Is the sound of the siren or alarm designed to create that rush of adrenaline or danger that we feel? If so, how do they produce that response? Or do we just feel that way because we associate sirens with danger?
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Sirens and alarms are loud as fuck in order to get your attention, no matter what you are doing. Sleeping? wake up! Listening to an audiobook with headphones while running the vacuum? Hey what was that sound?
it’s meant to “shock you” without warning with stimulates your body to devote attention to the source of the sound
I have a theory about this. Not long after having kids, it became apparent to be that a baby’s wail / gasp for breath / wail has the same cadence as most sirens.
It’s only a guess, but I suspect that early sirens were modified until they became attention grabbing, and it happened to be a sound vaguely similar to a giant distressed human baby.
Just a random thought though.
A siren/alarm usually consists of multiple tones simultanuously.
It is like a musical chord, and these can be consonant (easy to the ear) or dissonant (uneasy sounding).
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance)
The tones in alarms/sirens are deliberately chosen to be dissonant in order to cause uneasyness and get your attention. The tones can also change or be interupted in order to get extra attention.
Your body/mind also has an emotional/adrenaline response to loud noises in general. (Think of concerts, enginesounds on racetracks, just the roar of the spectators during a football match, …)
In short: Yes, alarms/sirens are designed to get your attention, to not be easily ignorable, and to induce a flight response from you.
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