A false alarm that warned of a ballistic missile headed for Hawaii sent the islands into a panic Saturday, with people abandoning cars in a highway and preparing to flee their homes until officials said the cellphone alert was a mistake.It wasn't an "exercise", Lindsay, you stupid, stupid loon.
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The emergency alert, which was sent to cellphones statewide just before 8:10 a.m., said: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
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White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said it “was purely a state exercise.”
This is the sort of mistake that should result in a rip, if not worse. One or two false alerts and if a real alert is then sent out, a lot of people will ignore it.
Hell's bells, when you go to exit Adobe Acrobat or Firefox and you have multiple tabs open, those programs ask if you really mean to close them all. How hard would it have been for a warning flag to pop up that says "You are about to issue a nuclear attack alert. Do you really want to do that?" and then another one: "Are you really sure you want to do that?"
8 comments:
When I was a kid in Coral Gables FL, deep in the Cold War, they installed a siren atop the municipal auditorium and tested it every Saturday at noon. We were close enough to hear its diesel start up before the siren sound.
One day it cranked up accidentally in the middle of the week and ran for several minutes...AFAIK, nobody took shelter.
The whole “someone pushed the wrong button” thing doesn’t make sense, as you so clearly pointed out. They seem to be trying to set it up to blame on a person or two, so this could be quite amusing to watch.
Other than to cause widespread Panic, what is even the point of a Nuke Alert in this day and age? We don't have shelters set up anymore and even if we did, the value of a 'shelter' in a full out attack is dubious at best.
On the other hand, What an Effing Doofus we have that we are back to these kinds of fears again! I had the drills when I was very little and thank goodness that the drills stopped in mid grade school. We had progressed beyond daily fear of being blown to cinders, and now with one single election we are back there again?
I know someone will equate this with something President Obama did, but the Fact is that we never had Any nuke warnings till This resident.
WTF have we done to ourselves this time
w3ski
First time since the eighties... They used to catch Soviet submarines off of the coast of California fairly regularly for a while back then, and without the internet to check up on what was happening, you had to go by the local TV stations for your info, which I didn't find very reassuring.
I'm just glad Fergus didn't start world war three over this.
-Doug in Oakland
Latest update says it happened “despite a confirmation required screen”. Wonder who they are backing the bus over?
Wolf!
Try deactivating your Facebook account. Are you sure? We can help you enjoy Facebook. Billions of people can't be wrong... I think there are 3 confirmations.
I only log on a few times a year, to change the PW and then deactivate it.
w3ski - The Swiss have shelters for their entire population (building them are part of the building code.) The Russians have (or at least had) extensive shelters around Moscow and few other large cities.
Shelters make sense unless you are in Midtown Manhattan, The Loop in Chicago or the Embarcadero in the SF Bay Area. If you can shelter for even a few days before you try to escape (9 is best - maximum of about a month) you would be exposed to significantly less radiation.
It is only Hollywood that made it seem like you have to spend forever in a shelter. Well, and I'm sure the politicians were happier spending money on pork (excuse me, earmarks.)
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