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

You posted specific and false information. You have not amended those posts.

You then accused me of “trotting out an excuse.” I noted the incivility of that statement and, as you repeated false and specific facts, highlighted your lie.

Let me go one layer deeper. You are upset a civil notification system malfunctioned, by saying false things. That is reasonable. But in reacting to that, you said false things.

These are unfortunate mistakes. Learning should result.

Just like, I imagine, most HN readers were exposed to what happened with Apollo XIII or at Dunkirk through the eponymous movies.

But I think there should be a stronger criterion than that before saying that the lack of common knowledge of the effectiveness of DIY civil defense shelters is in part due to how nuclear hazards have been portrayed by Hollywood.

It could be because they aren't effective against the type of nuclear exchange expected during the Cold War.

Most US policy makers, including Eisenhower, were convinced that there was no good civil defense against an all-out nuclear war. This lead to MAD, and the policy of MAD demands that a country not be able to protect its citizens. This was the US policy for most of the Cold War. Which means those Hollywood films reflect US policy.

A problem is, MAD requires an effective nuclear response force, with the expectation that most citizens will die. How do you convince the citizens to fund MAD? One way is to convince them that shelters are effective, even if the high-level planners know that it isn't. This was possible early on because of the secrecy about the nuclear bomb project.

The problem is, civil defense, unlike just about all other aspects of the Cold War, requires convincing the public of its effectiveness. And the government attempts were not convincing. This helped promote anti-proliferation efforts.

Which is why I don't accept your implication that because something is "informed by ... anti-proliferation sentiments" it means that we should ignore it. Those sentiments may have a reasonable basis.

Others believed in NUTS, with the possibility of a limited nuclear exchange, which is survivable for a large country like the US. NUTS played a bigger role during the Kennedy and Reagan administrations, which is why there was more government promotion of civil defense shelters then.

I'm almost certain that Teller would be in the NUTS camp. He certainly had Reagan's ear when he oversold SDI. Even if not, there were plenty of people who were, and those are the sorts of people who would (perhaps optimistically, perhaps reasonably) push that people have a nuclear bomb shelter. Teller's support of civil defense shelters was informed by his full-nuclear-response sentiments, which also "affected public perception in a particular way."

That said, the Cold War context, the idea of having a nationwide civil defense was that, after the few weeks are over and the all-clear signal given, we would help clean up and be able to return to a life that was little different than what we had before.

The reality is that, sure, perhaps a shelter could help millions more people survive the war, but come out to what sort of reality?

And it's not just Hollywood. Even before Dr. Strangelove, there were some widely read fiction books on the topic. The ones I've know are "On the Beach" (1957), "Alas, Babylon" (1959), and "Fail-Safe" (1962). (And a shout-out to "Malevil" (1972), which was the first 'modern' (post-Verne) French science fiction story I read.)

Again, the question isn't if they affected public perception "in a particular way", but rather if they lead to a more complete understanding of the topic.

And I don't think Hollywood's portrayal was much different than what was already well-known at the high policy levels, which is why I don't think it's right to single them out.

This kind of accident has happened many times in the history of the Emergency Alert System (EAS)[1] and the earlier Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). The false alarm of 1971[2] actually revealed a major flaw in the EBS. During the incident, a legitimate national alert initiation message was erroneously broadcast instead of the scheduled test message. Many stations did not propagate the message as required because of confusion caused by receiving it within the time window of a scheduled test. Interestingly, this revealed a major flaw in the system in the event of a real emergency: that an adversary could time its attack with a test broadcast of the EBS, rendering the system generally ineffective.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System#Inciden...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Broadcast_System#Fal...

CNN are not very objective on government issues... hopefully this was a video interview and not a "quote" ... (because videos are a bit harder to fake).

It reminds me of this story from Thomas Watson of IBM:

A young executive had made some bad decisions that cost the company several million dollars. He was summoned to Watson’s office, fully expecting to be dismissed. As he entered the office, the young executive said, "I suppose after that set of mistakes you will want to fire me." Watson was said to have replied, "Not at all, young man, we have just spent a couple of million dollars educating you."