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

nytimes.com

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

#271

Post by mistersquid »

neurotech1 wrote: post #210
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."

This is known as the "Asoh Defense". Capt. Kohei Asoh accidentally flew a DC-8 airliner into the water while on approach to SFO. No major injuries and the aircraft was repaired. The incident was noted for Capt. Asoh frankly accepting responsibility. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_2#The_"A...

While Governor Ige did accept full responsibility for the incident, he did not directly execute the technical steps that caused the alert to be sent to HI residents.

This is different than Capt. Asoh's defense because Asoh was directly responsible for

> attempt[ing] an automatic-coupled Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach, something neither [he nor Capt. Hazen] had done before on a recorded DC-8 flight.

In any case, your reference to the defense is fantastic. In the profane spirit of what Asoh told the National Transportation Safety Board investigators--"As you Americans say, I fucked up."--I think it's not too off the mark to observe "What an Asoh". [0]

[0] I tried resisting this but it's just sitting there, y'know. Also, I'm sure my American eyes are mispronouncing Captain Asoh's name. For what it's worth, we should all be so forthright to own up to the mistakes we've made.

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

#272

Post by HarryHirsch »

smacktoward wrote: post #198
nradov wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate, in some cases the point of firing an employee in a situation like this isn't about that one employee but more pour encourager les autres . So the remaining employees will see that management takes the issue seriously and they need to be diligent about following procedures. In this particular case no real harm was done and firing would probably be excessive.

Which is ironic, since pour encourager les autres in this context comes straight from the pen of a great satirist making fun of a dumb, blunt, broken institutional culture -- specifically Voltaire, mocking the British in Candide for responding to the loss of a naval battle not by training their admirals better but by executing one of them "to encourage the others." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candide#Satire

That was Admiral Byng, and the move worked, it made two generations of navy leadership reckless in the face of danger.

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

#273

Post by joering2 »

yks wrote: post #190
joering2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

if you want to come up on top after civilizational collapse you'd better join a gang or have a cabin in an extremely remote and secluded location, otherwise sorry but your stash will be seized by aforementioned gangs regardless of your prepping and shooting skills

Why would I join a gang?? I have enough brothers in arms to create my own.

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

#274

Post by anigbrowl »

roywiggins wrote: post #252
TillE wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long delay is what lightly tickles my suspicion that maybe this wasn't a mistake. It's a little too much of a coincidence that this particular alert happens in Hawaii at a time of escalating tensions with North Korea. I mean it's probably just a simple mistake, but it's also the kind of thing you would do if you wanted to stoke fears about a nuclear strike.

This system is run by the state of Hawaii. They're not exactly pro-confrontation (Tulsi Gabbard aside, but she's not in the state government).

How many people do you need to persuade to a particular point of view to actually put something like this into effect? If it were staged it would be interest of the state to hush it up rather than admit to a power struggle in the control room.

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

#275

Post by megaman22 »

dfox wrote: post #238
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if a nuke could get you it would do it regardless if you duck and cover or not. This is just not true. The area in which the nuke will get everyone regardless is less than a tenth of the area where taking precautions would save you. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. People widely laugh at "duck and cover" as if it was some huge joke. Even at the height of the cold war when the nuke stocks were at their larg…

Another thing that constantly astonishes me is how the immediate direct damage caused by any kind of intentional explosion is consistently overestimated by public at large. I largely blame action movies where C4 block of the size typically used for initiating industrial explosives in bore holes is often shown as leveling complete buildings.

Or war movies, where a round from a tank gun or small artillery piece completely wrecks a house. I have a handful of decommissioned 76mm tank destroyer rounds, probsbly from an M18 Hellcat - comparable to most WW2 tank guns. It's about the size of a one-liter soda bottle, and a significant portion of that is aerodynamic casing, propellant, and fuse.

It's interesting, too, to read historical accounts of sieges in the Napoleonic and earlier eras; it would take days or weeks of pounding by breaching batteries of heavy cannon to reduce masonry walls to effect a breach and allow an assault over the pile of broken rubble remaining, in a bloody, hand-to-hand melee. And often there would be so much time between firings that the defenders could rebuild new defenses in depth behind the breach. Unless a powder magazine was struck, massive damage was relatively rare.

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

#276

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anigbrowl wrote: post #257
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re bickering over a thirteen minute delay between a mistake and a correction.

A mistake that could easily have caused mass public panic and which there was no contingency in place for. That's not OK.

> could easily have caused mass public panic

Could. It didn’t. This was a mistake. You’re being irrational.

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

#278

Post by justin66 »

ju-st wrote: post #227
davidp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't a comforting thought, but: Missiles from the most likely source (North Korea) are not thought to have very good accuracy. They may be as likely to hit Kauai or the big island (or the ocean nearby) as Honolulu. I hope this event wasn't too stressful for you and your family.

They would probably send multiple warheads to increase the odds...

That's trickier than you'd think. You either have to send the warheads one well after the other, or you have to set them up so they detonate at precisely the same time, so as to avoid the first warhead to detonate destroying all the others. (This is why, at one time, missile silos were placed relatively close together. The enemy could presumably get one of them in a preemptive strike, but not all of them.)

At Korea's level of technology, for example, you'd probably just pick a secondary target in some other place entirely.

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

#279

Post by JumpCrisscross »

anigbrowl wrote: post #258
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the responsibility is on the people conducting the drill Was this a drill? I understood it to be an unplanned mistake. In either case, I agree. This was a fuck-up. I am simply saying the cause for the delay, once the mistake was made, is understandable. > You keep trotting out this excuse This is a shitty thing to say.

What's shitty about it? You posted the same thing a bunch of times and seem indifferent to the downside risk.

You’ve repeatedly, and wrongly, called it a drill. Lying is also a shitty thing to do.

I have seen your user name on HN before. I thought simple etiquette might apply to our discussions. I am sorry for presuming your civility.

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