requests that you call first, texting as a backup option. I see. So like we still have our 911 system and there's something they're trying to add and it's piecemeal and please don't like test it on your phone right now to see if it works because you might get through. Yeah that's not a good idea. Don't send them cute cat pictures. Yeah like don't say is this on and then they'll be like

what's your emergency and yeah. Unless your emergency is related to something not being on like your pacemaker or something. Then you can say, is this on? My pacemaker. Because it doesn't feel like it is. And ideally a phone call in the US. Because that gets us into takeaway number one. The US 911 call system is both amazing and prone to outages.

There's going to be a lot of awesome things about it and then also the issue that it has outages. Okay. So it's good we're constantly updating and improving this and finding new things like texting to add because it needs it. Right. Okay. When you say outage, do you mean entire 911 system goes down or just one of the 6,000 SPAPs?

Yeah, this is like another way it's sort of good that the system's so distributed. I couldn't find any situation where the entire country lost it. But it will be at lots of a state or multiple states level where there's an outage for more than a couple of minutes or like a lot of a day even. So when you say outage, do you mean power outage or the lines going down? What exactly is happening? Yeah, either specific mobile phones can't reach it or nothing can reach it. Yeah.

Hmm. It's usually software. I see. So it's not a squirrel getting in there being like, try to fix your broken legs now, human. It's like a software issue where they're not receiving stuff because of the software error? Yeah. So in the first half or so of 2024, from January to July, at least 12 states in the US had

major 911 outages. And in July 2024, Alaska, Arizona, and Oregon were some of the states that lost service and it was due to an update to Microsoft's program called CrowdStrike. So like all the wires and computers are still where they're supposed to be, but the software wasn't working. Okay. Just, that's very, that's very now, isn't it?

You're sort of, it's just, there's going to be E, like, what are those called? The AED kits where you have like the, or the paddles. There's gonna be smart ones where it's like updating, system update. Like download our app and you're just trying to put paddles on a chest. Yeah. It's like mobile game ads before you deploy the paddles. That king who's trying to do plumbing, he's like, oh, have you seen this though? He's always getting chased by that snake

when he's doing his little matchy game. But that's how I feel when I'm looking at YouTube videos of CPR techniques, Heimlich techniques. I think I've never done that like as an emergency is happening. I've always done it out of some kind of like kind of curiosity or wanting to prepare in case an emergency ever does happen.

But some of them have ads on it. I can't imagine the emotions I would be going through if I was trying to play the YouTube video of one of these things and an ad for freaking breakfast biscuits come on. And if you are not able to get through to 911, they suggest maybe trying a landline instead of a mobile. They also suggest just googling direct numbers for whatever service it is. Those aren't great options,

but it's just what you can do next. Right. And the other good news is the outages are usually brief. The National Emergency Number Association is a US nonprofit that like surveys and tries to improve 911 systems. They did a survey in 2024 and found that more than three quarters of BSAPs went down at least briefly in the year, but again, very short times and that's scary and also you can try to work around it or hopefully it'll be just not that exact,

exact time you need it. Right, yeah. So it's not great, but it's not the end of the system either. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't like it, Alex. I'm gonna say I don't like it. I want to think of it as being infallible. Yeah, me too. And I think people do see it that way. And one reason people are excited about it is that other than this outage situation that is our new thing to fix, it works great. Like it works even better than you might imagine it does. In what way does it work better?

The best part to me in looking at the sources about this is the staff that receive your call and the technology they have. Because a lot of the US has moved on to what's called enhanced 911 instead of the previous system we now call basic 911. Enhanced 911 instead of the previous system we now call Basic 911. Sounds like an insult. She said Basic 911. It's good peer pressure to me because Basic 911 means you simply make a phone call and someone picks up. Enhanced 911, the call itself tells them your location. Which is awesome.

That seems really good because it seems like there are some emergencies where you're either going to be so panicked, you forget where you are, you don't know where you are, or you're rapidly running away from a bear. So how are you going to... It's like, okay, well, let me stop and read the street, as the hungry bear chases me. It's really hard to do. Yeah, just looking at the direction arrows, like which one says the word safety on it? Right.

And then the bear also stops to look at the crossroads, be like, rrrr, rrrr, rrrr, rrrr. Yeah, and that enhanced 911, it works with any type of phone. If you call on a landline, your number gets associated with the street address right away. And apparently about 80% of calls are now from mobile phones for 911. And the federal government and mobile phone companies have really worked hard to make that work well for locating you phones have a system called location services and Companies like Google and Apple are required to build that in a way where as soon as you call

The 911 system can locate you within one and a half football fields of area With 90% certainty. That's what the law says. What if I'm on one and a half football fields and it's on fire though? Yeah, and apparently they can pinpoint it closer with a little more time as the call goes on too. And yeah, either way, like they're working hard to make this better

and better and better. What if it's a Bane situation? Are they prepared for a Bane situation where he's got, I don't remember that movie, he's got part of the football fields rigged for some something. Oh yeah? I remember in Batman when Bane was like, oh, you tried to, you could locate me within one and a half football fields. Well done. Katie, your impression is too legible. I can tell what words you're saying. Okay. Yeah, and like, errors can happen, signals can be weak, but,

you know, it's relatively new that we're all on smartphones and they've already made 911 in most places awesome at figuring out exactly where you are based on a smartphone call. That's good. They're trying very hard at this. That seems really cool. Yeah, that seems very cool. And they're also improving the ways every phone can reach the number 911. Mobile carriers have to have the thing that Katie accidentally butt dialed once where there's an emergency function.

You don't need a passcode or facial recognition. And we also recently fixed an issue with landlines that are on what's called multi-line phone systems, which is the kind of thing in offices or hotels where you can dial within the building to another phone with just a few numbers. It's initially bad news. A lot of them were built where you couldn't just dial 911 without pushing previous digits for an outside line. And we've passed a law in 2018 that requires all those systems to understand

that if you just hit 911, it needs to go there. Yeah, I remember using those phones, where you'd have to press a bunch of numbers, like to make an outgoing call, press five, two, three. Yeah, yeah. And if someone was having, if someone was choking on a chicken bone while that phone lady was telling me

that I'm doing it wrong. I would be so angry. Yeah, like the, I mean, it's dark, but the law was sparked by a murder in a hotel. Oh my. Because someone tried to call 911 four times and didn't know they needed to press nine first to get an outside line. And they shouldn't have needed to know that. That's stupid.

No, no. So. Yeah, awful. Yeah, we're fixing that. That's stupid. No. No. So awful. Yeah, we're fixing that. Well, that's good. I mean, bad it happened, but good we're fixing it. Yeah. Yeah.

The last exciting thing to me is that when you call 911, you're usually being helped by a lot of people at the same time. Like when you call the PSAP, there's someone you're talking to, they also, if it's an enhanced system, like in Hennepin County in Minnesota, they should have a document that they can type into, like a Google Doc sort of. And then someone else can read what they're typing as they type it. So almost immediately after you call, someone is working on where you are and sending somebody. Yeah, I've heard, I've heard these calls. Like I just listened to one where it was, it was one of these things where it's like both really cute,

but also just like heartbreaking. Everything turned out fine. Like, but it was this little girl who was calling cause her dad was having a medical emergency and it's like, it breaks your heart. Cause like, Oh, you can't imagine like a little kid being in that situation. But the little girl is so cute and also really, really smart. She saved her dad, by the way, he was fine afterwards cause they got him the help that he needed, saved his life.

So it all turned out good, but she's like just really, and this, I mean, the 911 operator was amazing cause he was keeping her calm and you know, and this, I mean, the 911 operator was amazing because he was keeping her calm and, you know, sort of, one of the things is like keeping you on the line. They don't want you to call, they're not going to want you to hang up at any point until the responders actually get there and you see them and they make sure they say like, can you see the responders? Can you confirm that they're there? You know, that kind of thing. Like they want to keep you on the line. And yeah, just like this girl was saying like, talking to them, saying like,

oh, daddy needs more oxygen. And, you know, like, but like everything's good now. He's still breathing, he's still awake. And saying like, oh, but I'm in my jammies. Maybe I should put on a shirt for when they get here. And he's like, no, it's okay. You can stay in your jammies. Just stay with your dad. It's so cute. Made me cry. But everything was fine. But I still cried. And that's a good example of a thing I didn't really realize before researching this, that the person you speak to when you call 911,

and probably a lot of other country systems too like because they have other team members dispatching and routing services as fast as possible they are able to focus on your emotions and there was this amazing thing in this CBS Minnesota report where they talked to a Hennepin County emergency medical dispatcher named Elias Vance-Lovacic and he said that a lot of people have a misconception that the person they reach when they call 911 is not working fast enough. Because like the person they're talking to will like be very calm and slow with them

and like check in with their emotions how they're doing and then the caller thinks that's wasted time because they don't know how much else is already happening from the moment you call. They're kind of expecting the movie version, right? Where it's like, 911, what's your emergency? Okay, we're sending a team now. But instead, they're not going to be barking at you like that because they want you to stay calm so that the person who's calling can follow instructions and allow the emergency personnel in and stay cognizant of the situation. So the operator sometimes almost has like this, it's like, well, aren't you taking this more seriously? And they're taking it very seriously,

but they're not going to match your level of emotion because that's just gonna make you more nervous. 100%, yeah. Yeah, and it also made me feel less concerned that texting 911 is not set up everywhere in the US yet because that doesn't have this feature. One of the biggest features of emergency phone numbers is you might talk to someone who carries you emotionally as this thing happens, whatever it is.

That's amazing, it's really cool. Yeah, yeah. No, it's really nice. And yeah, I mean, like part of it is also, they just want to keep you talking and keep you alert and aware so that once the emergency services get there, once the paramedics or whoever you've called gets there,

that you can talk to them and can be helped in that situation. And they're usually very good at it. Exactly. And so, yeah, this heroic topic, it's uplifting to me. And folks, that's so many numbers and an exciting takeaway. We're gonna take a quick break

and then get even more historical and technological about emergency phones. To lighten the mood before we go, do you want to hear my Bane impression after he goes to the dentist? Oh, sure. Okay. I'm a high-flying TV guy,

can't write the day I'm dead. Dead. All right, anyways. And I'm like that kid who owns Lassie, I know exactly what you'd said about someone in a well Someone's in the well you put them there Folks as you know, the only reason our podcast can exist is the support of listeners. Thank you to every single Maximum Fund member who funds the show and makes all of Secretly

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You probably didn't know the super soaker water gun was invented by a NASA engineer, an actual rocket scientist. You probably didn't know Taco Bell once used a paint sprayer to coat their taco shells in Dorito dust. You probably didn't know Marshmallow Peeps come from an upstart candy factory that went all in on Easter to try to compete with Hershey's, their basic next door neighbor. So we're thankful for their support. Again, that show is called The Best Idea Yet. You can follow the best idea yet on the wonderi app or wherever you get your podcasts. Folks, we are back and we're back with takeaway

number two. The world's first emergency phone number was 999 covering a small portion of London. 999, covering a small portion of London. Hmm. I did not know this. Me neither. And that's also still a number in the UK, apparently, although they've also partly adapted 112 because they were briefly in the European Union. But Britain invented the first phone number that a user dials to summon help. In 1937, a part of central London got it.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense. And it changed the world. I, how long, so this was 1937, telephones had been around for what, about 20 years then? Widely distributed? That's a good question because like widely not very long. And the first people who needed this are reported to have been

relatively upper class because it was expensive to have home phone service. The Alexander Graham Bell phone is from the 1870s and there were starting to be phones around. So that's part of why they came up with a number. Yeah. And also there was apparently kind of an urban rural difference too. It was just easier to wire phones for a lot of London townhouses apartments. I imagine downtown and Downton Abbey for some reason. I don't know why. And I also called it Downtown Abbey. Downtown Abbey. The wacky thing people did when that show reached us.

Just a bunch of monks living it up in the city. Monkey my way downtown. All right. Yeah, so this 999 was the world's first emergency phone number, a number where if you call it on a phone, you get routed straight to emergency services. When they came up with this, calls all went through phone operators. In the 1930s, that was the dominant system. That's like the lady at the switchboard, right?

Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So they invented this because of a fire tragedy. The first emergency service people wanted it for was fires. In 1935, a home on Wimpole Street in London burned down and five people died. And when that was happening, a neighbor was trying to call the fire department. And this neighbor was apparently a well-to-do architect. And by the way, key sources here are a piece from BBC News by Keith Moore and an episode of the show Seriously on BBC Radio 4 by Ian Sampson and Conor Garrett. Because they talk about this was like a well-to-do architect. It was someone who could afford a phone in their house.

But when they called, it went to the local telephone exchange like usual. And there were just enough other people with phones calling for other things that this person couldn't get to the front of the line. You're just sitting there waiting. Right. You're on hold for the operator. Yeah. And then this sparked an outcry in the London press. It also just helped that London had a lot of newspapers and stuff. And people said, can't we just build- For the fish and chips. They needed the newspapers for the fish and chips.

And then they're like, wait a minute, there's news under these fish. Yeah, anytime they were low on newspaper for fish and chips, they held a parliamentary election to make more newspapers. And then, you know, that's how the government works. Right. Yeah. So, so yeah, people said, can't we build or program something so that you go straight through to emergency services instead of the usual operator? And there was also discussion of will people use this responsibly or not? And people's consensus was if there's a risk of pranks or whatever, it's still worth it. Let's do it. Yeah. And that's still the logic today.

Yeah, absolutely. Any good thing, there's gonna be some stinkers out there who fart with their butt at that good thing, but we can't let that ruin it for everyone else. Yeah, that's right. And that's what people said, and they got going on this quickly, but just within two years, 1937, they set up a 999 system for the area within about

a 12-mile radius of Oxford Circus in northern central London. This 999 idea immediately seizes the public's imagination, partly because the first basically considered successful call with it, like the first usage of it that led to a good outcome stopped a burglar. One week after they introduced it, a homeowner in Hampstead heard suspicious noises downstairs. His phone was upstairs. He called 999 and police apprehended someone burglarizing the place. Wow.

So they did it. It's hard to, it's almost hard to get into their mindset because for them this was mind blowing. It was like science fiction. Right. That you could just instantly get through on the phone to summon the police to stop the burglar was new. That was not how it worked. You know what's wild is that it's,

technology is advancing at such a rate now that I feel like these kinds of big world changing things just kind of pass us by. When did we have the switch from where we had to say our location and make sure we got the address correct to basically now, like you said in the first half of the show, these 911 operators can just track you and get there and they already send someone as soon as you have confirmed that there's an emergency. It's a good question. Apparently they started to develop those systems in the late 1970s in the US. So that it was actually earlier in the process than I thought. They also had

to totally reinvent it for cell phones. Like landline phones oddly help you with some of that because it's always the same place So that's part of the info. Yeah, that's wild to me because it just feels like they're these groundbreaking things that it's like to me that That I should my little monkey brain should be find that magical But I'm just used to it and spoiled by our modern world. So Like yeah, so what? Me too. Heroes who are magically summoned by this strange flat brick? Meh. I feel like we do that with every Uber or Lyft call where like the moment a driver is

picked you're like, oh, their first turn was weird. I don't know if I'm, I don't know if they're going to make it. Like, just looking at the map and judging them from jump. Yeah. Just like, I have an omniscient view of my driver. And he's not good enough. Yeah. So yeah, so this took the British public's imagination by storm. And also some of the boosters of the 999 system may be over promised. Apparently a few people claim that if 999 was adopted nationally in the UK, that would allow anyone to receive help within five minutes for police, fire, or ambulance situations. Like not just

get through on the phone, but they'll be at your door in five minutes. That's over optimistic. It's not like there's just too many people and not enough services for that to ever happen. But yeah, it did lead to adoption of 999 and knowledge of it pretty quickly in the UK. So lying is good. Lying to the public is a good thing to do. And then this also helped spread the concept of instituting an emergency number worldwide because the UK had a lot of media reach. And the one big difference the world did is kind of picking different numbers than 999 partly so you can't accidentally dial it so easily.

This origin story also explains why the UK did 999 because they were thinking of fire situations or low light situations where you can't see your phone very well. Like they thought about fire first. Was this with the rotary phones? So wouldn't it be sort of like hard to accidentally dial it? Because you'd be like nine, nine, nine. Does anyone? Okay. I have to explain rotary phones to kids. So they were before our time as well, but I got to play with one once and you basically, it's fun. It has like a thing, but instead of pressing a button, it's a rotating disc and you see

the number, you put your finger in the number hole, and then you move the disk that amount with your finger in the number hole. It's hard to explain with just words, but they were fun, but probably not great in an emergency. Yeah. And I'm going to link, it's an amazing video because it's from the 1970s. It's pretty late in the process of this, but it aired on the Irish broadcaster RT

where they were also using 999. And a TV host demonstrates how to dial 999 without seeing your phone. Because. Interesting, yeah. Because with that rotary dial you described, there's also, it's not just all holes all the way around usually.

There's usually a solid bit. And so he demonstrates how you can find the last hole on the end, which is zero, then put your next finger in the next hole, which is nine, and then just spin from that slot three times without taking your finger out of the nine. Right. And so he says if the lights are all off, if it's dark, if the room's full of smoke and it hurts your eyes to open them, you can still dial for the fire department. That's really interesting because now we do have other features of the phone that might

make it easier to see. If it's dark, your phone has a light in it that illuminates it. But in terms of that tactile feedback, you don't necessarily really have it. I guess you do like when your phone with the lock screen you can do like a dial emergency services so you don't have to actually push in the numbers. But still, yeah, it's interesting. Sort of got a different set of features rather than just the tactile feedback. Exactly, yeah. And rotary dial or push buttons or something else. A lot of these emergency numbers use numbers at one end of the list, either ones and twos or nines and zeros because

that just is an interface thing. Yeah. And I wish there was salier information about like, John Q numbers who selected the number in each of these countries. It's really hard to find. But the easiest one is a British Government Committee and the public and like London authorities pick 999. It's just number wing, Alex. Oh, I love number wing. Number wing.

Yeah. In case I think it's already shared on discord, but if folks look up the IT crowd They have a funny bet about a super long emergency number and then also the Mitchell and Webb look has a great number wang sketch About nonsense number game show number wing. Yeah So thank you Britain some more. What do you mean nonsense? It's number wing. Yeah, yeah, and that's number wing But the takeaways are numbered, don't think about it. We have one last takeaway for the main show and it's takeaway number three. That's Numberwing. The U.S. resisted adopting 911 nationwide, partly because we loved telegraph boxes.

Ooh, telegraph boxes. Tell me more. Yeah, like the US was decades behind Britain and other countries in terms of adopting an emergency number. 911 is much closer to our lifetimes than I expected. And it's partly because Americans started adopting a way to use telegraph wires in boxes as like a telecommunications emergency safety thing before people had phones. And they like kept working. They ran well.

So we already had like these telegram boxes and we're just like, really? We got to do something else? Telegraph. Yeah, yeah. Too busy eating. We're too busy eating burger, fry, and apple pie. Yeah, 55 fries, 55 burgers, 55 tacos. And key sources here are the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Smithsonian

Magazine and the Chicago Public Library. They say that the US debuted 911 in 1968. Like our parents' lifetimes and stuff. It was brand new. Yeah. They had bell bottoms. Bell bottoms might have been older than 911. Oh, wow. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. What the heck? And when they debuted this, it was the FCC and also the phone company AT&T.

They collaboratively came up with 911 for the United States. They were super confident it would be a smash hit nationally. My favorite example is that apparently a leader of the FCC did a little brag in 1968 where he said that 911 was going to be better remembered than 007 because James Bond movies had just started coming out in the 60s. Yeah.

That feels very Pokemon go to the polls to me. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Like you think 007 is three numbers. Well, well, well. It's very corny. Well, well, well. We have another three numbers for you, my friend. And this did, it had almost a bigger

immediate influence on Canada, because Canada imitated the same number in 1972. Also, a few Canadian cities had adopted 999 like Britain, but they switched to 911, you know? Yeah. But what happened is the US said, we have other systems we like better than me dialing 911 myself.

That's irritating. And they partly said that because AT&T worked on this, but they did not consult more than 2000 independent telephone companies in the United States. That seems like a lot of companies. And it's very very big monopoly almost behavior to be like, we just decide. Then more than 2,000 companies said, I don't want to wire this, I don't want to program this, we need new equipment.

Those companies stuck to encouraging people to dial zero and didn't support 911. Wait, so zero was, but that was like dialing the operator, right? Exactly. And so one system people used instead of 911 was operators, even though it has the potential problem of they're slow to pick up. Right. That was the whole thing in England that they had that whole fire problem that we talked about in the first part of the show. Yeah. We just talked about it. We literally just talked about it. And the other thing in the 60s and close to that era is people did have

phones where they could dial their own number. You didn't have to go through an old-timey switchboard. And so people's second method was to learn the direct number for their various emergency services or like write it down by their phone or something. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the big reasons they did that is around when 911 is coming out, we basically still hadn't invented modern ambulances and EMTs.

Did we just have people going wee woo wee woo and carrying wagons? What was the thing? Nearly, yeah. It's an amazing thing. There's a few podcasts about it. I'll link 99% of Visible also a podcast by the New England Journal of Medicine. The modern ambulance was invented by black Americans in Pittsburgh in the late 60s. Whoa, really? It was a team called Freedom House Ambulance Service. Did they also come out after bell bottoms? They were probably wearing bell bottoms.

It was basically a thing where black people in Pittsburgh weren't getting good medical care in general. And in the process of trying to help themselves in a mutual aid community way, they invented a vehicle that comes to you with medically trained people in it. And before that, the system was basically the only medical services are at the hospital. You can call a few different services to drive you there. I see. Okay. And the options were the fire department, the police department, or amazingly funeral homes. If the funeral home was not busy, the hearse could fit you.

And so the hearse would come get you and bring you. That's... Hmm. Sending me mixed messages here. Right. I feel like that's... It's crazy. It's like, dress for the job you want and ride the car of the outcome that you would like. So I don't know.

I guess it does. If things don't work out for you, then they can just turn right back around towards the funeral parlor. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I feel like it makes sense to me that you, Katie, one of the top of mind Italy emergency numbers for you is medical stuff specifically. one of the top of mind Italy emergency numbers for you is medical stuff specifically. And like in an era when that's not a service yet, it feels almost less relevant to have 911. Yeah. Because you figure the fire department

will just hear about a fire. You don't think you'll happen to be by a landline when a crime is happening. Like, okay, who needs it? Kind of, you know? Like, what are you gonna do? And yeah, and apparently also, besides calling a hearse or cop or fire department

if you have a medical problem, people would also just directly dial the hospital. There's a 1921 article from something called Public Service Magazine that said that Bellevue Hospital in New York City fielded more than 2,500 emergency phone calls per day. Wowzers.

Routed through an operator and basically just like asking questions even more than asking for help. Right. Because there weren't really ambulances yet. My thumb's supposed to bend this way? Sir, I can't see you. Basically, yeah. Well, you know, kind of in an irregularly shaped L way.

Oops, sorry, I was looking at the wrong hand. Yeah, and it's 1921, so life is horrible and you don't expect much better than whoever picks up at the hospital being able to say something, you know? That's what it is. Right, yeah. But so beyond using an operator and just directly calling a service, the third and last American system predates the telephone completely.

Well. You know, many hundreds of years ago, people worldwide would use stuff like bells and shouting to alert about fires. Apparently around the American Revolution, the slang term for this was hallowing fire. Hallowing? Like come hallow the fire that's happening.

We need to tell people. Come hallow, so like hallow, you hallow the fire, I hallow, we all hallow the fire. Yes. Yeah, H-A-L-L-O-O-I-N-G. They're HALOOing fire down the street. Is it on a monopoeia? Like you go like, hello! Hello! Oh, I don't know. The Smithsonian didn't say. I think you just shout fire, but it would be fun if you shout this wacky word.

What? HALOO, I'm helloing. Yeah, and if folks have heard the past sif about telephone poles, we talk about how all the telephone pole infrastructure was basically existing telegraph poles and they added another line. We really aggressively built telegraph lines in the US. One form that took was red boxes with a hand crank or lever inside. And then that has a telegraph line where it sends the very simple telegraph message straight to the fire station of someone's pulling the lever.

You know, like whatever beep or boop means that to them. Beep or boop. Yeah. Dot or dash, I should say. But yeah, yeah. Like there's no words happening. It's just lever, lever, lever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. Beep boop bop. And because that was so simple it debuted in Boston in 1852 before the Civil War. Was that, that was before bell bottoms though for sure.

It was antebell Bell about them. Yeah. Boo. That stinks. Co-911. My guts are busted everywhere. Split my sides right open. And yeah, they mainly built this for fires.

Sort of like Britain, fires were the first service we tried to spread this system for. And then there were also separate boxes for police. The whole system was telegraph technology, no phones yet. There was also a brief speed bump in spreading it nationwide because the people who really got it going in the 1850s sold the rights to produce and market it to a different guy. And the different guy was John Nelson Gamewell who was a very proud resident of South Carolina and joined the Confederate military when the Civil War started. Oh. So then the Union government seized his patent and shut down his business and it slowed down adoption of this. Right. So he did not actually game well.

Because he was part of the losing tide. Exactly. And I assume he had bad beliefs, but he also got his patents back and helped spread this after the Civil War. Apparently as early as 1890, more than 500 U.S. cities had a robust network of GameWell brand emergency boxes for fires and crimes. I see. Well. And because the system was so simple, it didn't really break down very much. It was easy to maintain.

And so into the 1970s, after 911 was a thing you could call on the phone, a lot of Americans still wanted to use these boxes or their previous habit of calling a thing directly. Well, they're shiny and red, you know. Yeah, like they are, we'll link them, they're fun. The Game Well logo has a bunch of lightning bolts on it. It's cool. Yeah, it's like, and then you go, and it's fun. I don't know why we need phones.

That's what people said. Yeah, like apparently Chicago is a prime example. Like I grew up around there, had no idea that Chicago first adopted 911 in 1976. It's so recent. That was after Bell Bottoms. Yeah, yeah, disco time. And apparently they also didn't start removing these alarm boxes until the end of 1979. So there were like at least three years where you had both systems at the same time.

Yeah, we're almost into skinny gene territory. Right. And yeah, and they were also slow to remove it because this system worked great. And so there were 3,600 alarm boxes in Chicago and wiring connecting all of them and so it was a massive undertaking to stop having it and a lot of American cities resisted 9-1-1 for these kind of reasons. Apparently as late as 1988, which is 20 years after we introduced 9-1-1, only half of Americans possessed a phone that had access to the 911 system. Whoa.

1988, only half of people could call 911 in the US. That is a year before I was born. Yeah, that's when I was born. Like I don't know if my parents could have called for an ambulance to the hospital or whatever, you know? Like. Yeah, what the heck? Or well, they could have called but they might have needed to like call the hospital or whatever. You know? Yeah. What the heck? Well, they could have called, but they might have needed to call the hospital directly. Right. Right.

That's wild. The whole 10-digit number or something. That's wild. I had no idea. So, yeah, we only really got it going in the 1990s. Apparently in the year 2000, a full 90% of Americans could call 911. That's still not 10% of them. But this is a bizarrely recent institution in the United States, even though as a child, I thought we'd always had it.

That's wacky. These boxes are cool though. They look like a tiny house and they're red and there's a button and a lever. It has like a birdhouse vibe in a good way. Like a parrot that fights fires will come out of it. You know? That kicks butt. I love that. Or a pel- Oh, you got like a whole bird fire crew where it's like the pelicans got water

stored in there that it uses to put out the fire. And then so many little finches with the hose. It's like, it's so cute. So many. Right, it's super cute. Awesome. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways.

Takeaway number one, the US 911 call system is both amazing and prone to outages. Takeaway number two, the world's first ever emergency phone number was 999, covering a small portion of London. Takeaway number three, Americans were very slow to adopt 911, partly because we did not expect emergency medical services and because we had excellent emergency telegraph boxes. And then as you heard, an extremely numerical episode about many of the other emergency numbers in the rest of the world,

the way those different systems work, the way those systems can locate you, many many crisis lines as well, and the texting of 911 that you might be able to do, but why not give them a call? Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is two quick stories. It is the false Google AI search results about the date of 9-11 and the amazing story of band-aids funding the spread of 9-1-1.

Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of more than 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It is special audio, it is just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include digital resources from a few nonprofits, in particular the U.S.

National Emergency Number Association and the European Emergency Number Association. Also a lot of excellent journalism reporting on exactly how these systems work. Journalist Kirsten Mitchell of WCCO Minnesota went to the Hennepin County Emergency Medical Dispatch. Journalist Anna Rice of Voice for America went to a PSAP in Omaha, Nebraska. Also want to shout out Techbrew.com and an article by Kelsey Griffiths, who interviewed a lot of tech experts about the systems. We also leaned on digital resources from the Smithsonian, from the Chicago Public Library, and then wonderful audio journalism from the show Seriously on BBC Radio 4, also from 99% Invisible, and

from the podcast Intention to Treat by the New England Journal of Medicine. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoat people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the free CIF discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the discord. We're also talking about this

episode on the discord and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episodes through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 7. That is about the planet Venus. Fun fact, the conditions on Venus would almost instantly destroy your body and destroyed many Soviet space probes that landed there. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals,

science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Unavin' by the BUDOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to The Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.