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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

#341

Post by ramses0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #333
joering2 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a source! If you reason that survivalists have caused some many death because Lanza was survivalist, then lets continue with your thought process: - Lanza was white - hence to date white people have caused more deaths than their preparations have saved. - Lanza was male - hence to date men have caused more deaths than their preparations have saved. - Lanza was a minor - hence to date minors have caused more deat…

Yes, you've missed something. If the lady had not been a prepper then she would not have brought a whole bunch of guns into a house with a kid that was clearly having problems. And instead of preparing for the problems that she never had she might have spent more time on the problems that she - and he - clearly did have. Being white, male or a minor has nothing to do with it.

So to clarify, does this describe the gist of your original sentiment? "She was a prepper. She prepped for nuclear war. Her son had problems. She did not prep her son for day-to-day life problems, and her son used her weapons to kill people. Therefore, being a prepper has killed people."

Honestly trying to understand your POV.

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

#342

Post by CodeWriter23 »

TillE wrote: post #169
runesoerensen wrote: post #65

So it took 38 minutes to send out a new message informing this was a false alert. How is that possible if this was simply a human error during a "shift change"? You'd think the people who "pressed the wrong button" would be able to press the same button again?

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.

Or if you didn’t want to disclose missile defense capabilities.

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

#343

Post by CodeWriter23 »

roywiggins wrote: post #323
anigbrowl wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The State of Hawaii is spending time and money suing the feds over several things right now. The politicians in charge would probably love to blame this on someone else. The control room is probably staffed by underpaid state employees who aren't paid enough to take part in a government coverup for no good reason.

Actually, underpaid workers are ripe for recruitment by “evildoers”. Not that I think that is what happened, just sharing how the spy trade really works.

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

#344

Post by knz »

exabrial wrote: post #264
Houshalter wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to see people react. There are lots of stories of people dying in disasters because they didn't take it seriously. E.g. sirens blaring for a tornado alert, and people are just continue mowing their lawns. Or people continue eating their meal when the building is on fire, who ended up dying.

Tornado alley lifer here... they're a different story. They process slowly (10mph-30mph), the vast majority of them in the USA will move SW to NE, they usually have a very narrow damage track (100yards), and are usually very visible on weather radar as bright wind sheer. My point being, if you can see a tornado coming, you'll have ample time to take shelter in a basement [or if you're in an unpopulated area, you can…

I've heard dozens of tornado sirens and watched people ignore them in the 10+ years I've lived in Minnesota.

I've also experienced being caught in the middle of a tornado outbreak (30 in 90 minutes, a couple were over mile wide) while driving across southern Minnesota. We sheltered at a Walmart and were quite alarmed that no locals seemed to take it seriously, even when the roof partially lifted off and cars started getting tossed around in the parking lot.

IIRC the State recently switched to more localized warnings (not county wide) due to people ignoring the sirens.

I'm also pretty sure that "you can see tornadoes coming" is poor advice, especially since they often come at night or with significant rainfall.

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

#345

Post by josephjrobison »

userbinator wrote: post #319
blantonl wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 o…

More than reminds, it was a direct paraphrase!

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

#346

Post by Houshalter »

strken wrote: post #329
blhack wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think prepping is ridiculous, but it's precisely because I know the nature of humanity. (Among a bunch of other reasons.) Could you share this insight? The US gov't recommends that you do some amount of emergency preparedness ("prepping"): https://www.ready.gov/build-a-kit

Having 72 hours of shelter/water/food, a first aid kit, and some other bits and pieces is not how prepping is colloquially used. Given a disaster with a 1% yearly chance, and a lifespan of 80 years, lifetime odds of encountering that disaster are close to 50%. Given a disaster with a 0% or a 0.000001% chance, lifetime odds are still pretty close to zero. Disaster preparedness worries about the 1%, prepping worries ab…

You really think the probability of such a disaster is 0.000001% per year? The cold war wasn't that long ago and came very close to the brink a number of times. If we were just lucky, and there is an expected rate of 1 nuclear war every 73 years, that already gets us over your 1% threshold. And nuclear war is far from the only risk. Nuclear weapons are already 70 year old tech, we are always progressing towards scarier technologies. I think your estimate is off by a factor of a million.

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

#348

Post by Matt3o12_ »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #303
ghaff wrote: post #164

Earlier 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 would argue that someone probably deserves to be fired for this. It's obviously not the guy that pushed the button nor the guy that wrote the software. However, there was, probably, a guy that several years ago didn't do his job well - his job was to make sure that this kind of errors cannot happen, unless there is an intentional malicious action of course. We see it all the time in IT - people totally misjudge the…

There is hardly just one person responsible for doing this. There was at least one developer who implemented this solution, at least “designer” that can up with a solution for the initial problem, a dozen managers who oversaw that whole project, up to the minister who must have been aware of this problem. Let alone everybody who ever worked with this system and never reported that “bug”. So if you want to fire someone, start at the top for not overseeing this correctly or hiring the wrong person for the job and then work your way to the bottom.

I believe it is much better to fix it (require a second authentication before sending those massages) and search for similar problems within the whole department to make sure something like this never happens again. Make sure everybody, including new hires, are aware of this incident, what the consequences were and that everybody is encouraged to report similar bugs and nobody has to be afraid to be fired when they make a mistake. Otherwise you just create an environment where everybody blames anybody but themselves and the “smallest” guy gets fired for mistakes other’s. This way, things get never fixed probably because everyone ist just afraid of the consequences.

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

#349

Post by fapjacks »

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."

So, people on the mainland are reacting differently than people in Hawaii. But this is not unexpected. When you live in such an isolated and vulnerable place, you are prepared for events which take a turn for the worst. I sort of figured people on the mainland would be clutching pearls and calling for the firing of the employee. But we have "false alarms" in Hawaii occasionally (e.g. with tsunami warnings which fizzle out). Most people on the island take the more reasonable position that we seem to have our ducks in a row for alerting, and I'll take an occasional misfired false positive over a false negative. It won't lessen my community's readiness if the real thing happens. Call it a really true-to-life drill. If you don't live in Hawaii and are having this kind of weird panicked reaction to a mistake, perhaps give yourself a minute to really take stock about your perspective on life. It was a mistake, and maybe even helped us become better prepared.

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

#350

Post by lsc »

Feniks wrote: post #232
bilbo0s wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, at a more fundamental level... when you're dealing with processes as critical as this one... there should be no single point of failure. Even our President has a backup, a failsafe, and a safeguard for the purposes we're discussing here. And that backup has a backup, a failsafe, and a safeguard. Etc etc etc.

Not really true. Thanks to advances in technology POTUS had 10 minutes to launch by the 1970s before Washington was toast. It was an open secret that nuclear retaliation could be instigated without White House or even Pentagon approval if the Soviets tried to decapitate Nato.

"Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost if you KEEP IT A SECRET!"

A rational player would only put effort into a retaliatory strike capability to the extent that actually having a retaliatory strike capability strengthened the enemy's perception that they would be obliterated if they struck first.

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