No, not him. This is what the guy I saw sounds like.
Anyone who saw Spies Like Us would know what to do in the case of imminent nuclear disaster.
Hawaii doper here.
…Uh, so this happened. Huh. Don’t watch mainstream news much anymore, so I missed it. Yeah, kinda stupid.
Basically, I just can’t wrap my head around who’d want to attack us. A foreign leader who hates what Trump stands for? Listen, once we’re out of high school, our choices are 1. add something of value to society or 2. move to Alaska, and if you espouse Nazi views, getting punched in the face is the best-case scenario. WE hate what Trump stands for. Terrorism? What the hell do we have worth destroying? Heck, if you took out Aloha Stadium, you’d be doing us a favor! Way too into it World War 2 reenactor? Just not seeing it.
Well, say what you will about our ridiculous blunders, they don’t get lots of people killed and we fix them. That’s worth quite a bit in my book.
I doubt North Korea could hit us even if they tried. And they’d get only one chance before they were toast themselves.
I doubt North Korea could hit us even if they tried. And they’d get only one chance before they were toast themselves.
The cell phone alerts are really basic. IIRC they’re limited to something like 90 or 100 characters, so there’s not much room for more than a really basic summary of what’s happening. The TV alert I saw a video of did tell people to remain indoors. I think a phone number would be incredibly unhelpful, though, and would just encourage people to clog the lines.
The headquarters of the Pacific Fleet.
“There’s terrible phone reception in this secure bunker. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
"Welcome to the Oh Shit Hotline. We’re sorry, all our operators are hiding in the basement at the moment, please hold and we’ll be with you as soon as…BOOM
pffffft. Rather is just in the pocket of Big Little Paper Umbrella.
Trump’s response to the Hawaiian alert is amusing. His very first tweet after the mistake was
The “Fake News” was the missile attack? Several hours later the White House issued a retraction:
So what was the alert? “Fake News” or “state exercise”? Spoiler alert: It was neither.
…pushed a [single] button and sent the emergency messages…
Fools need the two click rule.
What concerns me is trump being woken and told that an incoming missile is headed for Hawaii. I don’t think he has any golf courses there, but he may order a counter attack anyway.
There’s a Trump Hotel in downtown Waikiki. He was worried.
This time they did. But the cost is the system’s credibility. Future safety warnings are more likely to be ignored, even when genuine, with whatever harmful consequences that entails.
From launch to impact is estimated to be 37 minutes assuming North Korea is the aggressor (See here). The steps you outline would probably take 10-15 minutes even under ideal circumstances - cutting the effective warning time almost in half. Getting it absolutely right, but too late to do any good is, IMHO, worse than the occasional false alarm.
You mean to tell me that there is a “button” that has “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” some how attached to it and that no one had to type this particular specific message into the system?
Is there another “button” for “Tsunami threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter.”?
And another one for a meteor threat, an Alien invasion and Godzilla?
The idea that the alert could be sent out accidentally by “one person during a shift change” is complete BS.
Hawaii state is without a doubt incompetent, but there is no way the alert system didn’t already have a two person (at least) multi layered fail safe program in place to prevent accidental alerts.
There probably is. Have you ever seen email replies and such that have pre-written templates to respond? It is not that unlikely that there is in fact a file in the system that has many warnings for different eventualities.
Rather than having people come up with the warning while a missile is incoming, they have pre-scripted warnings.
Most likely, the drill does involve using the EBS to warn the residents, and the drill is probably supposed to do everything up to actually sending the message. Meaning that it is to the point where it just requires one more button push to send it.
That button got pushed. Oops.
Very likely
Unlikely, but they probably have pre-scripted warnings for weather events, volcanic activity and other emergencies that actually can happen.
And it is not impossible that someone in the system went ahead and loaded it up with warnings for less likely events, like your examples there, but I 'd say not too likely.
How much do you know about how the EBS works to make such a definitive statement?
The staffer who caused the kerfuffle did have to press a second time after the screen asked, “Are you sure you want to do this”/ (Reports are it literally asks this.) So he needed a three-click rule. They’ve just changed it to where two guys have to go through the procedure now.
Downtown Waikiki? :dubious: There’s a downtown Honolulu, but Waikiki is just Waikiki. It’s a small little section of Honolulu. There is a Chump Tower (and Hotel) very close to where we live, just a few blocks away. Not nice enough for him though, as the piece-of-trash president stayed at a different place even closer to us when he and his Eastern European were here not long ago.
Indeed, as the Japanese knew. There’s a reason Hawaii, so far from the rest of the country, is a state, and that is its strategic military value.
The problem wasn’t really the alert that was sent out. Obviously, it isn’t exactly optimal to send such things, but the bigger problem was the response.
It should have been less than a minute to inform the public of the false alert. A few minutes would have been longer than it should have been.
38 minutes is unacceptable.
While preventing the false alert from happening again is important, the priority should be on why the response was so delayed, and how to make it faster in the future.