"How Dare My Phone Interrupt My Nap With a Tornado Warning!"

Oh, the horror. The absolute trauma of your phone daring to make a sound when there’s a tornado barreling toward your McMansion. I mean, sure, 120 people died in Texas floods last week, but have you considered how inconvenient it is to be rudely awakened by a blaring emergency alert while you’re in the middle of your 3 PM ‘self-care’ nap? The audacity of Mother Nature, interrupting your curated silence with something as trivial as life-saving information.

But fine, since the peasants at the Weather Channel insist on being dramatic about ‘severe storms’ and ‘impending doom,’ here’s how to make sure your iPhone doesn’t have the nerve to not warn you when a hurricane flattens your overpriced subdivision. First, you’ll need to navigate to Settings—yes, the same place you go to complain about app updates—then Notifications, and scroll all the way down to Emergency Alerts. Toggle them on, because apparently, your phone’s default setting is ‘let Heather figure it out when the roof flies off.’

And for the Android users (bless your frugal hearts), it’s even more exhausting. You’ll have to venture into Safety & Emergency settings—which, let’s be honest, you probably didn’t even know existed because you were too busy bragging about your ‘customizable home screen.’ Make sure ‘Allow Alerts’ is on, unless you’d prefer to be blissfully unaware while a hailstorm demolishes your Tesla.

Of course, if you’re really committed to ignoring the apocalypse, you could always disable all notifications and rely on your Nextdoor app to tell you about the storm after it’s already knocked down your mailbox. But where’s the fun in that? Nothing spices up a neighborhood HOA meeting like a good old-fashioned ‘Why didn’t anyone warn us?!’ meltdown.

So go ahead, tweak those settings. Or don’t. Either way, when the tornado sirens wail and your phone stays silent, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you prioritized your ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode over, you know, not dying. Priorities, people.