Once, when I was working away from home, someone unplugged the phone at home so I couldn't phone in. After becoming very frustrated, I SSH'd into my home server, and from there into the Mac Mini we used as a media station. Then:

- checked they were watching something using `ps`.

- killed that process so I had their attention.

- `say 'this is dad, I'm inside the computer.'`

- `say 'I want to phone you but you have unplugged the phone.'`

- `say 'plug it back in'`

Worked :)

[0] Also interesting is the time I discovered that sending a special escape code to the printer caused the cash drawer to open, but that's a tale for another thread.

My kids weren't replying to text messages about being ready to go to an appointment that we were pressed for time on, and I was on the way home, so I did that to tell them to get ready. A few seconds later I get a text from my wife: "How'd you do that?!?"

I also have a "haptic test" function: press the button, the phone vibrates briefly. I originally created that check the delay on the Pebble-Tasker connection, but ended up using it almost every day to find my phone among the clutter in the house.

Tasker is amazing, if you have Android, I recommend checking it out.

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[0] - misplacing a phone while having it still in Bluetooth range actually happened to me once long ago with a feature-phone. I looked and looked and couldn't find it. It was set on silent, so calling it didn't help. Then I noticed it's still connected via Bluetooth to my PC's phone management app, so I manually turned the ringer on, and discovered it deep within the mechanism of my bed. Finding it there without this trick would probably take me hours.

Better off forcing a ring in the home than where you can't foresee the consequences.

In the same sentence as performance and a restaurant, not less.

In contrast (and yes, my intention was contrast), if the wife was hiding from a shooter then her ability to maintain silence is required for life. Airplane mode isn't great, because she should be texting/tweeting/etc.

Thus, best to not let your silence be overridden.

For non-life-safety reasons that the husband might be trying to reach the wife, that could be solved via agreement ("keep your ringer on except in emergencies") instead of brute force.

For instance, my wife has her phone ALWAYS set to silent. I like all the suggestions here.

I think the "active shooter" situation is a bit of a stretch, to be honest.

"the kid is vomiting and school needs us to come get them asap, which one of us is more available?" is not a life-threatening emergency, but it's a family emergency and needs attention. It also happens a lot. An awful lot more than your "unlikely to happen to most people in their lifetime" contrived scenario.

As a workaround, I’ll use the “Find my iPhone” chime which is the one way to bypass the hardware switch if I need to get my wife’s attention while the phone is set to silent.