Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 409 posts

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#141

Post by dvirsky »

intopieces wrote: post #80

If I were going to erode public trust in emergency broadcast systems in order to increase the amount of damage I would do by launching an actual missile, this is how I would do it. A series of false alarms. A similar, if obviously much smaller and less disastrous example, happens at my apartment about 4 times a week: the fire alarms for entire floors of my apartment building are easily triggered by people smoking in…

Israeli here. We get false rocket alerts every once in a while. Usually it's a bug or a badly calibrated radar picking up something else, sometimes a human error.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#142

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #50
napsterbr wrote: post #35

Any reason why it would take 30+ minutes to rectify the mistake?

Civilian governments would have had to get clarity from a military caught off guard. Something as simple as the appropriate official being in a meeting could introduce delays.

You keep trotting out this excuse, but the responsibility is on the people conducting the drill to plan for that possibility and you're letting them off the hook.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#143

Post by namelost »

Houshalter wrote: post #101
djsumdog wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mocking isn't unjustifiable though. I mean the turtle/duck and cover is quite pointless, at least in the case of a nuclear strike (unless you're maybe on the far edge of it, in which case a ditch might save you..and that's big might). In the documentary "Iraq: The Untold Story", the creator shows civilian air raid shelters in Baghdad. They were four stories down, with the upper floors all reinforced concrete. Yet…

Have you ever looked at pictures of the aftermath of Hiroshima? People who weren't behind cover survived the immediate blast but got horrifying burns.

What happened to the people who were behind cover?

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#144

Post by verelo »

blantonl wrote: post #139
packetslave wrote: post #117

Just watched an interview on CNN with the Governor of Hawaii and their director of emergency management. Pretty impressed that the director didn't throw anybody under the bus. He basically said "An employee pushed the wrong button. It's my responsibility, so this is my fault. We're going to make procedure and technical changes to make sure this doesn't happen again."

A lot of people are calling for the person who did this to be instantly fired, but I've always been of the opinion that the guy that pushed that button would be an outstanding hire - because he'll never, ever do something like that again and he's learned an important lesson.

Also, it’s rarely one persons fault, and the next human is likely going to fail in similar (or worse, different!) ways to the previous human. Process controls variables like this, there is obviously an issue that we can learn from here and adjust to improve.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#145

Post by joering2 »

chki wrote: post #102

I actually wonder why this warning can be send in the first place. As this unwanted "test" has shown, people have absolutely no idea what to/where to go in that situation. Instead there was a lot of panic. If there is the possibility that you will send out such a message it would be a good idea to give some advice on what to do.

This system is NOT designed to help you or tell you what to do. Its mostly designed to take off liability from the government... so that when the dust settles down, you don't go en masses to sue the government for NOT warning you. Besides, places like Amazon and your local library are filled with sections on preparedness. Waiting for Government megaphone to tell you what to do with clear instruction while intercontinental ballistic missile is approaching in few minutes, is already too late.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#146

Post by anigbrowl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #77
charlesdm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd assume a potential strike by an incoming missile is important enough to interrupt said meeting?

If NORAD said “incoming missile strike,” sure. That isn’t what happened. The civilian notification system sent out a false positive. Saying “false alarm” would require, at that point, asking the military for affirmative confirmation nothing is wrong. That is a lower priority than responding to an active threat.

This is irrational. If you know a false alarm has occurred then you are endangering people by allowing them to believe the existence of an active threat. I feel like I'm stuck in a car with someone driving off a cliff because the GPS said so even though the edge of the cliff is perfectly visible though the windscreen.

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#147

Post by alexnewman »

djsumdog wrote: post #28

So either this was a security breach, a human mistake or a psyops/test on a small isolated American population. In the first case, we'll probably only be told about it if they actually make an arrest and the system is patched. The second is an interesting case, we'll come back to. The final one: it was intentional and used to track what happened on the islands, and to also watch that information propagate back to the…

I’ll take that bet that you are wrong. I assume you believe this but not enough to bet money that you R right

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#148

Post by packetslave »

blantonl wrote: post #139
packetslave wrote: post #117

Just watched an interview on CNN with the Governor of Hawaii and their director of emergency management. Pretty impressed that the director didn't throw anybody under the bus. He basically said "An employee pushed the wrong button. It's my responsibility, so this is my fault. We're going to make procedure and technical changes to make sure this doesn't happen again."

A lot of people are calling for the person who did this to be instantly fired, but I've always been of the opinion that the guy that pushed that button would be an outstanding hire - because he'll never, ever do something like that again and he's learned an important lesson.

BINGO. If someone makes a mistake like this, unless it was deliberate or negligent (e.g. he/she didn't follow established procedures), you don't fire them! You fix the technical or procedural failures that allowed them to make the mistake in the first place. Heck, you should probably THANK them for making the system better by uncovering a bug!

When I was still mostly a Noogler, I took a large portion of Google completely down worldwide for 6 minutes. Guess what? We did a postmortem, fixed the procedural and technical problems that allowed it to happen, and I'm still here!

Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say

#149

Post by FragenAntworten »

joering2 wrote: post #135
makecheck wrote: post #85

An interesting Reddit comment described a chaotic traffic situation for 20 minutes (people running lights, wrong-side-of-the-road driving, extreme speed, etc.). Human nature in these moments is very “Tragedy of the Commons” apparently.

Just recently I spoke to my friends that literally are living in LaLa land. They are making fun of me prepping and saving dry food, water, stacking up on legal guns and munition. I took upon challenge last xmas to meetup with them and they brought my prepardness as one of laughing subjects. It really saddens me when they believe that when gloves of society are off, we all gonna be happy singing kumbaya and respecting…

Perhaps they don't think the gloves of society will come off - that is, that no catastrophic event will occur which will affect their life/area, so that life will continue as normal for the foreseeable future. In that case, no preparations would be necessary.
Post reply on HN