The EAS tests exist for stations to make sure their emergency alert receivers are operating properly, and that the local area EAS network is also working properly.
There's no "government secrets" involved. At least not since the days of EBS (the old "Emergency Broadcast System"), when activation depended upon use of a "code word" that was scheduled and changed on a daily basis by the FCC. Those "code words" were kept in a sealed envelope in the EBS packets of every station (a pink envelope, in fact) and were not to be opened unless you had an activation.
There was one "accidental" (and, as it later turned out, incorrect) activation when I worked in a station a long time ago, so I opened the envelope. I can assure you there was nothing spectacular in it. Unless you really get excited by listings such as:
Aug. 29: Zulu Alpha.
Aug. 30: Bravo Tango. Etc....
That's what you would have found inside such envelopes.
Of course, the other thing no one mentions even about EAS today. Most of the "local primaries" (read that as: the stations that are supposed to dissemenate the information to the public in the event of the unthinkable), most very likely have towers that are within mere miles of first strike targets and will, certainly, go up with the first big mushroom cloud. (Even though some radio stations actually have government paid "bomb shelters" at their transmitter sites and, might actually have people inside who may survive, only to have nothing on which to transmit.) Tell me that idea wasn't a government operation!
However, for more typical civic emergencies, the system should work fine. IF...(and I needed to put that in caps, 'cause it's a big "if") the people inside the radio stations know how to use it. Which, in a lot of cases, they don't. Which is one of the reasons I'm all for going back to operator license tests, and making sure you can pass one before you can operate a radio station.
