Read time: 4 min.

Most of Muncie’s outdoor warning sirens are bland, modern Federal Signal 2001-SRNs. Three, however, are different: they’re yellow Federal Signal Thunderbolts that date back to 1958. I’ve finally tracked all of them down, but the last example -perched at the old Riley Elementary School- has fallen silent. Its Cold War voice is broken. 

According to an exhaustive Google Map produced by Spencer Harman with help from Tyler Noie, Brandon Mendel, Ian Tate, Matt Hacker, and others, Indiana is home to 2,486 outdoor warning sirens! Only twenty-one of them, or less than one percent, are Thunderbolts. Of those, Delaware County is home to three. Combined with the old Banshee 110 atop the courthouse, I live in a hotbed of siren history! 

Even so, the Thunderbolts here make up just a sliver of Delaware County’s thirty-four sirens. That only heightens their appeal! Aside from a handful of venerable firehouse models in outlying communities, the Thunderbolts were the county’s first truly purpose-built warning sirens. They marked a turning point in how public safety was broadcast across the local landscape. 

I can hear one of Muncie’s old Thunderbolts from my house, but I first encountered it in action on March 24, 2023 at the Suzanne Gresham Center, formerly Morrison-Mock Elementary School. I used to work in part of the Gresham Center home to a phone bank, and it truly sucked every time 11:00 on a Friday would roll around. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that the siren no longer rotates.

Catching the second Thunderbolt, perched at Southview Elementary, proved more challenging when school was in session. I finally had my chance on January 2, 2026, when the building was quiet and the campus stood empty over winter break. I tried my luck with the last Thunderbolt still standing in its original spot at Riley. Unfortunately, I came up empty-handed: low clouds hung overhead and storms were rolling in, so the sirens never tested. 

I’d known that the Thunderbolt at Riley didn’t rotate thanks to the siren map I’d found, but I swore I’d been there five or six years ago to document it when it was working. After digging through my archive, though, it was clear that I hadn’t. Still, I returned to Riley the next week, five minutes before the sirens were set to sound. At eleven o’clock, the venerable Thunderbolt started to sputter. Really, it was more of a loud rattle. Air was sucked up through the blower, but the chopper that drives the siren tone was no longer rotating. The resulting noise was pitiable.

The Thunderbolt coughed and wheezed while the rest of the city’s sirens went full bore. I could hear the 16V1T-B at North View, the Banshee 110 downtown, several 2001-SRNs, and maybe even one of Ball State’s Whelen 4004s at the end of the concert. Even with the Thunderbolt at Riley falling silent, the north side of Muncie remains far from unprotected.

Today, the Riley Thunderbolt stands as a reminder rather than a warning. If anything, its silence sharpens its meaning. These sirens were never just machines; they were symbols of a moment when fear, technology, and civic duty converged on rooftops and schoolyards across the country.

Muncie’s Thunderbolts have outlived the Cold War they were built for, but even in decline, they still tell a story about how the city once listened for danger and how it learned to protect itself. One still sounds. One can still be chased down on a quiet school day. And one -broken, weathered, and stubbornly standing- marks the end of an era. 

As an aside: did I listen to videos of all of Delaware County’s sirens on full-blast last Friday through recording studio speakers? Yes! Is it going to be a long time before my neighbors come out of their downstairs bathroom for an all-clear? Probably also yes. It’s all in the name of history!