Early warning — know before the crowd

Goal: you and the people close to you should be able to act before everyone else starts filling up their cars, shopping or taking to the roads at the same time. That is why the rapid monitor runs every 5 minutes and sends a warning to your phone.

Regional note: Which sources are used depends on the region chosen in EINRICHTEN.bat. Official German sources (NINA/MoWaS, federal authorities, German government channels) exist only in Germany, Alertswiss only in Switzerland. If a source is not available in your region it is skipped and the page shows "Not available in your region". In that case your country's official warning channels apply (see region box). Worldwide sources (news, GDACS, earthquakes, air traffic, Ukrainian air-raid alerts) work everywhere.

What the rapid monitor watches

Signal	Why it is early
Official warnings for where you live (Germany: NINA with MoWaS, Katwarn, DWD weather service, flooding — for the district entered during setup)	comes directly from the authorities, without going through the media
Breaking-news keywords in news sources in your language (German e.g. Tagesschau, Deutschlandfunk, n-tv, ZDF, Spiegel, SRF; English/French: corresponding international broadcasters)	state of defence, mobilisation, NATO collective-defence case, attack on your own country, radiation accident, large-scale power outage, border closure, supply collapse — only when related to your own country or its neighbours
Cluster of crisis reports (at least 4 reports from 3 sources within 60 minutes)	the situation is tipping — usually before the panic becomes visible
Travel warnings from foreign ministries for neighbouring countries, Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and others	foreign ministries often warn before the general public reacts
Grid frequency (Continental European synchronous grid; not for Great Britain/Ireland or North America)	drops measurably before a blackout — minutes of lead time

The wider world included: it also detects events anywhere in the world that reach us through chains of effects — closure of Hormuz/Suez/the Red Sea, oil-price shock, gas supply stop, use of nuclear weapons, reactor accident, attack on NATO's eastern flank, Taiwan blockade, WHO pandemic emergency, financial and global IT crises, grain export bans, volcanic ash clouds, severe solar storms (NOAA) and red-level disasters in and around Europe (GDACS). Additional sources: BBC World, Al Jazeera.

Forecast: every warning includes "What can happen now" (timeline from earlier crises), the typical duration and the concrete action. The page 🔮 Scenarios & outlook (fruehwarnung\SZENARIEN.html) calculates for each scenario whether your supplies are enough and shows the gap in days.

Government comparison (every 15 minutes, page 🏛️ fruehwarnung\ABGLEICH.html):

Travel advice from four governments (German Federal Foreign Office, US State Department, UK government, Canada) for your own country, its neighbours and NATO's eastern flank side by side. If several governments tighten their advice at the same time, that is a strong early signal — before the Russian invasion in 2022, embassies withdrew staff days in advance. Calls to leave a country trigger RED. Especially serious: when foreign governments warn about your own country.
Official channels (Germany): Federal Government, Federal Foreign Office, Ministry of the Interior, Federal Network Agency, BSI (IT security), Federal Office for Radiation Protection, RKI (public health), THW (technical relief), DWD (weather) — official accounts on social.bund.de. For all regions: the UK's NCSC (civilian arm of the intelligence agency GCHQ).
Russian state sources (Kremlin, TASS, RIA, Interfax) as a cross-check: announcements of escalation against NATO or individual NATO states. On their own only YELLOW (propaganda); together with a Western reaction ORANGE.
YouTube: the rapid monitor reads the official channel feeds of major news broadcasters (German-language e.g. tagesschau, ZDFheute, WELT, phoenix, DW, SRF News, plus the German Federal Government and Bundeswehr; international e.g. DW English, Reuters, AP, BBC News) — video titles only, no comments. All YouTube channels together count as only one source for the "cluster" — sensational titles alone do not trigger an alarm.
Limits: intelligence services do not publish real-time assessments. X/Twitter and Telegram are not included (X only with paid access, and unconfirmed social-media reports are the most common source of false alarms and panic).

In addition there is the supply radar (every 30 minutes, guide 18) for fuel, gas, electricity, food, money and water.

Air situation monitor — missiles, drones, air-raid alerts

Page ✈️ LAGE.html (also in the dashboard). Runs every minute, invisibly in the background.

Level	Trigger	Do
🔴 RED	Official air-raid warning for your region — Germany: NINA/MoWaS (every minute; your district explicitly); Switzerland: Alertswiss. In other countries this trigger is not automatic: there, sirens, Cell Broadcast and your country's warning app apply (see region box)	Immediately to the basement/an inner room, radio on, stay off the street
🟠 ORANGE	Impact/crash, shoot-down or airspace violation by a drone/missile in Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Moldova; NATO Article 4/5 consultations	Prepare: charge devices, clear the basement, emergency bags by the door, fill up the tank
🟡 YELLOW	Large attack wave on Ukraine (air-raid alerts in many regions, especially on the border with Poland/Romania), fighter jets scrambled on the eastern flank, airports/airspace closed in the east, many reconnaissance/tanker aircraft (ADS-B)	Stay alert

Sources: NINA/MoWaS (Germany only), Alertswiss (Switzerland only), official Ukrainian air-raid alerts per region, news from Poland (TVN24, Polsat, RMF24, Notes from Poland), Lithuania (LRT), Estonia (ERR), Romania (Digi24), Ukraine (Kyiv Independent, Ukrinform, Ukrainska Pravda), tagesschau; military flights via adsb.lol.

Push: RED and ORANGE immediately; YELLOW only for jets/airspace closures or when several YELLOW signals coincide (otherwise there would be a message almost every day). All-clear after 30 minutes without ORANGE/RED. From ORANGE upwards the risk map is also re-assessed.

Honest limit: only military satellites (secret) detect missile launches. Depending on distance, a ballistic missile is in flight for only a few minutes (to southern Germany about 8–12 minutes) — for that, only sirens, Cell Broadcast and your country's warning app count. So on every phone: the warning app with your home location + current location (Germany: NINA), and under Settings → Emergency alerts switch on all levels. Cruise missiles (1–2 hours) and drones (hours), on the other hand, often announce themselves on the eastern flank — exactly what the monitor watches.

Rules and thresholds: luftlage\luftlage-regeln.json. Check immediately: luftlage\LUFTLAGE-START.bat.

Middle East (separate box in the air situation monitor, separate traffic light)

A war between Israel/the USA and Iran does not hit Europe with missiles, but through oil, gas and fuel prices (Strait of Hormuz, Suez Canal). That is why it has its own traffic light, which does not raise the Europe level:

Signal	Source	Level
Direct attack Israel/USA ↔ Iran	Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Iran International, Al-Monitor, BBC Middle East, Al Jazeera, Iranian state media as a cross-check	ORANGE + push
Massive missile attack on Israel (≥ 60 locations in 30 min)	public alert data from the Israeli Home Front Command	ORANGE + push
Airspace over several countries suddenly empty	civil air traffic via ADS-B (Israel, Jordan, Lebanon/Syria, Iraq, Iran, Gulf, UAE); the normal value for each time of day is learned automatically	ORANGE + push
Airspace closed / airlines cancel flights, US build-up (bombers, carriers), attacks on US bases/ships (Houthis)	news, military ADS-B	YELLOW
A government calls on its citizens to leave a Middle Eastern country (new)	government comparison (16 additional countries)	ORANGE + push

What to do at ORANGE: fill up the tank, fill jerrycans, check heating oil/gas, cancel trips to the region, watch the supply radar (fuel). The rapid monitor additionally watches the Strait of Hormuz.

Limits: there are hardly any ADS-B receivers over Iran and Iraq — "0 aircraft" there usually means no coverage. US combat aircraft do not transmit ADS-B on missions. The Israeli Home Front Command's alert data is blocked for data centres — this signal only works from a home PC.

Air traffic over your own region (situation map)

weltlage\LAGEKARTE.html shows all aircraft (civil + military) within a radius of up to 463 km (250 nautical miles) around the home location you entered. The air situation monitor fetches the data every 3 minutes (adsb.lol, free open data, ODbL licence, permitted). The open page reloads itself every minute.

Arrow = direction of flight · grey = civil · red = military · flashing yellow = emergency squawk code (7500 hijacking, 7600 radio failure, 7700 emergency)
Hover over an aircraft: callsign, from → to, altitude
Click on an aircraft: airborne / on the ground, climbing / descending / cruising, from and to (airport, country), km flown and still to fly, departure time ("observed" if the take-off was within view, otherwise estimated) and approx. arrival, plus a line departure → aircraft → destination on the map. Clicking on the empty map removes the line.
Flight tracks: behind each aircraft a line shows the path actually flown (blue civil, red military; one data point every 3 min, up to 2 hours back). Dotted grey from the departure airport to the first sighting (assumed), dashed yellow for the remaining route to the destination (according to the flight plan). When clicked, the aircraft's own track is highlighted in white. All lines can be switched off individually at the top right.
Yellow dot = transponder signal lost: an aircraft was at cruising altitude (from 6,000 m, military from 3,000 m), at least 120 km from the edge of the observation area and not on approach to its destination — and suddenly can no longer be seen. The dot stays at the last position for 60 minutes, with a dashed yellow track. Usually harmless (reception gap, military switching off). Light aircraft in mountains disappear all the time and are therefore not counted. Only when 5 or more disappear at the same time does the box mark this in red — then check the news (jamming, closure).
Search field: callsign, airport or city (e.g. a city name, an airport code such as "FRA" or an airline code such as "DLH") — only matching flights remain visible.
Departure/destination come from a flight-plan database (adsbdb.com). If the route does not match the position, "uncertain" is shown instead of wrong times. Military aircraft do not report a route. After a restart, departure/destination fill in within about 30 minutes.
Box at top right: current count, normal value for the same time of day (learns over 3 days), 24-h history, "Map to region" button, link to the live map with second-by-second updates
Airspace conspicuously empty (≤ 40 % of the normal value) → YELLOW in the air situation monitor, without push: may be an airspace closure, but also a receiver outage. Then check the radio (regional station) and warning app.
Without internet the last state remains visible, marked "x min old". Data volume about 0.5 MB per request (around 250 MB per day).

Honestly: how much lead time is realistic?

Shortages (fuel, food, cash): hours to days — the signals (prices, reports, clusters) come before the rush.
Political escalation (travel warning, mobilisation, collective defence): hours before the general reaction.
Blackout: minutes, sometimes none at all.
Waves of drones/cruise missiles: often hours — recognisable by air-raid alerts in western Ukraine and jets scrambling in Poland (air situation monitor).
Ballistic missile, surprise attack, accident: no lead time ahead of sirens/Cell Broadcast — then what counts is that you already know the plan.

The lead time is only useful if you act immediately.

The 1-hour rule

Warning	Within 1 hour
ORANGE	Full tank, get cash, calmly top up missing supplies, charge batteries, inform family and friends
RED	As ORANGE + radio on, secure medication, fill water containers, grab bags by the door, decide: stay or go

Don't debate whether it will "really be that bad". A full tank and cash never hurt — being too late does.

Setting up phone warnings

You: benachrichtigung\PUSH-EINRICHTEN.bat (app "ntfy", subscribe to the topic).
Family and friends: benachrichtigung\EMPFAENGER-HINZUFUEGEN.bat — everyone gets their own secret topic. They only need the ntfy app, no PC. You decide from which level someone is warned (recommended: ORANGE).
Test: the script sends a test message.

The secret topic is stored encrypted on your PC, not in the configuration file. The default is the public ntfy.sh service; if you run your own ntfy server, you can enter its address during setup.

Limits

Push warnings only arrive while the PC is running and online. The phone needs internet too. If the network fails, sirens, radio and Cell Broadcast apply.
With satellite internet (if you have it) you stay online when DSL and mobile networks fail: power the satellite router (power station/generator/battery storage), connect the PC running the monitors and the phones to that router's Wi-Fi — then the air situation monitor, rapid monitor and push keep running. Details: guide 04 (power & blackout).
Pages, maps, offline Wikipedia and the local AI need the PC.
Rules and keywords: fruehwarnung\schnellwaechter-regeln.json. Logs: folder logs\.

Without a PC: everything on your phone

Fill in everything in the emergency folder (NOTFALLMAPPE.html) → "Emergency folder as PDF".
In the supplies calculator → "Shopping list as PDF".
Double-click HANDY-PAKET-ERSTELLEN.bat → folder HANDY-PAKET on the desktop (knowledge portal as a single file + both PDFs + instructions).
Copy to the phone via USB cable, open it once in flight mode and check it.
Print the emergency folder: one copy in each grab bag, one on the fridge door, one in the car.