So you’ve probably heard about Hawaii’s false alert crisis one way or another. Either through the countless (and mostly unfunny) memes its sparked or you read the news if you have an IQ of over 200. Now you may be thinking to yourself: what does this have to do with Grant’s radical technology articles he writes 9 times out of 10? Well, today we’ll be discussing this and a just a little bit of a history lesson, so stay tuned for that. Maybe even a little bit of civics, too.
Also, just in case you’re sensitive to this type of stuff; fair warning. Just to be safe this is here. (Jokes aside; this gets pretty serious).
September 26th, 1983. An officer by the name of Stanislav Petrov is on duty at the Serpukhov-15 bunker close to Moscow. In this bunker, was modern (for the time) early warning satellites which could detect nuclear bombs being deployed from anywhere. Petrov, being the highest in charge that day, was on the lookout for any suspicious activity that if he say were to immediately notify his superior officers and then counter-attack the weapons (tl;dr entire Fallout game series). Anyway, back on subject; it’s a little after midnight. It’s quiet for the time being; nothing that would arise suspicion yet. Suddenly, the most feared thing happens, bunker computers detect that the United States has launched a single (keyword) nuclear bomb. Petrov, not immediately raising the alarm (thank goodness) detected this as a computer error; as he reasoned that if the U.S. were to start a real life Fallout 4, they’d send hundreds of nukes, not just a single one. He had nothing to go off of, so they sat there like sitting ducks, hoping for the best. To their relief, there had been no actual bomb; just sunlight hitting off clouds in an odd manner.
January 13th, 2018. It’s a normal day, not a single thing that could ruin it. 8:07 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutain time. People’s phones go off with the following alert: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”. So, people being the smart people they were, panicked for roughly a few seconds before people realize it was a false alarm. Only 3 minutes later (too many minutes) officials said that they goofed up real hard and pressed a button that said “Yeah a pretty bad thing is gonna happen don’t like press me unless it’s not a drill my guy”. At 8:13 a.m. HST the government actually had to manually stop the alarm going to phones that were turned off or had no reception (which is actually scary if you think about it). Then at 8:45 a.m. {[(HST) and 38 minutes after the initial alert] AND after everybody was well aware that it was a false alarm} Hawaiian government officials sent out the second emergency alert: “There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm.” (thanks government). Later (roughly 1-3 days) a post on 4chan (please don’t get your IP stolen and go there, I’m actually serious) by an anonymous user said that there was a bomb detected from North Korea but to keep everybody cool they had to shoot it down without anybody knowing and had to send out “fake false alarm alarms”.
Now to cause even more drama; people were saying that there was a HIGH ENERGY WEAPON used on a city in Michigan (tl;dr Star Wars: A New Hope Death Star destroys Alderaan). But that hasn’t been really “proved” yet and I’m too lazy to type up another paragraph that takes the life of a turtle to read. So, I’ll end it here. Maybe this happens again next month? Hawaii Goofs Up Part 2: Electric Boogaloo? A lot is just speculation and a lot is fact: so do your homework and maybe you can find out something I don’t. Or maybe you’ll prove me wrong in the Michigan thing. Whatever you do; just double check what you read online. The internet is both helpful, dangerous, and weird.
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