A false alarm, also calle a nuisance alarm, is the phony report of an emergency, causing unnecessary panic and/or bringing resources (such as fire engines) to a place where they are not needed. Over time, repeated false alarms in a certain area may cause occupants to start to ignore all alarms, knowing that each time it will likely be a fake. The concept of this can be traced at least as far back as Aesop's story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where many episodes of a boy falsely yelling "wolf" caused the townspeople to ignore his cries when a real wolf came. In addition, false alarms have the potential of diverting emergency responders away from legitimate emergencies, which could ultimately lead to loss of life.