Telegram#

The alert layer, built and in use. One button, and the whole village knows within a second.

A woman in a village doorway holds up her phone showing Botón Escudo, smoke rising over the fields behind her. — One tap, and the whole village knows.

Why Telegram#

It’s already on the phone, and most villages already have a group on it. Nobody installs, learns or opens anything new during an emergency. It also brings, for free:

Notifications that work, including on locked phones.
Group messaging with delivery, read state and history.
Identity — people are already themselves in the group. No accounts, no passwords.
No cost, on any phone, with nothing to bill a village for.

It depends on a company we don’t control and on the internet being up. Both are covered in what this layer doesn’t solve.

Two elements#

Botón Escudo — the bot. A private chat with permanent buttons: the virtual panic button. Alerts are raised here.
Red Escudo <Village> — the group. Alerts arrive here, and neighbours organise who goes.

Telegram allows neither permanent buttons nor location requests inside a group, so raising and receiving happen in different places.

In this section#

The group and the button — how it works, and what it doesn’t solve.
Setting it up in your village — the full runbook.