Serious question: for those of you reading this, how would you have responded in those 30 minutes?
calm down the population, because the nuke wasn't gonna land
Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
291–300 of 409 posts
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no real harm was done I wish to believe, but probably there was real harm, probably someone will come up with some million figures. Statistically, probably someone died during those minutes of terror and someone will try to attribute to this incident. What is interesting that employee probably meant no harm, but compare this to that SWAT murder a month earlier. The prankster meant no harm either, but he's going to…
>What is interesting that employee probably meant no harm, but compare this to that SWAT murder a month earlier. Swatting is intentional, triggering the alert wasn't (at least, so it seems). It's not like the operator pressed the button knowing that it would trigger an alert and expected it not to be taken seriously; he didn't mean to trigger the alert at all.
What I am pointing at is the paradox of intention.
Ongoing car slams into you and kills your whole family while you were driving drunk; you go to jail for manslaughter and get sued by other driver for all you've got.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
When news reports quoted the White House saying it was an exercise (which they did) I was naturally inclined to take that at face value. Here is one example.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/368907-white-hous...
Furthermore, allow me to quote from the NY Times story on which we are commenting:
Officials said the alert was the result of human error and not the work of hackers or a foreign government. The mistake occurred during a shift-change drill that takes place three times a day at the emergency command post, according to Richard Rapoza, a spokesman for the agency. (emphasis added)
Now you're accusing me of lying. Previously you thought my disagreement with your dismissal of the issue was shitty and you accused me of being irrational. You are in no position to complain about civility.
Please retract your false accusation.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm always a bit shocked at the number of people here calling for someone's head in this sort of situation. I imagine the same people would downvote to oblivion anyone who came on here and wrote something like: "The only way we're going to get better software is by firing people who write bugs and make sure they never work in the industry again."
I'd say we just don't have enough information. It's possible someone deserves to be fired for this - e.g. if the alarm was intentional or negligent. It's also possible it was a misclick, confusing UI, etc, in which the person or people who should be fired are those who designed the system such that a simple mistake could set it off. There is a third possibility too - that some unpredictable alignment of factors means…
But there are certain jobs where the job is to get it right 100% of the time. This sort of mistake is extremely damaging in the unlikely scenarios that there would be an actual alert. A significant proportion of the population will ignore it next time because of this. You can’t take the “shits happen”, “break often and break fast”, “it doesn’t matter because we learn from our mistakes” attitude with everything. And in general with anything that has to do with nuclear energy & weapons. Or take a swat team to take another recent example of a really bad mistake.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#295An 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…
The fact that they are laughing at you does not mean that you are not actually living in lala land. The whole 'prepper/suvivalism' movement took a big hit after Sandy Hook. To date survivalists have caused more deaths than their preparations have saved.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#296Meanwhile, Trump went ahead and finished his 18 holes of golf while 1.5 million Americans were told a ballistic missile was headed their way.
To be frank I prefer him distracted, as opposed to overreacting and deciding to launch a retaliatory strike. I'm disinclined to trust people who announce themselves publicly as 'a very stable genius'.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
gangs have an hierarchy, experience with violence and disregard of ethics. if you and your "brothers in arms" are veterans you have pretty good odds otherwise not so much.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#298Ok, I hope that the people who got scared shitless by this emergency start doing something against nuclear weapons. It's ludicrous: We can all die any day and ICAN, the people who helped to pass the ban on nuclear weapons and got Nobel prize for it are raising money at a rate of $50 a day.
ICAN got nuclear weapons banned? I.e. they got a bunch of non-nuclear states to sign an agreement about nuclear weapons? Maybe they’d be getting more funding if they weren’t so damn worthless.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#299Doesn't everyone know that the best defense against such an attack is: "duck and cover"? Further, the desks of school children could be used as shelter/cover since everyone knows that these desks are made of the most powerful adamantium/vibranium alloy.
That is in fact what you should do during an earthquake, which is the closest equivalent to a nuclear blast in terms of suddenness and potential destructive impact.
Re: Alert About Missile Bound for Hawaii Was Sent in Error, Officials Say
#300Serious question: for those of you reading this, how would you have responded in those 30 minutes?
I would seek shelter in a subway station. It’s not perfect in terms of protection, because the ventilation system would pump in radioactivity as long as there’s still power. But it would allow me to get to any place 20km away from city center without going above ground once. Or, you know, a vodka soda.
Some lines, like part of the M1 metro line in Warsaw, are somewhat prepared to serve as a shelter.