The radio alert transmission system, or RATS, has sounded for the Queen . . . many times over.
If protocols were all in order, a mysterious alarm went off Thursday in the newsrooms of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It should have been almost the first time the alarm had ever been officially used since being created decades ago. It wasn’t. Some reporters had heard it before in tests, and others had been repeatedly tricked when it was triggered by accident. Even still, the alarm sound on Thursday would have been unmistakable to any BBC newsperson: Queen Elizabeth II had died.
