What is your opinion on the Department of Homeland Security's Threat Level Color Scheme?

Question

While the color codes red, yellow, and green are intuitive, the codes orange and blue may leave you scratching your head. And are the implications of these codes clear? Does read mean there is an imminent attack or suspects?

I am suggesting a change in the Threat Level Color Scheme:
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29

I recommend we keep the colors simple and familiar with something Americans know like our traffic signals - red, yellow, and green. And where there are gray areas between two threat codes, the threat level should be divided into a left and right sections. The complete listing of the suggested color scheme is as follows:

Red (STOP) - Severe. Stop what you are doing. Attack imminent or inprogress.
Red/Yellow - Moderate to severe. Attack not imminent.
Yellow (SLOW) - Moderate.
Yellow/Green - Guarded
Green (GO) - No risk.

What's your opinion?

p.s. I have included a link to this post in an e-mail to the DHS. Please keep your responses clean.

Answer 1

It sucks and most of the time they put on a threat level it's a bit exagerrated/

Answer 2

Why do we need them? Its not like "o damn threat level is still red guess I'm not going outside today"

They quite literally are a way to make the citizens feel scared, and be more likely to accept things passed or done during elevated periods.

Answer 3

My opinion is a simple one, Their color codes kind of sound like a bad star trek episode with the Red, Yellow and I not sure if they event had a green alert, but it kind of reminds me of that.