Real emergency alerts from US colleges and universities, preserved word for word
The exact words universities choose when lives are at stake
An archive of real campus emergency alerts, preserved in exact, original wording and linked to citable sources. Free to search and export.
Start anywhere: 2,026 campus emergencies, told through 4,392 alert messages from 539 colleges and universities across the country, 1969 to 2026. 3,803 of those messages (87%) appear here exactly as they were sent, word for word, from cited sources. The rest are not made up. For any message we have not confirmed word for word, we show no text at all, just a note that a message was sent and that we do not have its exact wording yet. Here is what each looks like:
Archive last updated July 2026 · Full statistics →
See the difference
Every message in a timeline is one of these two. A confirmed message shows the exact words that were sent. An unconfirmed one shows no words at all, only that a message was sent at that point. We never paraphrase or guess.
Confirmed word for word
3:14 PM: UVA Emergency Alert: RUN-HIDE-FIGHT
Wording not preserved
This message is documented at this point in the sequence, but its exact wording has not been recovered yet. The archive shows only confirmed alert text, never a guess.
Take the data with you
Download it all, then analyze it your way
Every case, every sequenced alert, every citation, free to export in one click. Pull the whole archive here, or filter to just the slice you want on Search the Archive, then drop it into Microsoft Copilot, Google NotebookLM, ChatGPT, Claude, a notebook, or a spreadsheet and ask your own questions.
- The verbatim text of every alert (3,803 confirmed word-for-word, 4,392 messages in all), one row per message.
- A source URL for every alert, plus channel, timestamp, confidence, casualties, and Clery category, so anything is checkable.
- Choose your depth: a quick case summary, the full verbatim-alert grain, or everything, in CSV, Excel, JSON, PDF, or HTML. Versioned downloads, the codebook, and citations live on the Dataset page.
2,026 cases · archive and exports: no signup · public-domain sources
Heads-up: the full archive is a large file (the complete JSON is tens of MB). The “Everything” and JSON/Excel options are biggest; CSV and the case-summary level are much lighter, and filtering to a subset on Search keeps downloads small.
The “Everything” level also folds in Claude’s element analysis (consensus and arbitrator synthesis) on each coded first alert, and the JSON export can optionally include all 25 individual AI reads. It is AI-generated and not human-reviewed.
One click = the whole archive, one row per alert. These are large files (tens of MB; JSON and Excel are biggest, CSV is lighter), so you’ll see the exact size and can confirm before it saves. Want a smaller subset or a different level of detail? Use Export or Search the Archive.
New here? How to analyze it
Export a file, upload it to an AI tool, then ask away.
Suggestions for AI tools that can read your export: Microsoft Copilot, Google NotebookLM, ChatGPT, Claude. Upload the file you downloaded, paste one of these starters, and go from there:
“I've uploaded a dataset of real, verbatim US campus emergency alerts. Walk me through the common phrasing patterns institutions use in the very first message of an active-threat alert, with real examples.”
“Using only the verbatim alert texts in this file, show me how all-clear messages are typically worded, and quote a few real examples.”
“From these real alerts, help me draft a clear, plain-language shelter-in-place notification, grounded in how actual campuses worded theirs.”
These are just starting points. The data is yours to question however you like.
Recently added cases
Recently added
- Jul 21, 2026 · severe weather
UC
Tornado warning Clermont County take shelter
- Jul 20, 2026 · robbery
UMD
Off-campus armed robbery on Baltimore Avenue near College Park
- Jul 17, 2026 · disease outbreak
UW
Rabid bat on University Way prompts contact medical evaluation advisory
The archive updates in weekly rounds: every Monday at 8 AM Eastern, a new round goes live with alerts from incidents of the previous week alongside cases newly added to the archive. Browse the Weekly Round →
Why this exists
Humans set the standard. AI did the work.
This Campus Alert Archive demonstrates that a human (a non-coder!) can direct publicly available AI tools, on ordinary monthly subscriptions, to pour large, sustained amounts of effort into building and steadily improving a single focused project over time. Read more about why this exists.