What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

https://www.newyorker.com/news/as-told-to/what-it-felt-like-in-hawaii-when-warning-of-an-in-bound-missile-arrived?mbid=social_facebook

by mathgenius • 9 years ago

273 352 9 years ago

newyorker.com

brndnmtthws2• 9 years ago

I live in New York City and I felt a small degree of panic when the reports showed up on Twitter. However, my initial instinct was "either the system doesn't work, or someone messed up".

If someone started firing missiles at the US, the risk that we'd start shooting them back seems high, and I think NYC would be a city that would get pummeled in retaliation. This is probably true for a lot of major coastal cities, especially Seattle, Vancouver, SF/LA, NYC, Washington DC, and Boston.

Fun NYC fact: the city is littered with fallout shelters: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Zm18xuBxp8kSysodfr...

ashleyn2• 9 years ago

Growing up I got the impression that a fallout shelter was a purpose-specific room deep underground. So every time I saw the "Fallout Shelter" sign on a building, I figured it was built with one of these "secret underground rooms". Think dedicated, locked stairwell that goes a thousand feet underground; after all, that's how it was pictured in my "Way Things Work" book. When we went to the bank, it was something of an intrigue, where the door to this secret underground cavern really was and what was inside.

As I got to go into more city buildings throughout my life, I noticed many of the rooms designated "fallout shelters" were just some spare room in the basement, complete with ventilation to the outside and really, not much farther than a few steps to the front door.

There may be a lot of "fallout shelters" in NYC but I get the impression that the labeling wasn't very strict and that many of these "shelters" won't really protect you from "fallout".

Retric3• 9 years ago

It takes far less to be an effective fallout shelter than you might think. If you look at lethal ranges on H-Bombs you see incredible destruction, but if you're protected for the first 1hour after a blast you can be surprisingly close to the blast and live.

gdubs4• 9 years ago

Off-topic, but if the book you’re referring to was the How It Works encyclopedia set, that was how I also learned about everything. My grandpa gave the set to me, and it included an incredible amount of material - illustrated and fascinating for a wide range of ages (this was long before we had internet). It is how I also learned about nuclear weapons, though I don’t specifically recall fallout shelters.

JKCalhoun• 9 years ago

Looked through the index of my early German (English translated, published around the 1960's, I believe) "The Way Things Work" volumes I and II and didn't see fallout shelters.

It occurred to me though — when did they start calling them "fallout" shelters rather than "bomb" shelters?

I'm guessing (after having read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb") that this would be about when the hydrogen bomb came along.

It was sobering to read how dramatically more powerful the fusion bomb was compared to the first fission bombs. Suddenly the idea of going into a basement shelter to "survive" the blast became laughable. If you were far enough from the blast though your only comfort could come from a shelter from the fallout.

ataturk• 9 years ago

"Growing up" those shelters were considered around smaller, kiloton and low-megaton sized weaponry. The whole civil defense project fell apart after the 1950s once 100 Megaton hydrogen bombs become the norm. There's no sheltering from a city killer inside of a city, hence the reason the US quit pretending there was.

I still like Switzerland's idea of civil defense, but then nobody is going to attack the place where all the world's criminals keep their wealth anyways, so even there it's a complete sham.

I only get two posts on here because HN mods hate me, so I'm going to just add this: You don't have to worry about North Korea. At. All. The threat is already over.

As far as the false alarm in HI goes, maybe ask questions in the direction of "who is it that would like to embarass the current US Administration?"

herbst3• 9 years ago

However, my initial instinct was "either the system doesn't work, or someone messed up".

Why? What really surprises me the most is that this seems to be a common thought. Did that happen before? Do you simply misstrust your government so deeply that you can not even assume something important like this is done right?

Really if i would get such a message on my phone (not even sure if my country does that) i would definitly expect the worst and act like that.

harryh2• 9 years ago

Bayesian reasoning. Most positive tests for unlikely events are false positives.

true_religion2• 9 years ago

I felt the same way, but its not because I distrusted the government. The situation didn't feel like one wherein nuclear missiles would start being fired (or any missiles of any kind).

There's got to be some sort of build up before a conflict before it can't catch people in shock (hence the rational of actual surprise-attacks).

If tomorrow you read that Canada had invaded New York City, would you believe it instantly out of trust for your news agencies and government, or think that perhaps someone somewhere screwed up or was making a silly joke?

brndnmtthws2• 9 years ago

For me it's 2 things:

1) it seems incredibly unlikely, and

2) these systems haven't really been tested adequately for me to have much confidence in their utility.

tome3• 9 years ago

Hawaii does not seem like a plausible target for a nuclear missile.

danepowell• 9 years ago

I wasn't in Hawaii, but I also imagine that I would assume that an alert like this is a false alarm. I've just lived through too many scenarios like this, albeit not on the same scale (think false fire alarms.)

Upon reflection, however, this seems like the definition of survivor bias.

komali24• 9 years ago

I remember an occasion when I lived with a partner - the fire alarm had gone off and I immediately got out of bed and started putting my pants and shoes on. She asked why, I said "so we can go outside. What are you doing? Let's go."

She said she didn't understand the point - if it was a REAL fire, wouldn't they just come get us or tell us?

I don't know how prominent this thought process is, or why so many people don't take things like fire alarms seriously. Selection bias, perhaps you're right. Every fire alarm most people has ever heard was a drill.

This has happened twice at work now, even my manager was teasing me for telling people they should leave. Eventually I left on my own.

semicolon_storm• 9 years ago

A couple things to keep in mind:

1. Your most logical thinking doesn't occur at 8am on a weekend when you just woke up.

2. Hawaii has a more ingrained trust of the EAS than most other states. We test our sirens and EAS monthly. Sirens for tsunamis aren't that uncommon, and there are several horror stories in Hawaii of how people have ignored the sirens and warning signs in the past and got killed.

3. It's a lot easier to determine its a false alarm in hindsight. At the time, you have no information other than the alert and the knowledge about the current tensions with North Korea. We all knew there was a chance it was a false alarm and sure hoped it was, but when your life is on the line it doesn't matter.

blackRust• 9 years ago

They seem quite useless: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-new-york-nuclear/new-york-...

Clubber2• 9 years ago

Depends on who was shooting them. The North Korean missiles are notoriously inaccurate and if Kim shot one off with a live warhead, there's a decent chance it would detonate within his own border.

mejari3• 9 years ago

North Korea is really the only viable country that we'd be hit by nuclear weapons from, and they have no way of "pummeling" NYC.

stirlo• 9 years ago

An accidental launch from Russia/China/India/Packistan is more likely than North Korea waking up one day with a death wish IMO

tomalpha6• 9 years ago

I always struggle with news interviews that go along the lines of “So you’re entire family’s been killed. How do you feel?”.

I realise it’s easy to lose the impact on people’s lives behind a few words in a headline, and maybe I’m just too much of a cynic.

Pleasingly (to me) this article’s focus on feelings has some real meaning: namely the widespread panic that was caused by the false alarm.

(Like other folks in the previous HN thread I hope constructive lessons can be learned at all levels from this)

maxerickson2• 9 years ago

I don't struggle with those interviews at all, they are outrageous and shameful.

There's an argument to be made about conveying the scope of a tragedy to the public but it's also pretty clear that cameras are being shoved in people's faces.

tomalpha6• 9 years ago

I don't struggle with those interviews at all, they are outrageous and shameful.

Sorry, I was being unclear in the context of an international audience: "I struggle with" translates from my-version-of-UK-English to my-US-coworker's-English as more or less exactly this :-)

(I'm told my tendency to say "sorry" continuously also gently mistranslates like this too...)

pmoriarty3• 9 years ago

I feel exactly the opposite.

It's critical that the real impact of death and destruction be effectively conveyed in the media. All too often it's trivialized, sugar-coated, or made to seem like a video game.

People need to realize how devastating such violence is, instead of viewing it as a game or a joke, if there is to be any hope of reducing its incidence.

jstanley• 9 years ago

I always struggle with news interviews that go along the lines of “So you’re entire family’s been killed. How do you feel?”.

I'm the same. It's a shameful effort to manipulate the reader's emotions. The same trick is also used by insurance salesmen and the like.

anigbrowl6• 9 years ago

GP post is talking about actually asking this question of people whose families have been wiped out, not rhetorical questions posed in the comfort of an office.

usnigg• 9 years ago

I for one am convinced this is all part of a fear-mongering tactic of the US army aimed at psychologically pushing US citizen into supporting another war (crime). Unfortunately, Americans are all to easy to scare and the probability that they will in panic commit the most unspeakable of all war crimes (which they have already committed twice in the past) is much too high. The truth is NK couldn't shoot a missile at the US even if they wanted to.

bvod2• 9 years ago

I find it really annoying that top two articles on HN are completely separate from engineering. Since when have posts from news sources been able to not just make it to the front page, but dominate the front page?

Years ago, coming to this site helped me to become an engineer and changed the way I think about problems. But now I don't get that, and instead get plenty of feel-good articles and useless posts that don't contain any real information. I think the articles here should be different from the front page of reddit, but increasingly this viewpoint has become unpopular here.

10dpd• 9 years ago

You might find it useful to read the HN Guidelines [1]

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bvod2• 9 years ago

So any article under the sun is relevant for HN? That's definitely not the case as mods frequently remove posts, and as much as they would like to be, mods are not arbiters of intellectual curiosity.

tome3• 9 years ago

It continues

"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

pmoriarty3• 9 years ago

Also from the guidelines:

"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."

godelmachine• 9 years ago

I second you. Important engineering / tech related articles don't make it to front page, and something's that's absolutely unrelated often does.

cryptoz• 9 years ago

This is an engineering article.

Edit: if you're an engineer and you disagree, then you're the kind of engineer who's more likely to accidentally convince millions of people they are about to die and you are exactly who should be reading this kind of article.

true_religion2• 9 years ago

That's the thing... you've become a good engineer already so you can't get anything out of low hanging fruit anymore.

merricksb• 9 years ago

user: bvod

created: 447 days ago

karma: 94

Some sincerely-intended, friendly advice...

Whilst I understand it's possible that you may have contributed more to HN under a different username, your complaint would be taken vastly more seriously if it came from an account that had a solid history of posting quality articles and comments of the kind of which you've said you'd like to see more.

This community is only as good as people make it through their article submissions and comments, and it's up to all of us to do our part.

And as others have pointed out, the flag link is there for stuff you don't think belongs here.

hedora• 9 years ago

How close did we get to nuking them “back”?

Symmetry• 9 years ago

The US military never thought that there was any nuclear attack inbound so not at all. The real danger was that either North Korea thought that this alarm was cover for us preparing for a counterstrike after we preemptively nuked them, causing them to decide to launch, or that Trump saw the news on Fox and ordered a launch and didn't let himself be dissuaded.

tome3• 9 years ago

Since this system had nothing to do with the military, nowhere near.

exabrial3• 9 years ago

I seriously doubt we would or should... Too close to China and Russia.

China said they would not get the USA's way, if NK initiates. A nuclear explosion near their border would assuredly remove that protection.

Finally, there are very few military targets there that a nuke would be more useful than conventional weapons.

v4n4d1s• 9 years ago

Anyone got data (Heartrate etc.) from Apple Watches / Fitbit / Other Tracking devices?

McKayDavis7• 9 years ago

This [1] reddit thread has a fitbit graph.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hawaii/comments/7q6hzg/average_card...

anigbrowl6• 9 years ago

Is that for real? It looks too simple. I do appreciate your sharing it and think this sort of quantitative data is absolutely valuable in helping to measure externalities.

hoppelhase• 9 years ago

Any study/articles on how the boundary of starting a nuclear war and being the first one to launch a missile is much lower after that incident?

ultim8k• 9 years ago

Well, if Trump wasn't there we wouldn't be talking about this "engineering" problem. He is the one that triggered the whole nuclear story.

IIAOPSW3• 9 years ago

I'm currently living in Japan. So obviously I have a plan for nuclear war.

First, I'm going to press send on the doomsday draft which is sitting in my e-mail.

Second, I'm going to go to youtube and play "We all go together" by Tom Leher.

Third, I got a bottle sitting in my desk that I'm going to pop open. Presumably I'll be in the office at the time so one final round with the coworkers.

The people in this article seem much more stressed and have not yet come to terms with the fact that sometimes life ends abruptly (nuclear or otherwise). If you actually get a nuclear war warning for real, my plan is just as good as any other. At least I didn't spend my last moments frantically running a bathtub and panicking.

salmonfamine• 9 years ago

You should probably get an MP3 of that song, in case YouTube happens to be down at the time of the nuclear blast. That would suck.

IIAOPSW3• 9 years ago

My actual level of preparedness goes up in proportion to geopolitical tension.

0xdada• 9 years ago

I don't think it's as bad as you think. Check out this thread: https://twitter.com/lcamtuf/status/952265416289632256. If shit hits the fan and you end up surviving, your help in the aftermath can be crucial.

IIAOPSW3• 9 years ago

If I survive, I'm a refugee, foreign national with minimal language skills, I'm likely in an active war zone and my nation is probably one of the belligerents. My chances don't look good.

trumpsamerica2• 9 years ago

I'd rather this be the actual submission!

matte_black3• 9 years ago

What software development skills will be most useful in a post-apocalyptic world?

microcolonel• 9 years ago

lcamtuf has also put together a more comprehensive guide to evaluating and preparing for disasters, which I find is pretty darn good.

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

intrasight2• 9 years ago

And if you end up not surviving, your help in the afterlife will be welcome.

jonnycomputer• 9 years ago

I'm guessing that you don't have children. And no, your plan isn't as good as any other; its just one that suits your own fatalistic attitude toward the risks involved.

cantrip• 9 years ago

Yeah I think it's one of the worst reactions you could have.

Without any indication of how bad the attack actually is, you should really assume the best and set yourself up to be able to survive.

What if it's a conventional bombing, or you're not directly in the blast zone? Or if the nuke fails to detonate?

The immediate aftermath if the most important time. While he's futzing around with Youtube and getting drunk the more intelligent people are coming up with a plan to live.

Whether it's getting the fuck out of there or stockpiling water or climbing into a storm drain, almost anything is better than sending emails and jamming away to cliche songs.

rdiddly3• 9 years ago

Unless you're saying this person is worth less than you, then the plan suited to them is indeed as good as the one suited to you.

A few popular assumptions that aren't necessarily true: Living is always better than dying. Your actions have an effect on the outcome. You can do it. People should always do what they should. It matters.

FooHentai• 9 years ago

"I have decided that if I'm ever about to crash my car I will unclip my seatbelt and steer violently to the side. My plan is as good as any other plan"

warent• 9 years ago

I don't know about you but filling the bathtub is my instinctual reaction to anything that goes wrong. Job going badly? Fill the bathtub. Medical emergency? Fill the bathtub. Lost my house key? FILL THE BATHTUB.

akerro• 9 years ago

Chased by wolfs?

That's right, BUTHTUB

sudhirj• 9 years ago

Ah. I actually thought filling the bathtub was a measure to mitigate the effects of the heat wave and maybe the radiation as well.

mLuby• 9 years ago

In a tub you might get to see some Cherenkov radiation up close. Would be a nice silver lining to radiation exposure. :)

jmadsen3• 9 years ago

This.

I live in Japan as well & told my family the same a long time back. There aren't that many other specifics you can plan for, with the family typically spread across the city on the average day, but at least grab a bathtub of clean water to see you through a few days till things settle down.

rcharles• 9 years ago

Flash flooding? Fill the bathtub!

ourmandave2• 9 years ago

Fourth, wash down potassium iodide pills with the wine.

https://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

delbel• 9 years ago

Does wine do anything to increase the effective method of action of potassium iodide pill? Or just because? (My just because is to make pancakes in an emergency sit-tight scenario, when the power goes out for 3 days or I'm snowed in)

But being serious another nutrient you could take is Turmeric/Curcumin as an anti-rad supplement. However it isn't easily absorbed. There's a version called BCM-95 that is better. But better then that there's a Liposomal version that you can make at home with a ultrasonic cleaner. The idea is to buy 100% organic tumeric for $11 on amazon, and make the liposomal version. Take massive dosage if you are or about to be exposed to radiation. Sorry I don't have sources, because I'm not in the medical field, you'll have to source them and vet them yourself. If you are in the medical field I'd be interest in your input

tomalpha6• 9 years ago

I'm currently living in Japan. So obviously I have a plan for nuclear war.

I can't tell whether this is meant seriously or not, but assuming it's serious, I'm genuinely curious as to why this is "obvious"? Is this historical (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) or due to current political tensions?

sdrothrock• 9 years ago

I'm also in Japan, and I have a pretty serious go-bag for this kind of thing. It's because of political tensions for me; we're in spitting distance of North Korea.

interfixus3• 9 years ago

And I - just as genuinely, and not attempting to troll - am curious how anyone could be in doubt, current reports of red buttons and impressively coiffed heads of state taken into account.

titanix2• 9 years ago

Yeah, this isn't "obvious" at all. North Korea is not at war with Japan. What could it even gain from it anyway? Just war for the sake of war and have their country destroyed and their government overthrown? This doesn't make sense at all. Don't forget a lot of NK elite including Kin Jung-Un himself were educated in Europe. They know the state of the world.

So when I'll go to Japan again latter this year as a scholar, NK is the millionth thing I'll care. Because the risk isn't real, it's mostly propaganda towards a country that is trying hard to exists. I think the most important thread are actually the US and how they're unnecessarily adding fuel to the fire at any occasion.

In addition, I would mention that the mere existence of NK is a by product of the US intervention in the Korea War. Should the communist forces won like they did in China & Vietnam, the country would not have been parted like it is. And the situation towards capitalism would have started a normalisation like in China and Vietnam.

lz400• 9 years ago

Not sure but in Japan there are a lot of preparedness measures for earthquakes. Everyone goes through disaster training, people have survivals kits at home, are aware of evacuation centers, etc. There is some overlap between these measures and nuclear war but I'm not aware of a lot of planning for nuclear war itself.

harryh2• 9 years ago

What's in your doomsday draft? "I love you" and such to friends and family or also more practical concerns?

trumpsamerica2• 9 years ago

You know it's one of the things that comes from heart. If you don't have one then no need to force

SilasX• 9 years ago

I’m not sure if you were trying to be funny, but you can’t expect YouTube to work through doomsday.

sdenton4• 9 years ago

Have you ever met a YouTube SRE?

If YouTube goes down in the apocalypse, you can bet there will be a postmortem, and steps to avoid downtime the next time the world ends.

shrimp_emoji• 9 years ago

I'm going to go to youtube and play "We all go together" by Tom Leher

Aw, c'mon. I like Fallout too, but it's gotta be https://youtu.be/lIVgxFabzdE !

wbl2• 9 years ago

You can survive a nuclear war. People survived very close to the hyoocenter of Hiroshima, even without warning or knowing about fallout.

TheOtherHobbes• 9 years ago

You can survive a single small nuclear explosion if you're a comfortable distance from it and/or happen to be underground and protected.

Your odds of still being alive five years after a full scale war are tiny, unless you have your own concrete bunker a long way from any likely targets, and it's conveniently equipped with a near-infinite supply of water, food, livestock, seeds, farming equipment, and fuel.

newfoundglory5• 9 years ago

But if you get a nuclear war warning that isn’t real...I’m curious if there’s anything damaging in that doomsday email you have?

bahmboo4• 9 years ago

Yah I hear ya, but if it's dprk launching a "low yield" device that lands a distance away you aren't going to be too happy with thousands of shards of glass in you because you didn't take some simple precautions.

Blazespinnaker• 9 years ago

It depends if you have kids or not that you are responsible for. We can all make that choice for ourselves, but when you have kids most of us have a moral code to protect them from ‘sudden death’.

fapjacks2• 9 years ago

Yes, exactly, thank you. The world has sharp corners and it appears that tourists and people who recently moved to Hawaii apparently have no idea that Hawaii's a fucking target. It's the center of the universe in the Pacific. There is an entire division of troops there, and carriers, and planes, and missiles, and nukes and nuke subs. Hawaii is the most tunneled piece of American soil. All of these people crying on the floor in the fetal position seem to have successfully lived out their lives inside a fantasy bubble where nothing goes wrong. I wonder how they would feel if they knew how dangerous it was to drive on the highway. It was actually less dangerous to go to Iraq than it was to drive on American highways. It's clear these fragile souls have no idea what's out there waiting for them.

ggsp• 9 years ago

Stupid question: why would you fill up your bathtub?

avtar• 9 years ago

Probably to quickly stock up on drinking water.

matt4077• 9 years ago

Having a reserve of potable water.

Maakuth• 9 years ago

It's a useful reserve for potable water. If you have nuclear fallout coming down, it's not a given that you can trust the tap water to be clean, if it runs at all.

robschia• 9 years ago

Because the fallout would poison the water with radioactivity

stevenleeg• 9 years ago

Stocking up on drinking water or having a source of water to flush the toilet with (by manually refilling the tank).

asdjasldkjkljd• 9 years ago

Drinking water. Don't flush the toilet because you might eventually need the water in the tank too.

baursak• 9 years ago

A good piece of perspective on this -- it's what many civilians feel day in day out in places like Pakistan when killer drones are flying over.

anotheryou2• 9 years ago

Until it becomes the sad norm and you just get on with your life I guess.

anotheryou2• 9 years ago

(Just for clarification, this doesn't make it any better or less traumatizing. It is probably much more traumatizing, people just have to cope with it, because you can't live in constant fear forever.)

nbsd4lyfe2• 9 years ago

Below the surface there's an abnormally high rate of PTSD and a small percentage of people who fail to function.

ahmadss2• 9 years ago

Let's be honest - most people don't want to hear that the people living in drone target areas of Pakistan, Yemen, etc feel this way, else we'd be seeing many more stories about the psychological trauma faced by these folks.

ahmadss2• 9 years ago

Found this 2012 article about a joint NYU / Stanford study regarding terror civilians face from drones.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/25/study-...

ageofwant• 9 years ago

It's reasonable to assume that a adversary can and will use overreaction against perceived threads as a strategic 'unconventional weapon'. Unconventional defence would include educating a modern populace on critical thinking, thread model evaluation and even things like stoicism.

https://youtu.be/ciStnd9Y2ak?t=14m5s is relevant, in which the fear of the thing killed 1500, while the thing in reality is benign.

joewee• 9 years ago

Went through two major disasters. The most critical thing is to have a plan. Make everyone in your household aware of the plan. Then execute it, practice once a year if you can. Execution during the disaster helps distract you from the emotional turmoil.

spraak3• 9 years ago

Pedantic pet peeve: spelling it as Hawaii instead of Hawai'i

rainbowmverse2• 9 years ago

I tried shaving this yak to out-pedant you on the assumption it was a transliteration of a non-Latin language, then found that Hawai'i's written language is (apparently) recent relative to the age of the language. Also, it has a history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language

nkurz2• 9 years ago

Is your peeve that you believe there exists some unwritten requirement that all place names must use identical spellings without consideration of the language they are written in? If so, I don't think this is reasonable.

Words are allowed to change when they are taken from one language to another. It's spelled (and pronounced) Hawai'i when written in Hawaiian. But when writing in English, as the article is, it's typically spelled (and pronounced) Hawaii.

rainbowmverse2• 9 years ago

English may have no patience for diacritical marks (lack of them on keyboards doesn't help), but they're still a good idea when using words from other languages with pronunciations an English speaker wouldn't know intuitively.

spraak3• 9 years ago

Both the symbol/mark and the sound exist natively in English text and speech, so it bothers me in the same way someone might be bothered by mixing up their/they're or your/you're.

chiefalchemist8• 9 years ago

I think it's safe to assume the 100,000+ Iraqi civilians killed in the conflict in Iraq received no such warning. It's shameful how completely unaware most Americans are of the terror their MIC imposes on others.

Ironically, this incident in HI will feed the collective fears and the wrath of the MIC will extend further still. The opportunity to question the status quo will be lost.

sschueller• 9 years ago

Or the continued drone war that is inflicting a continuous terror on many civilians. Now considerd standard operating procedure and no longer mentioned in the media.

Imagine living your life not knowing if the coffee place you are visiting is in a drones cross hairs. Then image what kind of hate you would feel towards the country inflicting this terror on you.

This is not how you solve extremism and bring peace. This is how you make it worse.

chiefalchemist8• 9 years ago

Yup. The USA has actively created plenty of shitholes - in places where the faces are not pure European white - and that gets zero public reaction.

The current POTUS uses the word shithole to describe a group of countries and he's X, Y and Z.

Yeah, Trump is a moron. But the hypocrisy of the press and the public is a moral violation.

rtx• 9 years ago

Maybe they realize it, but benefits of an empire are too great to give up.

chiefalchemist8• 9 years ago

I don't see much evidence that people are aware.

catdograbbit• 9 years ago

Is this relevant to the linked article at all or are you just finding any excuse available to push your politics?

ourmandave2• 9 years ago

Nearly forty minutes passed before a second message went out: “There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii.

...“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the changeover of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button.”

I've seen some shitty Admin Panels, but somebody "pushed the wrong button" and an end-of-your-world false alarm was going off for 40 minutes?! WTF?

herbst3• 9 years ago

Exactly my thoughts. Errors happen, Developers are lazy and interfaces suck. However this is definitly not a excuse, multiple things have to be completely wrong that it even could get this far.

beamatronic• 9 years ago

I've built a lot of alerts. The "This is not a drill" text should not have even been entered until the system was fully tested and operational.

Clubber2• 9 years ago

I've seen some shitty Admin Panels, but somebody "pushed the wrong button" and an end-of-your-world false alarm was going off for 40 minutes?! WTF?

Ya, it's the same panel that is installed in the White House. :) Now that's a comforting thought.

spikels• 9 years ago

This is clearly on the State of Hawaii not the US government.

mfukar2• 9 years ago

What sort of procedure do you imagine is in place for a 'false-alarm' type of situation like this?

cbr2• 9 years ago

If the alarm is as easy to trigger as pushing a single button, then issuing an update that it was a mistake should be designed for. Ideally just a couple presses, something that can be done in under a minute.

stordoff2• 9 years ago

It remaining like that for 40 minutes is a bad sign, but it being easy to issue a warning seems reasonable (the counter-story is "No warning of the genuine threat was issued, due to the process for doing so being too involved/difficult").

tzs• 9 years ago

That suggests an interesting question: if you issue a false alarm should you retract as soon as you can or can it be better to wait a while?

I could see retracting quickly leading to even more confusion as you then have a mix of people who have received (and believed the retraction) trying to resume normal activity and people who still thinking they have to get to a safer place right away. I could see this leading to some escalating tension and even violence.

It might be better to wait until a good majority of people have reached their shelters and stopped moving before you issue the retraction.

sneak3• 9 years ago

If someone did launch a missile, and it were destroyed with a secret weapons system, this is precisely the timeline (alert, not a drill - passage of 30+ mins to write a cover story about shift change, “oh sorry false alarm”) and news articles I would expect to see.

The only thing we know is that we won’t ever receive the truth.

Can you imagine how much worse it would be if the story were “US anti-missile defense destroys weapon headed for Hawaii”?

holman• 9 years ago

The likelihood of this being the case seems so close to nil. For one, the coverup required would involve thousands of military and non-military personnel. But secondly, if we really did destroy an incoming warhead, well, that would constitute an attack — the attack — and I can’t fathom the US military not counter-attacking.

So no, I don’t think you have to worry about that. Just a fat fingering, no more.

sneak3• 9 years ago

For one, the coverup required would involve thousands of military and non-military personnel.

Over a million people have a TS clearance.

As for not fathoming the military counterattacking—that is an excellent motive for keeping such an event secret.

RoyTyrell• 9 years ago

What if this site is actually just a government tool to monitor "woke" people, and you're one of the handful of users that isn't a bot or a shill...

abecedarius• 9 years ago

Who else would likely see the missile besides U.S. military? That's an interesting idea, even if at first blush very unlikely.

sneak3• 9 years ago

Yeah, I don’t think there was a missile. Or, at least, there probably wasn’t. This messaging and timeline is just strangely congruent to what I would expect if there were.

Narretz• 9 years ago

South Korea and Japan routinely are reporting about North Korean missile strikes independently of the US military. So this seems extremely unlikely.

kartan• 9 years ago

The only thing we know is that we won’t ever receive the truth.

How do you know? If you never get the true.

Can you imagine how much worse it would be if the story were “US anti-missile defense destroys weapon headed for Hawaii”?

For the Trump administration? It will have been a blessing. Forget about porn stars, Russia, tax reform for the rich, ... just talk about war.

politelemon• 9 years ago

and an employee pushed the wrong button

I would assume that was how it was explained to the governor, and that the actual system is software based (right?) - there couldn't possibly be an actual physical 'ballistic missile alert' button right next to the 'shift change' button.

In which case, the triggering of this alert is probably a bit more complex. However, this is treated as a sensitive system so there likely will not be an actual post-mortem on the incident

MicroBerto• 9 years ago

They are clearly lying, that much is certain.

The question is why, and there are far too many rabbit holes to go down for this one. For now I'll just settle for "bad people stirring things up for terrible reasons".

newfoundglory5• 9 years ago

Not a public one, but I expect there will be an internal one.

intrasight2• 9 years ago

Call me a cynic, but I'm willing to believe that there was a 'ballistic missile alert' button in the wrong place. Sometimes bad placements are only clear after the fact. I walked into a building once and the lights were out. I walked along the wall and pulled the first switch I found - which turned out the be the fire alarm.

dbbk• 9 years ago

According to the Washington Post, it was a dropdown with two options next to each other - "Test missile alert" and "Missile alert". It's really that bad.

https://twitter.com/ericuman/status/952719318688718850

jmcqk6• 9 years ago

It's shocking it doesn't happen more often then.

rawnlq• 9 years ago

AskReddit is really good for these kind of questions. There's a large thread going on right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7q6gys/reddit_me...

gdubs4• 9 years ago

It’s interesting how people (anecdotally) don’t seem to have any plan for a nuclear attack, as opposed to, say, an earthquake or a fire.

I think there’s a stigma around even considering the possibility. However, it makes sense to at least talk with your family about what you would all do.

According to what I’ve read on the gov sites, it’s very survivable for a lot of people if you take key steps: surround yourself with as much building as you can (the middle floor of a high rise, or a basement three stories deep, etc.) Shower and dispose of any clothing that may be contaminated. Wait out the initial 24 to 48 hours until you’ve gotten official instructions (a hand crank radio is good to have.)

Generally, having a first aid kit, water, and food, is common sense for any potential outage of the infrastructure.

Sucks to consider the possibility, but worth having a conversation.

TimonKnigge• 9 years ago

surround yourself with as much building as you can (the middle floor of a high rise, or a basement three stories deep, etc.)

Why would the middle floor of a high rise be better than its ground floor?

gdubs4• 9 years ago

Here’s one source: https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1622-20490-...

The idea is to get away from an area where particles can collect (like the ground). They seem to be saying that you wouldn’t want to choose a floor with a balcony, for instance.

macintux4• 9 years ago

I think many people consider nuclear war an end of the world event. Working hard to survive just to be left adrift in the ashes of civilization with likely long-term health effects seems counterproductive to some of us.

rectangletangle2• 9 years ago

The US/Russia/France have already detonated thousands of full power nuclear weapons all across the globe, primarily for testing. Although major cities would be ash, with millions lost in the senseless conflict, life would go on. You'd likely only have health problems if you had acute exposure to the blast. If you live somewhere irrelivant, radiation exposure won't be much more of a concern than it already is currently; whatever enviromemtal impacts nuclear weapons have, have already taken place.

Though the standard of living for survivors is sure to plummet, as famine and other secondary problems start to take precedence.

End of the world? No. Set back industrialized society two centuries? Sure.

anigbrowl6• 9 years ago

A reasonable point, but it's sad that people consider surviving a nuclear war a more practical endeavor than altering the political direction of the country. Admittedly they are somewhat orthogonal, but I'm trying to highlight the problem of equating war with natural disasters as opposed to something over which we have any sort of political control.

ddxxdd5• 9 years ago

According to game theory, the easiest way to win a game of Chicken is to tear off your steering column and wave it out your window.

In other words, preparing for nuclear war instead of preventing a nuclear war is how you win small battles, like where to put an embassy or whether foreign countries will respect your patents.

Udik2• 9 years ago

Fires and earthquakes are orders of magnitude more probable than nuclear attacks.

gdubs4• 9 years ago

I thought Nate Silver had a good take this week, which was basically that Nuclear Weapons have not been around long enough for us to draw statistical conclusions.

He continued that even if the odds were small, like a 1% chance a year, it would very much be worth being prepared for.

SQL2219• 9 years ago

3 words: Software alert fatigue.

rdlecler1• 9 years ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw PTSD.

dude01• 9 years ago

In fact, I would say that it was the goal of this event -- inducing PTSD on a small part of the U.S. (the state of Hawaii).

nkurz2• 9 years ago

I saw a high-effort self-post on Reddit that gave a good framework for evaluating what might have happened. I thought it was good enough that I've recopied it here in full hoping that author appreciates reaching a larger audience and that discussion here might be better than that on Reddit. Repeating, I'm not the author of what's written below.

---

A couple of possibilities for what REALLY went down in Hawaii yesterday

I used to work on the Minutemen 3 ICBMs for a high profile company. Can't share too many details for obvious reasons. But I think the "mistake" of an employee accidentally pressed the mass alert button is very unlikely. In fact, I can think of a lot of things way more likely. Here's my two cents, in no particular order:

The threat was real, the missile was shot down

As others on this subreddit have already pointed out, the amount of time it takes an ICBM to travel from Southeast Asia to Hawaii is approximately 20-30 min ( ~10 min to hit ICBM max speed of 7 km/s, ~7200 km, (7200/7)/(60) = ~17 min for total travel time of ~27 min, not accounting for earth's rotation in that time period). The amount of time it took for the false alarm to be sent out was 38 min. Now, the way the US's ABM system works is that they basically launch a giant chunk of metal at the ICBM and hit it really hard. The ABMs have no ordinance or anything, they just destroy the incoming missile through shear impact. However, even though our ABM system is the best in the world, it's still only successful around 50% of the time. So when the incoming threat was discovered, it would still be protocol to alert the intended target of the threat in the event that the ABM systems fail (and whatever other defenses we have that I don't know about). I think it's at least feasible that the threat was real, and the threat was dealt with successfully (and thankfully). The question that tears this theory apart is: why would the US not tell us they shot down an enemy ICBM? The most likely answer I can come up with is that Trump doesn't want war. Maybe he just talks a big game. Or perhaps it's not financially beneficial to start a war when there were no causalities. Whatever it is, it's not that we don't know who launched the missile. When those things take off we pretty much immediately know where it's going and where it came from. So if there was a real threat, the US Gov is for whatever reason not sharing this information with the public. Maybe they don't want to cause panic. I don't know.

The EAS was hacked to provoke reaction from Trump

The EAS has been hacked before, it's possible that it was hacked again. The person or persons who hacked the system either did so for shits and giggles, which is extremely fucked up considering how many people could have died if we had retaliated, or they did so to intentionally cause a retaliation from Trump in order to make him look bad. See, ICBMs function on something called Mutually Assured Destruction. If someone like Russia launches their full force of ICBMs at us, we have that half hour to retaliate. In a situation like that, both countries lose. Using ICBMs against another country with ICBM's is essentially committing suicide. If we had launched missiles towards Southeast Asia, they would then have a chance to retaliate against us. I have hard time believing that any hacker would do this, but then, there are some truly crazy people out there. This could also explain why it took so long for them to send out the second alert, because the system was hacked or down and they needed to regain control or reset it. Also, if one of the employees didn't send the message, they may not have even known about it for several minutes after.

The EAS was commandeered by a disgruntled employee

This is the scenario I find most likely. Trump tends to piss an enormous amount of people off. Perhaps one of the workers manning that operation decided to try and make Trump look bad by sending out a false alert. It certainly is a bit embarrassing to send an entire state into full panic mode on accident. This is going to be a national incident for several days still.

The monitoring system used to look for incoming threats malfunctioned

This happens more often than you would think. The early alert systems are very sensitive. They're a lot better than they used to be, but they've detected false missiles before. I've heard of them being triggered by sunlight reflecting off large pieces of metal. They're sensitive for a reason, I mean better safe than sorry, right? Somehow, yesterday, the conditions were just right to trigger a false alarm. Instead of sharing with everyone how fallible the system really is, the Gov decided to blame it on a careless employee. It would cause a lot less panic.

The "false alert" was staged

In an attempt to distract the MSM from some policy he is currently pursuing, Trump ordered the "fake" threat. Now the news cycles will be dominated day and night by this "mistake" allowing him to pursue his true intentions. Or, alternatively, he wanted to demonstrate to the people that the U.S has an early warning system, although I don't think this is likely as the amount of panic that the alert would have caused (car crashes, heart attacks, etc) would not have been worth it.

The mistake was exactly that; a mistake

Honestly, I have a hard time believing that any operator could accidentally send out a message like that. These guys are trained for months before they are put at that station, and it seems to me like sending out a state wide alert takes more than just one press of a button. Also, the operator would have immediately noticed that the alert went out, and they would have been able to correct it much faster (not the 38 min that is did).

Whatever really happened yesterday, I don't think it was just an errant press of a button. But no matter what the actual cause was, this event was still a tragedy. Why? If there ever is a real threat and people get this message, they are now less likely to believe it, and that means they are less likely to seek shelter or prepare in anyway. Remember guys, don't let this turn into a "the Gov cried wolf" story. If you ever get a notification like this, your first thought should be finding shelter, then questioning.

Good night everyone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7qax47/a_couple...

lovethebombs2• 9 years ago

Since we are in conspiracy territory, it could also be a staged "false alert", but not to distract from Trump policy, but to confront Trump with the reality of nuclear warfare.

He was on Twitter a few days back talking about whose nuclear button is bigger. If Trump is triggerhappy and willing to sacrifice millions to salvage his ego, then maybe some footage of children huddled up, crying and thinking the world is about to end, will instill a sense of reverence for life.

Under Obama in 2010, we had Obama defunding part of the nuclear missile program, and in the same week, entire nuclear grids went offline due to an unexplained bug. This also send a clear signal to the commander in chief.

The Air Force swears there was no panic. But for three-quarters of an hour Saturday morning, launch control officers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming couldn't reliably communicate or monitor the status of 50 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Gulp.
The incident comes at a particularly tricky time for the Obama administration, which is struggling to get the Senate to ratify a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. In conservative political circles, there's a distrust of the nuclear cuts – and a demand that they be matched with investments in atomic weapon upgrades. Saturday's shutdown will undoubtedly bolster that view.

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/communications-dropped-to-50-n...

jjeaff3• 9 years ago

Regardless of the credentials of the poster, the fact that it was posted in r/conspiracy makes me think it's not that useful of a comment. r/conspiracy attracts a certain type of poster, one who finds possible consiparcy in everything.

cookiecaper3• 9 years ago

While I think everyone understands that "pressed the wrong button, woops" is, at best, a gross oversimplification, I think assuming that it was directly connected to Trump or that he has the ability to "order" the state EAS system to issue some alert unilaterally is ridiculous.

This comment also overlooks that a hack of EAS may've been perpetrated by an enemy group to test the American response. That is semi-plausible.

Personally, I also think the disgruntled employee is the most likely scenario. It was someone's last day, or they had just decided they wanted it to be their last day, and they typed this up and hit send.

It makes sense that "it was just an accident" is the explanation that restores the most faith in the system, because they can then say "We've updated the system so that accidents like that can't happen again, we now have two buttons in different rooms that have to be pressed simultaneously". Whereas intentional hijacking of the system is much harder to prevent.

henrikschroder4• 9 years ago

Ok, let's debunk this crackpottery.

The threat was real, the missile was shot down

If NK had launched something, multiple countries would have detected the launch, acted against the launch, and let everyone else know about the launch.

If NK had launched something, it would have been picked up by NORAD or similar, and the order to alert everyone would have flowed downwards from there, which means that all the alert systems on Hawaii would have gone off, and we would have seen a substantial military response. This didn't happen, only a single system broadcast the alarm.

The EAS was hacked to provoke reaction from Trump [..] onsidering how many people could have died if we had retaliated

The EAS is not a launch detection system. Hawaii State EMA is not a launch detection agency. In the case of actual launch, actual launch detection agencies would know first, and then tell Hawaii State EMA to trigger all the alarms. The information doesn't normally flow the other way around.

As the information that an alarm was going off in Hawaii, everyone above in the normal notification chain would question it and ask why the fuck the alarm was going off, since they would know they didn't order it.

If you think the US would start nuclear retaliation without confirmation of actual launch, you're an idiot.

The EAS was commandeered by a disgruntled employee

Possible. It's directly contradicted by the official statement, though.

The monitoring system used to look for incoming threats malfunctioned

If actual launch detection systems had picked up a launch, then you would have information flowing out of NORAD, ordering all emergency alert systems to go off, sirens, EAS, tv, radio, the works. You would also have a military response, and you would have procedures for informing political leadership, including the president. None of this happened. A single alarm system in Hawaii went off.

In an attempt to distract the MSM from some policy he is currently pursuing, Trump ordered the "fake" threat.

How the fuck would the federal president be able to order a state civilian agency to execute and cover up such an idiotic plan, without it leaking, and without anyone questioning?

The mistake was exactly that; a mistake

And this is the only sane guess in this wall of idiocy.

jmadsen3• 9 years ago

Thank you!

The number of people who are posting, tweeting, etc looooong convoluted theories & explanations, and yet can't seem to figure out that this was a civilian warning system & nothing more, is amazing.

What happened in Oahu was essentially that a guy ran out in the street shouting "the sky is falling!". His button let him use some push notifications to everyone's phones & TVs, but little more.

McKayDavis7• 9 years ago

I live on O'ahu and was holding my phone when the emergency alert came in at 8:07am. I yelled "Oh my God!" and ran to show my wife the message. I've run through this scenario a few times in my head before and I knew every minute was critical -- so I went into action mode immediately. I told my two kids to get dressed now because we were leaving in exactly 1 minute. The reason we were leaving is our house is single-wall wood construction with no sealed windows and no HVAC, which is pretty much the least ideal shelter possible in a nuclear fallout scenario.

The four of us were in the car on the road at ~8:09 and inside the local LDS (Mormon) Church 0.9 miles away at 8:12am. The church building is the nearest concrete structure with sealed windows and interior rooms that I knew I could gain access to. Unfortunately it doesn't have a basement, but very few structures in Hawaii do.

Thankfully, the doors were already open as there was a family inside doing some cleaning. We were the first to arrive and at least a dozen other families showed in the next 10 minutes. We all hunkered in the gym, some crying, some praying, most just in shock. The first glimmer of hope came when I read the first report of the it being a false alarm on Twitter at around 8:23am.

The whole incident was absolutely terrifying and I'm very upset that it even happened. But, we learned some valuable lessons and I'm satisfied with how my family responded to the incident. Overall, my plan was good and was executed about as flawlessly as possible. I realize we need to add a "bug-out bag" of essential items (e.g. medications, cell phone charger, hand-crank radio) that we can grab as we head out.

It most definitely helped that I had considered this scenario before and knew exactly what steps I would take. The one good takeaway is that this event has sparked many similar conversations state-wide (and beyond) of what to do in these situations. Here's hoping these plans never have to be executed again...

dmarlow• 9 years ago

What will you do if you can't get into your church building?

McKayDavis7• 9 years ago

I had considered that too and breaking a window to gain access was an option.

I'm not a member of the church, but I chose this building specifically as it was most likely to have other people seeking shelter there who also had keys to the building. Indeed, the first family to arrive after us lived a block away and I did verify they do have a key.

aviv• 9 years ago

Definitely a good day for all the online preparedness stores.

gtcode• 9 years ago

808-861-6666 happened while on the north shore

aoeusnth1• 9 years ago

What happened on the North Shore?

esrauch• 9 years ago

What?

acqq• 9 years ago

cell phone charger

I don’t think it would work in the given scenario?

woolvalley• 9 years ago

Solar?

mejari3• 9 years ago

There are plenty of situations where you have to deal with the reality of a nuclear blast that cell phones would still work. It's not all just ground-zero or nothing.

koheripbal• 9 years ago

There is a big misconception about nuclear attacks. Full scale nuclear war with a adversary like Russia is indeed an apocalypse scenario, but a single lowish yield nuclear detonation by a nation like North Korea is very very survivable, if you are prepared.

I have a similar evac plan with a bug-out bag that I gave my wife to keep at her work. For nuclear attack specifically, she is instructed NOT to leave her work and hunker down in their concrete basement for two weeks. Even being much closer to an estimated ground-zero, she is far safer in their well-shielded basement than trying to get home in the open fallout zone. The bag has enough rations, batteries, water, first-aid, etc for that period. Fallout zone radiation levels take about 2 weeks to drop to safe levels, at which time she has a printed google map for her to walk the 20 miles home.

My job is to grab the kids at school and hunker down in our basement where we have more exhaustive supplies, and ultimately get the hell out of town together.

Fallout is the biggest killer. Using http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/, and unfortunately fallout is highly dependent on wind direction - an important unknown on that day.

Given the unknowns and the likelihood that roads will be quickly impassible, it is best to prepare at home. It takes two feet of concrete or packed dirt to block radiation to a safe level, and that includes ABOVE you. Wood provides almost no protection. ...but if you do have a basement, then you can make a plan to place very heavy items (appliances & server racks) on the first floor above you and vehicles and stones/dirt/etc around that part of the house.

Fallout settles on surfaces, so it's a good idea to trim bushes and trees directly around that shelter - you want the fallout to hit the ground, not settle at a higher angle above you. ...and if you're in Hawaii or other coastal area and have easy access to a boat, that might be the best option because fallout sinks and there are no traffic jams at sea.

sammoorhouse• 9 years ago

she is instructed NOT to [...]

Wait, she’s what now?

EldonMcGuinness• 9 years ago

Thanks for this, when I heard about the announcement my mind just went blank and I'm nowhere near Hawaii!

qbaqbaqba• 9 years ago

During the Cold War in Poland we had no nuclear shelters only huge stockpiles of Lugol's iodine, which is said to be blocking intake of radioactive isotopes. It came handy after the Chernobyl.

bahmboo4• 9 years ago

We sat next to a water tank on the side opposite of Honolulu. No other options. A year ago if we had gotten the same alert it would have just been wtf instead of terror. Hacker angle: we need different levels of emergency alerts. People turn them off because they don't want yet another irrelevant flood warning for some place 20 miles from them or an Amber alert at 3 am. In this particular case the lucky ones had them turned off. 38 minutes to send out correction. Just sayin

exabrial3• 9 years ago

Everyone is talking about nukes... I doubt nk has a compact nuclear warhead that can fit on a ballistic missile. Maybe in another 5-10 years, but not right now.

They most likely have chemical and biological weapons, as confirmed by the nk soldier that defected and had anthrax antibodies in his blood.

mejari3• 9 years ago

We already know they have compact nuclear warheads

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/north...

exabrial3• 9 years ago

Well that sucks. Guess I'm behind in the news. Wow, that's a lot of nukes... 60??

peter303• 9 years ago

You know how people born before 1985 felt when there was the ever present global thermonuclear war threat. We used to practice duck-and-cover in grade school. Woulnt help if very near a bomb explosion, but a little helpful from distant blasts. Plus there were near misses of a launch in 1962 and 1983 on news. Plus several other secreat incidents revealed years later. Contributed to hippie malaise that boober parents were fucking up the world.

Myrmornis• 9 years ago

I'm amazed this isn't being considered a bigger deal - I would expect the government to announce a major inquiry into how this happened and what to do to prevent it ever happening again, and I would expect heads to roll.

jernfrost• 9 years ago

Must be a terrible thing, if anything good can come out of this I hope it alerts people to the horrors of nuclear war. I am puzzled by why we speak so much about global warming but almost nobody talks about nuclear war.

Global warming is not remotely as dangerous as nuclear war. Sure it will make crops fails some places, cause water shortage for some millions, force people to move off the coast etc. But it will not kill billions of people. Nuclear war could do that.

As long as the US and Russia stockpile huge quantities of nuclear weapons the whole world is in jeopardy. The number of times nuclear war has almost gotten triggered due to mistakes like this one in Hawaii is scary to think of.

How many human errors or hardware/software failures need to happen before one day, an actual launch of nuclear missiles happen by default?

These weapons are far too dangerous to stockpile in such huge quantities. There should be a push to reduce the stockpile to something like 20-30 missiles.

It isn't hard to imagine a president in the style of Donald Trump, acting irrational and making a rash and stupid mistake which puts the world on fire.

namelost2• 9 years ago

If nuclear war is that close to happening, then we are already too far gone to address it. Who is going to be the one to convince Trump to decommission some of America's nuclear weapons?

burfog2• 9 years ago

Putin has more nuclear weapons. Shouldn't he decommission his first? He has already risked kicking off WWIII several times. He took a chunk of Ukraine, broke two chunks off of Georgia, make a bunch of border incursions into NATO/EU countries up north, and is currently supporting a civil war in Ukraine.

The situation is pretty crazy. Russia is far from the world's biggest economy, yet it is the nation with the greatest nuclear capability. There is clearly a desire to hold the rest of the world hostage, strongly equating fear with respect.

Note that Ukraine once had nuclear weapons. They gave them up, being assured that Russia would not threaten territorial integrity and that the USA would help ensure this. We see what those promises were worth. Giving up the nuclear capability was obviously a mistake. There is no way that Putin would have annexed Crimea under the threat of nuclear retaliation.

KnightOfWords• 9 years ago

Have to disagree that climate change, combined with intensive farming, couldn't potentially kill billions. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

m3kw9• 9 years ago

I’m waiting for the Colbert interview with the man of the moment

xcodevn• 9 years ago

Now let's think about the feeling of people in other countries when be attacked by US missiles.

rpmcmurphy• 9 years ago

This should give everyone serious pause. If this false alarm had been sent by NORAD (it has happened before, read Command and Control), it's very likely that several million people in both Koreas, Japan and possibly the US would be char-grilled nuclear krispies right now. There needs to be a serious re-evaluation of our alert systems and launch on warning posture.

WillReplyfFood• 9 years ago

Technical Support will come riding through the apocalyptic wasteland on a technical, robbing those who for years refused to read the manuals.

What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

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