Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 381 posts

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

#121

Post by pault »

matte_black wrote: post #113
0xdada wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What software development skills will be most useful in a post-apocalyptic world?

I would think basic knowledge of electrical engineering, solar & battery technology, radio, and mesh networking would make you pretty handy. Front end developers will be the first ones in the stew pot.

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

#122

Post by lovethebombs »

nkurz wrote: post #90

I saw a high-effort self-post on Reddit that gave a good framework for evaluating what might have happened. I thought it was good enough that I've recopied it here in full hoping that author appreciates reaching a larger audience and that discussion here might be better than that on Reddit. Repeating, I'm not the author of what's written below. --- A couple of possibilities for what REALLY went down in Hawaii yesterd…

Since we are in conspiracy territory, it could also be a staged "false alert", but not to distract from Trump policy, but to confront Trump with the reality of nuclear warfare.

He was on Twitter a few days back talking about whose nuclear button is bigger. If Trump is triggerhappy and willing to sacrifice millions to salvage his ego, then maybe some footage of children huddled up, crying and thinking the world is about to end, will instill a sense of reverence for life.

Under Obama in 2010, we had Obama defunding part of the nuclear missile program, and in the same week, entire nuclear grids went offline due to an unexplained bug. This also send a clear signal to the commander in chief.

> The Air Force swears there was no panic. But for three-quarters of an hour Saturday morning, launch control officers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming couldn't reliably communicate or monitor the status of 50 Minuteman III nuclear missiles. Gulp.

> The incident comes at a particularly tricky time for the Obama administration, which is struggling to get the Senate to ratify a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. In conservative political circles, there's a distrust of the nuclear cuts – and a demand that they be matched with investments in atomic weapon upgrades. Saturday's shutdown will undoubtedly bolster that view.

https://www.wired.com/2010/10/communications-dropped-to-50-n...

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

#123

Post by ataturk »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #38

I think it's safe to assume the 100,000+ Iraqi civilians killed in the conflict in Iraq received no such warning. It's shameful how completely unaware most Americans are of the terror their MIC imposes on others. Ironically, this incident in HI will feed the collective fears and the wrath of the MIC will extend further still. The opportunity to question the status quo will be lost.

You can lay blame to all of that (and more) on the Bush Family and their associates. The "MIC" is those families, the people who sit on the boards of directors, combined with some really awful international elites. Bush Sr. initiated the first war in the Gulf by tricking Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait. The second Bush used 9/11 as his casus belli to "get Saddam." I still think the Bush's themselves had a hand in 9/11--it only makes sense given how much they and their faction benefited from all of it. It was trillions of dollars on MIC expenditures while everything else--US schools, infrastructure, everything, wilted.

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

#124

Post by microcolonel »

0xdada wrote: post #32
IIAOPSW wrote: 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.

lcamtuf has also put together a more comprehensive guide to evaluating and preparing for disasters, which I find is pretty darn good.

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/

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

#125

Post by SilasX »

IIAOPSW wrote: 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’m not sure if you were trying to be funny, but you can’t expect YouTube to work through doomsday.

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

#126

Post by anigbrowl »

hugozap wrote: post #92
sdrothrock wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also in Japan, and I have a pretty serious go-bag for this kind of thing. It's because of political tensions for me; we're in spitting distance of North Korea.

What surprises me is that the foreigners in Japan are the ones who are scared about that situation, Japanese people don't care that much.

Western people are largely indoctrinated with the idea of life being sacred and the necessity to protect it all costs; many Asian cultures are much more matter-of-fact about death as the worldview is more cyclical than teleological and reincarnation is quietly assumed as the natural order of things.

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

#127

Post by laretluval »

macintux wrote: post #82
tome wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hawaii does not seem like a plausible target for a nuclear missile.

Why not? Until recently it was one of the few places North Korea could reasonably expect to reach.

What would NK have to gain by nuking Hawaii? It would cause the US to retaliate massively, while not doing serious damage to its military capabilities.

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

#128

Post by mfukar »

ourmandave wrote: post #40

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?

What sort of procedure do you imagine is in place for a 'false-alarm' type of situation like this?

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

#129

Post by ataturk »

ashleyn wrote: post #14
brndnmtthws wrote: post #2

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…

Growing up I got the impression that a fallout shelter was a purpose-specific room deep underground. So every time I saw the "Fallout Shelter" sign on a building, I figured it was built with one of these "secret underground rooms". Think dedicated, locked stairwell that goes a thousand feet underground; after all, that's how it was pictured in my "Way Things Work" book. When we went to the bank, it was something of a…

"Growing up" those shelters were considered around smaller, kiloton and low-megaton sized weaponry. The whole civil defense project fell apart after the 1950s once 100 Megaton hydrogen bombs become the norm. There's no sheltering from a city killer inside of a city, hence the reason the US quit pretending there was.

I still like Switzerland's idea of civil defense, but then nobody is going to attack the place where all the world's criminals keep their wealth anyways, so even there it's a complete sham.

I only get two posts on here because HN mods hate me, so I'm going to just add this: You don't have to worry about North Korea. At. All. The threat is already over.

As far as the false alarm in HI goes, maybe ask questions in the direction of "who is it that would like to embarass the current US Administration?"

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

#130

Post by booleandilemma »

pault wrote: post #121
matte_black wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What software development skills will be most useful in a post-apocalyptic world?

I would think basic knowledge of electrical engineering, solar & battery technology, radio, and mesh networking would make you pretty handy. Front end developers will be the first ones in the stew pot.

For most developers there is no overlap with what they know about software and the things listed above.
Post reply on HN