It’s breaking news and a developing story, but such a message was sent to Hawaii residents via text message and Twitter, adding that it was not a drill.
It’s the middle of the night in Hawaii, which probably lessened the collateral damage, but I’m sure there’s a lot of panic going on over there right now.
Any Hawaiian Dopers wish to comment?
Haha! The wife and I were blissfully unaware here in Waikiki and did not learn about it until after the fact. We did notice some consternation among the neighbors, but I was sitting here typing away on the Board, and nothing came over my phone. The message did come over the wife’s phone, but she was busy and did not see it, and there was no piercing sound like happens with flood alerts and such. We knew nothing at all until it was all over! If you hear on the news, like I already have, that the message came over every single phone in Hawaii, that is simply not true. Nothing on mine. Come to think of it, I never get the flood or other alerts either. The Powers That Be want me dead.
Here is the original message on the wife’s phone. It was in all caps as re-created here:
Emergency Alert
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Then a full 38 minutes later:
Emergency Alert
There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False alarm.
It took 38 minutes to issue an “all clear”. :eek:
Well shit. Now no one is going to believe the real one.
This reminds me of when I was working at The Nation newspaper in Bangkok. The Thai king’s sister was seriously ill, and everyone knew her death was imminent. Whoever was in charge of preparing the website announcement for when it actually happened was tinkering with and testing it, when he somehow sent it online live. !!! Fortunately this was around midnight or 1am, and the guy realized his mistake within minutes. I don’t know if anyone saw it, but we sure heard about it. The newspaper could have been shut down over that. Hell, executives could have faced jail time.
Just think, if it had been real, you guys could have marked the time of the strike based on the time of my last post.
Again, they keep saying on the news that every single phone in Hawaii got that message, and it’s just not true. Again, nothing on my phone.
CNN is interviewing by phone all sorts of people here in Hawaii who sound like they’ve been deeply traumatized. I dunno. Everyone in our neighborhood is having a good laugh about it. I think it’s maybe because we all realize we’ll all just kiss our asses goodbye anyway in case of the real thing.
Correct us if we’re wrong, Sam, but I’m pretty sure early afternoon in the eastern US doesn’t translate to “middle of the night” in Hawaii, as the OP said. It’s a long way to Hawaii, but it’s not exactly the other side of the world, right?
Correct, this time of year Hawaii time is five hours behind EST. (We never change our clocks.) The alert was about an hour ago, which made it about 8:25am.
Also, apparently (according to CNN) Trump was on the golf course when this all went down.
Kinda crazy to think the only thing between us and Trump impulsively launching nuclear Armageddon in response to a false alarm is the fact that he takes so much time off his real job to golf. I mean, thank God for that, but …
We are now the official laughing stock of the world. Good job with that MAGA stuff, Donald.
It took 38min. To correct. WTF??
Make America Goofy Again.
The wife now thinks she did hear a sound from her phone at the time but ignored it. That was back in the bedroom, so I didn’t hear it at all since I’m in the living room.
I wonder why I never get emergency alerts on my phone, but the wife does. It’s the same account, and her line is an adjunct to mine, which is the main line on the account.
I came here to update that. I thought Hawaii was 8 hours behind me in Central time; it’s actually 5 hours. My bad.
So, is this going to be another “War of the Worlds” thing? Anyway, it’s not like much of anything could be done if it was real. 
**RELAX. EVERYTHING IS FINE.
MINOR RADIATION LEAK. ROLL UP WIND0WS.
MELTDOWN. FLEE CITY.
CORE EXPLOSION. REPENT SINS.**
allcapsbuster
Yeah, the neighbors seemed to be a little rattled at the time, but we just thought it was normal family drama stuff and minded our own business.
No, this time of year Hawaii is only four (4) hours behind Central Time. Again, we never change our clocks, so when you change them again in a couple of months, THEN we will be five hours behind Central time. Right now, we are 4 hours behind.
It is 9:36am right now as I type this.
By the way, isn’t the Emergency Alert System supposed to give instructions on what to do, as well as provide a telephone number to contact for further information?
Or did the system just say, “Incoming Missiles, You’re All Fucked, Have a Nice Day!”
The system said EXACTLY what I showed in my post No. 2 above, no more and no less.
The main thing I’m pissed off about is this has now pushed President Chump’s “shithole countries” controversy completely out of the news.