Yep, these kept going off on the (crowded) train this morning, and I thought they were some sort of fire alarm. It didn't help that everyone assumed the noise was not coming from their phone (because they'd never heard it before or found a configuration page for it,) so they mostly just let it go off while looking around for the source. The whole ride was more than a bit surreal.
That sounds intense. Maybe this was one mass psychological experiment.
Yea, me and my roommate were completely confused to why our phones went off. Not only that once you close the alert you can't find ANY history of it or the message that was displayed. Needs to be a better system for this.
At least on Android, you can go to Messaging, open the bottom right menu, then tap "Cell broadcasts."