Systems, apparatus, and methods detect and respond to environmental anomalies in a shipping container on a transit vehicle having an external transceiver. Systems generally have wireless ID nodes at different locations within the container and a command node mounted to the container. The command node is programmatically adapted to selectively assign a subset of the ID nodes as dedicated monitor beacons deployed within the container, identify an unresponsive group from the assigned subset of the ID nodes monitored to be in an unanticipated state of ceased broadcasting based upon the monitoring step. The command node detects the environmental anomaly when a size of the unresponsive group in the assigned subset of ID nodes exceeds a threshold setting maintained by the command node, automatically generates an alert notification related to the detected environmental anomaly, and initiates a mediation response for the anomaly by transmitting the alert notification to the vehicle's transceiver.