Live data from Hacker News

What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

newyorker.com

41–50 of 381 posts

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#41
post #17

I'm currently living in Japan. So obviously I have a plan for nuclear war. First, I'm going to press send on the doomsday draft which is sitting in my e-mail. Second, I'm going to go to youtube and play "We all go together" by Tom Leher. Third, I got a bottle sitting in my desk that I'm going to pop open. Presumably I'll be in the office at the time so one final round with the coworkers. The people in this article se…

I don't know about you but filling the bathtub is my instinctual reaction to anything that goes wrong. Job going badly? Fill the bathtub. Medical emergency? Fill the bathtub. Lost my house key? FILL THE BATHTUB.

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#42
If someone did launch a missile, and it were destroyed with a secret weapons system, this is precisely the timeline (alert, not a drill - passage of 30+ mins to write a cover story about shift change, “oh sorry false alarm”) and news articles I would expect to see.

The only thing we know is that we won’t ever receive the truth.

Can you imagine how much worse it would be if the story were “US anti-missile defense destroys weapon headed for Hawaii”?

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#43
> and an employee pushed the wrong button

I would assume that was how it was explained to the governor, and that the actual system is software based (right?) - there couldn't possibly be an actual physical 'ballistic missile alert' button right next to the 'shift change' button.

In which case, the triggering of this alert is probably a bit more complex. However, this is treated as a sensitive system so there likely will not be an actual post-mortem on the incident

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#44

I live in New York City and I felt a small degree of panic when the reports showed up on Twitter. However, my initial instinct was "either the system doesn't work, or someone messed up". If someone started firing missiles at the US, the risk that we'd start shooting them back seems high, and I think NYC would be a city that would get pummeled in retaliation. This is probably true for a lot of major coastal cities, es…

> However, my initial instinct was "either the system doesn't work, or someone messed up".

Why? What really surprises me the most is that this seems to be a common thought. Did that happen before? Do you simply misstrust your government so deeply that you can not even assume something important like this is done right?

Really if i would get such a message on my phone (not even sure if my country does that) i would definitly expect the worst and act like that.

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#46

Nearly forty minutes passed before a second message went out: “There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. ...“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the changeover of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button.” I've seen some shitty Admin Panels, but somebody "pushed the wrong button" and an end-of-your-world false alarm was going off for 40 minutes?! WTF?

Exactly my thoughts. Errors happen, Developers are lazy and interfaces suck. However this is definitly not a excuse, multiple things have to be completely wrong that it even could get this far.

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#47
post #32
post #17

I'm currently living in Japan. So obviously I have a plan for nuclear war. First, I'm going to press send on the doomsday draft which is sitting in my e-mail. Second, I'm going to go to youtube and play "We all go together" by Tom Leher. Third, I got a bottle sitting in my desk that I'm going to pop open. Presumably I'll be in the office at the time so one final round with the coworkers. The people in this article se…

I don't think it's as bad as you think. Check out this thread: https://twitter.com/lcamtuf/status/952265416289632256 . If shit hits the fan and you end up surviving, your help in the aftermath can be crucial.

If I survive, I'm a refugee, foreign national with minimal language skills, I'm likely in an active war zone and my nation is probably one of the belligerents. My chances don't look good.

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#48
post #35

Pedantic pet peeve: spelling it as Hawaii instead of Hawai'i

I tried shaving this yak to out-pedant you on the assumption it was a transliteration of a non-Latin language, then found that Hawai'i's written language is (apparently) recent relative to the age of the language. Also, it has a history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language

Re: What It Felt Like in Hawaii When Warning of an In-Bound Missile Arrived

#50
post #17

I'm currently living in Japan. So obviously I have a plan for nuclear war. First, I'm going to press send on the doomsday draft which is sitting in my e-mail. Second, I'm going to go to youtube and play "We all go together" by Tom Leher. Third, I got a bottle sitting in my desk that I'm going to pop open. Presumably I'll be in the office at the time so one final round with the coworkers. The people in this article se…

Fourth, wash down potassium iodide pills with the wine.

https://emergency.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

Post reply on HN