People in Hawaii got an alert over their mobile phones that turned out to be wrong.
Omg pic.twitter.com/ZbDTL1rcaF
— Michelle Broder Van Dyke (@michellebvd) January 13, 2018
It was also on tv, and there are reports of sirens going off.
But it turns out that it seems to have been, uh, a drill.
PACOM in my Inbox: "USPACOM has detected no ballistic missile threat to Hawaii. Earlier message was sent in error. State of Hawaii will send out a correction message as soon as possible."
— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) January 13, 2018
HAWAII – THIS IS A FALSE ALARM. THERE IS NO INCOMING MISSILE TO HAWAII. I HAVE CONFIRMED WITH OFFICIALS THERE IS NO INCOMING MISSILE. pic.twitter.com/DxfTXIDOQs
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) January 13, 2018
NO missile threat to Hawaii.
— Hawaii EMA (@Hawaii_EMA) January 13, 2018
And then comes the commentary.
Who is being fired for mistakenly sending out an emergency alert of an incoming ICBM headed towards Hawaii? What if the President had been scrolling through Twitter and saw that?
We could all be dead by now because someone messed up and POTUS decided to Twitter-Order a response
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) January 13, 2018
This is for my friends in Hawaii.https://t.co/yTFZD1PdCF
— Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) January 13, 2018
https://twitter.com/harries_matthew/status/952251376876351488
This happened in the pre-digital age, but social media changes things quite a bit: This Message from NORAD Announced Global Nuclear War—In 1971 https://t.co/jbN8dTmvsy
— Ankit Panda (@nktpnd) January 13, 2018
I’ll update when I’ve got reliable information on what went wrong. I’m seeing several possibilities on my Twitter stream.
Meanwhile, open thread!
Davis X. Machina
Happy drones, working towards the Führer, building the case for preventative war against North Korea.
“Because next time it might not be a drill…”
ETA Nice to see Tulsi Gabbard doing something useful for a change.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Somebody’s career is over today.
No Drought No More
My initial reaction is to hope it was a simple mistake but to also suspect it of being a black-psych operation, the type to which the Dick Cheney’s in the United States government are so wedded. That is to say, is IS meant to prepare us all for next war they intend to launch in our name.
Davis X. Machina
@Aardvark Cheeselog: Except if they get promoted for it.
Suzanne
Holy shit. I cannot imagine.
And because of the PO(tU)S, absolutely everyone believed it was real, I bet.
germy
I remember the “Child of the ’50s” comedy album. Robert Klein said he grew up hearing sirens every day at noon. Test drills. Then he wondered “what if the Russians bomb us at noon?” He imagined them saying “We’ll bomb them during lunch!”
He and his classmates were issued dog tags. “In the event your bodies are burned beyond recognition,” was how it was explained to them.
Cheryl Rofer
Another Scott
It’s a good thing that Bradley P. Moss, Esq. is on top of things and knows everything about the emergency alert system in Hawaii and what happens when it’s activated. Having people like him overseeing our safety and security – people who have never made a mistake and have always been in a system that has never made a mistake – is such a comfort in these trying times.
:-/
Who was it that said that Twitter turns everyone into an idiot?
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is glad he has continued to successfully resist the temptation to sign up to Twitter.)
Major Major Major Major
Tulsi Gabbard has a low battery for 8am on a Saturday!
Baud
I took a nap and now it’s April 1.
Baud
Technically, still a risk.
SFBayAreaGal
I have a friend who is temporarily working on the island of Oahu and she posted the alert on Facebook as well as this:
“It took 38 mins for them to send out an alert that this was a false alarm. An error. We evacuated to a shelter. With no clue what was really going on. I’m still shaking. I need a drink.”
Mike J
When you have a drill, do not include the words, “this is not a drill” in case it leaks. In fact, maybe include the words, “this is a drill.”
Everyone I know in radio has a story about some guy who grabbed the red EBS cart when they were supposed to run the test.
Major Major Major Major
This is just trump reminding us that he’s keeping us safe.
Baud
At least we know the missile alert system works.
Arclite
Yeah, I was asleep in bed when I got that alert. Not fun. Then it took authorities an hour to send a second alert, canceling the first. I grew up across the river from the Groton sub base in CT, so I’m no stranger to the nuclear threat. There were no sirens going off or anything, so I figured it was a hack or something.
That being said, I guess it would be a good idea to create a grab bag with some energy bars, water, and potassium iodide pills for this contingency. DPRK doesn’t have miniaturized nukes yet, but it’s just a matter of time before they get something they can stick on a missile.
d58826
But see how easy a mistake could escalate in a tense situation like the 38th parallel. In 1983 nuclear war was averted because a Russian officer took the time to double check something. That also was a time of heightened tension due to Saint Ronulus the Unready and his loose talk about nuclear war.
There was an incident in the 60’s when the BMEWS early warning radars first went on line. The radar lightup with incoming missiles and since it was the height of the cold war every one thought that this was IT. Fortunately some very cool/levelheaded field commanders realized that the computers were not resolving target locations. Someone also asked where was the soviet leadership. The answer was at the UN. They didn’t think that the USSR would start WWIII with the Soviet PM in New York. What they realized was the radar was so powerful it was returning echos from the raising moon.
Given the NK power structure there might not be any one around Kim who would be brave (or suicidal) enough to double check before pushing the button. Unfortunately there might not be anyone in DC either.
Ryan
“HAWAII – THIS IS A FALSE ALARM. THERE IS NO INCOMING MISSILE TO HAWAII. I HAVE CONFIRMED WITH OFFICIALS THERE IS NO INCOMING MISSILE”
Of course that’s what we would expect to hear… from North Korean hackers!
Baud
@Mike J: This may or may not be a drill.
raven
Grab your cocks and pull up your socks, Charlie is in the wire!!!
Arclite
@Suzanne:
Hawaii officials have been prepping for this over the past 6 months or so. That they are putting these alerts in place is a sign of good government, despite today’s mistake. And yes, Trump’s belligerence is partly spurring this action.
trollhattan
Hawaiians have been paying close attention to all things North Korean the last couple years. For no discernible reason I’m on Hawaii state rep Gene Ward’s mailing list and received a Town Hall North Korea disaster preparedness invite back in November. I’m sure that was a fascinating conversation.
Mike J
@Baud: Schrödinger’s drill.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Because of Trump, there was a decent chance the missile was coming from the mainland.
Arclite
No sirens went off in Honolulu. I live less than a mile from the capitol.
Mike J
@Arclite:
Fill your bathtub, sinks, and every pot and pan with water. It’s easy to use literal tons of water. You cannot have too much of it stored if there’s a chance you might be without. If you’re near the beach maybe even consider having a solar still (or the stuff to throw one together). They’re slow and inefficient but don’t require anything other than seawater and sunshine.
Davis X. Machina
“I think you’ll all agree with me that this just underscores the necessity of doing something about North Korea, and soon — like before the mid-term elections.”
Arclite
My daughter had swim practice at Punahou school (yes, where Obama went). The coaches took precaution and sheltered the kids in the basement of the gym until the all clear.
It’s good to see people responding properly to these alerts, even when they turn out to be false.
John Revolta
In 1959 in Chicago when the White Sox won the pennant, the Parks Commissioner thought it would be a good idea to set off all the air raid sirens all over town. At 11:30 PM. Hilarity ensued.
Scott Alloway
@Arclite: You a Whaler? I’m Class of 68.
Arclite
@Mike J:
I live in an apartment, and will have to shelter in the basement. After receiving the warning, I’ll have ten minutes to shelter, so there probably won’t be time for that.
d58826
Well according to Twitter the bright side of all of this is Der Fuhrer was out on the golf course so his little hands weren’t close to his big button. Since it was an Obama admin. official tweeting it I suspect a strong snark factor was involved.
Fair Economist
@Mike J:
Seems obvious but…
Arclite
@Scott Alloway: I’m a Lancer. I lived in Quaker Hill near Conn College and the CG Academy, and went to Waterford High, ’87 grad. Then to UConn, ’92 grad.
Chyron HR
Fixed the typo.
trollhattan
@Mike J:
Is that when you simultaneously have a cavity have no cavity?
d58826
I’m old enough to remember the duck and cover drills in school. They would show a film of what Hiroshima looked like after the a-bomb was dropped and then explained to us how hiding under our desks would keep us safe. Even at 10 years old that didn’t make a lot of sense.
Major Major Major Major
@Arclite: true.
dmsilev
Why would Trump care if some exotic foreign country like Hawaii was attacked?
smedley the uncertain
POTUS establishing himself as a war time president is a great way to perpetuate himself in office.
Even to the extent of cancelling elections or invalidating other candidates. Just sayin…
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
That tune will change at some point.
Emerald
@d58826: I did lots of duck and cover drills under my desk. I even remember one practice evacuation, where we walked home from school all together (those of us going in the same direction).
Entirely out in the open, of course.
jimmiraybob
MADACA! Make America Duck and Cover Again! (And just when I was worried that all my early childhood training in D & C was going to go to waste.)
Mike J
@debbie: Not if there was an actual drill going on. It has happened several times in the past. When you do a drill, you should practice exactly what you would do if it were real. So somebody did exactly what they would do and hit the alarm button instead of the test button.
The Dangerman
Trump: “All they talk about is my calling those horrible places shitholes; what can we do to change the topic?”
Hawaii: “Hold my beer.”
Suzanne
I’m finally feeling like we’re great again! Woohoo!
rikyrah
this is crazy.
CRAZY!!
CaseyL
@Mike J: There should be a [Are You Sure?] message after they hit the alarm button, like ordinary computers do when you’re about to delete a document. Even if it isn’t a drill but a real attack. Because if you don’t have time for a confirmatory step, there’s no point in issuing the alarm anyway.
Scott Alloway
@Arclite: My brother’s three boys are Lancers. Two are still in WHS. I grew up in New London near the Sound Lab and across from EB. Still remember the missile crisis in 62 with the subs heading out. The fears of those days are returning with Trump’s actions.
d58826
@Emerald: We lived right behind the volunteer fire company. It had the usual fire siren and of course the air raid siren. During the Cuban missile crisis, every time the siren went off we held our breath until we head the first fire engine heading out to the fire. Was uncharitable but was never so happy that someones house was on fire rather than……………..
Soprano2
My husband’s son in Hawaii called us about this and left a message; all I could hear was inbound nuclear missle to Hawaii. I googled fast and was relieved to find it was an error. I texted him about it. I hope he got it.
rikyrah
This is so sad.
Adam L Silverman
http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0910/sound-advice-from-dr-strangelove-i-submitted-this-already-bi-demotivational-poster-1256447843.jpg
jimmiraybob
If this had been announced on Fox & Friends I assume that there would have been a massive retaliatory attack on someone somewhere. Probably Hillary. Maybe NK. Possibly the UK.
Arclite
@Scott Alloway:
Yeah, I’d have dreams of the nuclear flash only to wake up with the sun streaming through my window and onto my face. My folks still live in Quaker Hill, although I live in Hawaii now, and my brother in Spain. Still, I love CT. Great people and a beautiful state.
PJ
Well, Cole’s hero Chelsea Manning has decided to primary MD Senator Ben Cardin (D) this year. https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/chelsea-manning-files-to-run-for-u-s-senate-in-maryland.html . I’m sure that will end well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There was that incident in 1984 were the Soviet early warning system was seeing false launches from the US at the Soviet Union. The only reason we are still alive today is the officers in charge didn’t trust their equipment.
Redshift
xkcd about Twitter and earthquakes seems apropos…
rikyrah
I’ve said for awhile that the goal was to kill these American Citizens.
Puerto Ricans Have Been Committing Suicide Nearly Every Day After Hurricane Maria, Report Shows
Source: Newsweek Magazine
PUERTO RICANS HAVE BEEN COMMITTING SUICIDE NEARLY EVERY DAY AFTER HURRICANE MARIA, A NEW REPORT SHOWS
BY MARIA PEREZ ON 1/13/18 AT 8:00 AM
The rate of suicide increased to nearly a suicide a day in Puerto Rico in November, according to a recent report released by The Commission for the Prevention of Suicide. At least 227 people committed suicide on the island last year, a 16 percent increase compared to 2016, according to the report released Tuesday from the commission, which is part of the Department of Health of Puerto Rico.
After Hurricane Maria, 26 people took their own lives in November, or nearly one person a day. The suicide report also found that 85 percent of suicides are committed by men, and 14 percent are committed by women. Many health specialists and doctors said the spike in suicides can be linked to the aftermath of the storm that struck the island on September 20 and the destruction of basic resources like food, water, electricity and housing.
“If someone is in a position where they do not have any electricity, water or a roof over their head, you’re going to either break and sometimes break to the point of committing suicide,” said Alicia Schwartz, a home care nurse from New York City, who volunteered in Puerto Rico through the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union after Maria hit the island.“You can only live so much without the simple necessities of having a roof over your head.”
Dr. Kenira Thompson, who is in charge of providing mental health services at the Ponce Health Sciences University in Puerto Rico, said she has seen a rise in patients since the storm. “A lot of patients are presenting severe mental health issues since the storm and the number of patients in our clinic has increased dramatically,” said Thompson. “Not one person that has lived through the storm can’t say they weren’t touched by what happened.”
Baud
@PJ: I blame Obama.
rikyrah
in moderation, please help
JMG
The problem with false alerts like this one, besides the big one of scaring people out of their wits for no reason, is that it will cause X number of people to distrust and hence ignore the alert system if it sounds for a much more likely natural disaster (tsunami in Hawaii’s case).
Mary G
My clearest memory of duck and cover is that they said if we were out on the playground girls should crouch and pull their dresses up over their heads. It caused an uproar with boys worried about catching cooties and girls fearing death by embarrassment. I just thought it was stupid because even at six it was obviously useless to think a yard of cotton would be any help at all.
Timurid
@raven:
Inside the wire? He’s already in the White House…
Baud
@Mary G: I…have never heard of that. How creepy.
Mike J
@Redshift: Earthquakes won’t have paid posters spreading disinfo the way a real attack would.
We’ll have to get by with twitter’s standard amount of disinfo.
Jager
When I first got into radio, there were 3 scripts provided to radio and television stations in case of nuclear attack, the last was “attack is eminent”. All the stations recorded them, because, hey who the hell could go on the air and let people know missiles were on the way and life as we knew it was over. The news director did the recording for my first station, he did the attack eminent recording and signed it off, “this is_________ and thanks for listening.”
Adria McDowell
Holy fucking shit.
@Chyron HR: I am fucking WEAK!! Lol!
Adria McDowell
@rikyrah: I will never forgive this administration or anyone associated with it.
That story you posted about that baby girl….heartrending.
germy
Ben Cardin is considered one of the more liberal members of the Senate, generally siding with his party on all major issues.
So I guess it’s time for him to go.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Cardin spoke out against Russia, Russian tool primaries him. Not confusing.
mike in dc
@PJ: Ben Cardin, the author of the Russian interference that just got published? Hmm.
Davis X. Machina
@PJ: FInally a True Progressive™ candidate for us to vote for.
Boatboy_srq
@Baud: Shroedinger’s airstrike.
JPL
@Mary G: I got in trouble because I questioned the entire routine. Yeah.. hiding under a desk is not gonna help.
JPL
@Davis X. Machina: Has Jane Hampshire moved to Maryland yet?
Waldo
@Arclite: I know the sub base in Groton really well. My father, a CPO, used to take us kids there all the time back in the 60s and 70s. It was like a little town within a town, with stores, doctor’s offices, baseball fields etc. I remember getting a tour of Dad’s old diesel submarine. It was all good fun until it dawned on me that the whole place would be vaporized almost immediately if WWIII broke out. Yeah, those were the days.
Another Scott
@PJ: Assuming she is actually running (and that filing isn’t some sort of publicity stunt), it would be interesting to see how much Putin-associated money pours into her campaign via the various SuperPACs. And interesting to know what her position on accepting PAC money is, and how serious she is about not accepting skeevy donations. Would be kinda interesting if Mueller’s team found even more links to Vlad and his cronies…
(Hmmm.emoji)
I don’t think Cardin has anything to worry about, but I hope he understands the best way to address candidates like her. If she’s actually running.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“You showed you had very poor judgement in the past and paid a high price for it. Why not show us you’ve got better judgement now by serving on something like an elected school board first??”)
Sab
@JPL: My childhood FL bombdrills weren’t useful then, but they were useful when I moved to San Francisco with its earthquakes.
PJ
@mike in dc: @germy: If you scroll down to the bottom of this Washington Post article, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/the-2018-midterms-are-fast-approaching-first-up-primary-fights-for-both-parties-future/2018/01/06/3b3d20fe-f1b0-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html?utm_term=.5e7174119fc0, you can read quotes from Corey Bliss, of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is allied with Paul Ryan, indicating that they are planning to support far-left candidates in Democratic primaries.
I don’t know what Manning’s actual motives are, or who, if anyone yet, is paying for her campaign, but having the only notable thing on your resume being a convicted felon for revealing state secrets to a known Russian operative (even if she was unaware of it at the time) is probably a decent indication that the best result of your campaign will be chaos for Democrats and a weakening of Democratic candidates in 2018 overall.
Adria McDowell
@Another Scott: It never ceases to amaze me that people like Glenn Greenwald and (potentially) Chelsea Manning will do Putin’s dirty work for him, considering how they would be treated in Russia by his regime.
Self-hate is so very, very real.
Kirk
I seem to recall being told the duck and cover was for the people outside ground zero, where thrown debris and collapsing structures were greater threats than the radiation. It’s been a few years, though, and not my field of focus.
Baud
@PJ:
It would be malpractice for them not to.
On the bright side, I’d prefer the left fully discredit themselves before 2020.
Baud
@Adria McDowell: Cash is also very real.
Another Scott
@Kirk: Kinda-sorta. But it was also to convince us (and by extension the Soviets) that our population and country would survive a nuclear war. If people are convinced that everything will be Ok if they crawl under their desks and cover their head, or if they build a bomb shelter and fill it with water and canned goods, then they won’t demand that the government stop buying weapons that would destroy the world if they were ever used.
As it was atomic tests during the 1950s probably killed half a million Americans, but we didn’t hear about it…
Cheers,
Scott.
Sab
@PJ: Chelsea Manning’s political sense is like my sense of direction. My husband can use it as a compass because I am always off by 180 degrees. I do think she is well-intentioned, unlike Greenwald, Snowden and Assange, but whenever she has a choice to make her choice is invariably horribly wrong.
If they find Russian connections, then Reality Winner is even more screwed than she already is.
Yutsano
@PJ: Wait…is she 30? Is she even old enough to run for the Senate?
Another Scott
@Yutsano: Story says she just turned old enough to run.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Baud:
They should save their bucks for their own loonies.
cwmoss
@Cheryl Rofer: There is absolutely no cannibalism in the Royal Navy.
Baud
@debbie: They have plenty of bucks.
mike in dc
@Baud: Acknowledgement of Russian interference and a pledge to get tough on Russia should be a litmus test for candidates in 2018 and 2020. To inoculate candidates against challenges from the left, they should endorse $15 minimum wage, real infrastructure spending, affordable college, criminal justice reform and medicare for all.
Sab
@Another Scott: I worked with a guy who grew up in southern Utah. His dad was an open pit miner. Every single member of his dad’s crew died of cancer in their forties, because they worked too close to the test sites.
Baud
@mike in dc:
You are a dreamer.
mike in dc
@Baud: We’ll require them to engage in 4 hours of public self-criticism and then testify against the traitorous Comrade Greenwald.
Aimai
@rikyrah: heartbreaking.
Yutsano
@PJ: This is not your fault, but the article is Democrats in disarray disguised as a both sides argument.
japa21
@mike in dc: I wish people would stop acting as if medicare for all is some utopian thing and the only meaningful universal coverage mechanism. I would prefer something that provides better coverage than that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Yutsano: Handsome Joe Biden ran for the Senate at 29, his term began after his 30th b-day.
ETA: Between the time of his electoral victory and his term beginning his term; his wife was in a fatal auto accident that killed her and their daughter and injured their sons; Senator Biden was sworn in in the hospital.
Baud
@mike in dc:
They’ll also need to swear to all that on Hillary’s book.
Baud
@japa21: Neoliberal.
Another Scott
@Sab: It was a huge, insidious, enterprise and shortened the lives of many, many people. There is a federal program to pay compensation to nuclear workers, but it’s very modest.
Cheers,
Scott.
Thomas Fuchtman
I heard the news on the radio here on The Big Island, and then got the push alert on my phone, about 8:05 am. It was a surreal feeling, but not completely unbelievable, having watched Herr Drumpf antagonize Kim Jong Ill for months now. This is it – that’s what I thought. I went outside to find my lovely wife and tell her that it was time to come inside and prepare for a missile attack. She said I looked scared. We estimated we had about 15 or 20 minutes so we calmly shut the house down, made sure we brought all the bottled water in from the garage, filled a closet with bedding and photos of our children, phones and flashlights, and then sat down together to meet our fate. We were so thankful that we were together.
After nothing happened in 20 minutes, we checked the internet, and Tulsi Gabbard had just issued the all-clear tweet. Still a little shaky.
D Myer
@Arclite: funny that it’s assumed if you live in a house so does everyone else
Yarrow
@Sab:
Intentions don’t matter. No one involved with Wikileaks has their hands clean.
Sab
@Another Scott: Old folks in Vegas tell me the newspaper would publish the times of the nuclear tests, and everyone would rush outside to watch the mushroom cloud on the horizon.
Dina Titus as NV Sec of State even got a mushroom cloud on the license plates. I really wanted one but I had already left NV. All I had on my plate was a mountain goat.
gene108
@mike in dc:
The Left will just move the goal posts. They did that to Hillary, and Democrats, in 2016.
NeenerNeener
Twitter says Trey Gowdy just quit the House Ethics Committee.
raven
@Sab: I watched one when I was a kid.
Jeffro
@NeenerNeener: whaaaat?
Sab
@raven: Where was that?
Yarrow
@NeenerNeener: Just saw that. He was on the Trump transition team. Bet Mueller has all those emails. LOLOLOLOL.
Mike J
@Yarrow: Wolf has resigned from the committee for sheep safety. Fox has resigned from the henhouse.
p.a.
I don’t remember duck and cover, but I do remember being down in my elementary school’s fallout shelter (why? no recollection), and the 55gal drums of water and cases of crackers and cheese (IIRC) there.
Yarrow
@Mike J: Traitor thinks he can hide. Nope.
Another Scott
@gene108: Yup. There’s not enough Purity Symbolism in Mike’s list. It would have to include things like: (list of impossible things here).
Idealism is great and it’s important to recognize the need to aspire to make things better than they are.
But when idealism becomes set in stone and binary choices used to make incremental progress impossible (e.g. can’t vote for Hillary because she gave some speeches and because she said “superpredators” once 20 years ago), then those who advocate such an approach become enemies of governmental progress.
Cheers,
Scott.
NeenerNeener
I guess Gowdy is going to head the House Oversight Committee now, and thinks himself spread too thin to head up both. I shudder to think of the mischief he’ll get up to at Oversight.
raven
@Sab: Crossing the desert in Nevada in the 50’s.
JPL
@Yarrow: Oh please..
Odie Hugh Manatee
@raven: I thought that started with: “Drop yer cocks and grab yer socks…”
Though I do think it would have scared the shit outta charlie to see a mass of soldiers coming at them while holding their cocks and socks…lol!
Sab
@Yarrow: That was kind of my point, expressed badly. Good intentions with very bad results. And she is apparently continuing on that path.
Adam Silverman pointed out a few threads back that if you want to whistleblow there are DC law firms that specialize in helping you.
Kids: don’t try this at home, and don’t do it yourself. If you are smart enough to find the stuff, then you ought to be smart enough to pass it on to the right hands.
And reporters are not the right hands unless you ate very sophisticated in DC politics.
Cheryl Rofer
I see the news about Gowdy on Google, but it’s only on rightwing rags right now. Of course, it could be that he wanted his friends to know first.
eclare
@rikyrah: I know, I read that earlier. Hopefully this will get lots of attention and jog someone’s memory.
eclare
@mike in dc: Oh, that is interesting…
laura
@Sab: My dad was in the Marines and was sent to NV to stand in a trench during above ground tests.
He didn’t say anything about it until about a year ago when he and I spent a day getting him qualified for VA benefits.
I was floored and immediately called the brothers. None of us had any idea.
Jager
I grew up 16 miles from the 2nd largest Strategic Air Command Base in the country. Drive by on the highway and you could see B52s loaded with H-bombs sitting on the tarmac ready to go. My first girlfriend’s father was a LtC 52 pilot, his job was to fly up to the Fail Safe line over the Bering Sea and wait for orders to strike the USSR, if he didn’t get the order he’d fly home, A couple of days later off he’d go again. Annie and I never talked about it, nobody did.. I reconnected with her years and years later, she said he never talked about it at all or how he felt.. After her dad died, her mom told her she had lived in mortal fear for his life from WWII (he was a bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force) until he retired in the early 70’s. Ann’s dad was a really nice guy with one hell of a stressful job
Sab
@raven: That makes sense. I was surprised because I had thought you were always a Georgian.
raven
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I have a cold.
PJ
@Sab: One of the biggest problems involved with people like Manning and Snowden is that, in normal circumstances, as someone who was mentally unstable and supremely unsuited for the military in the former case, and a high school dropout in the latter, they never should have had access to the classified material that they did. And, assuming the best of intentions for them (which I have serious doubts about with regard to Snowden), neither were mentally equipped to know what to do with the material they had access to, and assumed they could handle it themselves.
raven
@Sab: Sheet, I was born in Urbana, lived in Chicago until 57, moved back to Chicago in 61, went in the Army in 66, went back to Urbana in 69 and moved here in 84.
Yarrow
@raven: Are you doing any better?
japa21
@Baud: My secret is out
Another Scott
@Sab: The stupid No Step on Snek flag seems to be the most popular vanity license plate around here in NoVA. I guess it’s useful to have them point themselves out to the rest of us, and it does cost them more every year than the regular plate, so there’s that. ;-)
The timing of tests can be a handy way to distinguish them from earthquakes, also too. I can’t find it, but one of the more recent nuclear tests (in the last 20 years or so) was quickly suspected of being a test (rather than an earthquake) because it happened exactly on a minute/hour (indicating it was of human origin).
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who, if he had to get a snake flag, would get the ‘join, or die’ one by Franklin.”
Villago Delenda Est
For the love of Cthulhu, it is 2018. We can send men to the moon (oh, wait…we can’t anymore..) but we can’t have safeguards in effect to prevent falsely sending a “this is not a drill” alert for incoming missiles?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: In the mid-60’s we had the tests of the Saturn-V rocket engines about 15 miles east of us, and that really felt like an earthquake*(no, they didn’t let us know when they were going to happen).
*Keep in mind, this was in Southern CA.
Sab
Don’t want to be maudlin, butI cannot think of anywhere I could go, online or elsewhere, that would have such a diverse bunch of people. Every job. Every location. Every background. Only limitation is the only RWNJs are foreign trolls, but I don’t see that as a negative.
raven
@Yarrow: Yea, I had another weird wheezer thang last night but, overall, yea.
Sab
@raven: Well live and learn . I was surprised earlier by the presence of Norwegian immigrants in early twentieth century Georgia, so that now makes sense to me.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I remember watching those launches on TV. Just astounding machines. It was neat how they slowly lumbered into the sky and just kept going and going and going, while the Shuttles just leaped into the sky by comparison.
You might enjoy this (something I found searching around today): How to detect a secret nuclear test (3:47).
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@d58826: Trust me, it doesn’t make any more sense as you age.
opiejeanne
@Jager: So, you grew up in Riverside?
eclare
@Sab: How is your dog doing? (hoping for good news)
Yarrow
@raven: Glad to hear it. Hope last night was the last of it.
raven
@Yarrow: thx
Steve in the ATL
@raven: you’ve lived in Georgia longer than I have!
(and you lived in Chicago longer than I did)
The Moar You Know
I argued here way back when that Manning deserved the death penalty for treason and was called an inhuman monster by almost everyone here. Then got to watch years of weeping over the supposed cruelty of her sentence and living conditions. Well, this is what quite a few of you wanted. Gotta day I’m kind of enjoying the buyer’s remorse.
J R in WV
@Sab:
Might depend on what was being mined in the open pit – they mined a lot of low-grade uranium ore out of open pits out there. And with no more attention to employee health, they almost certainly didn’t pass out effective respirators to the crew.
Fallout from Nevada test range, also too!! When you watch the nuclear bomb worldwide map, which shows every nuclear explosion from 1945 to 1998, it’s hard to believe anyone lived through it, and not hard to see why strange diseases have cropped up since then. Dementia, anyone?
Steve in the ATL
@Sab
Not surprising if you live here: almost every restaurant has herring and grits in on the menu.
J R in WV
@laura:
And he’s still alive!! I knew that they did that, sent soldiers and marines to see how fit to fight they would be after experiencing a nuclear explosion. I guess it makes Strangelovian sense if you really expect to have to fight a nuclear war in the Fulda Gap near Poland. Really.
Glad he made it!
SC54HI
Chiming in late here from Hawai’i Nei, but you won’t be surprised to know there were at least a few WTF, OMG moments this morning at our house this morning. Spouse & I were questioning the validity of the alert within a minute because there were NO sirens & local radio stations were all business as usual. We have no TV so would not have seen the nuclear attack broadcast that some reported seeing when the first alert text appeared. The most troubling thing is that it took the state over 30 minutes to send out a cancellation alert & it was 5-10 minutes before we could locate ANYTHING online to indicate what the hell was going on. The main newspaper’s website absolutely crashed. Finally found confirmation on Twitter from Tulsi Gabbard, probably the first thing she’s done that’s actually helpful.
The alert text appears to be locally sourced, with a civil defense employee “pushing the wrong button” at shift change. No hacking, just incompetence.To say that people are furious is understatement. I just want to see a clear explanation (to the extent security requirements allow) and a clear description of how this will NEVER happen again. Like many, I have a ton of questions, not the least of which is how an alert could be triggered without (apparently) any confirmation or directive from USPACOM.
Of course, the meta-problem here is that tRump et al. make such an alert all too believable.
sharl
Just some late stuff on this I found via twitter.
From the attached 2-page .pdf
There are a few paragraphs beyond that, explaining how HI-EMA propagated the subsequent ‘it was a false alarm, all is OK’ message, and how they intend to prevent this sort of fuck-up in the future.
I’m no fan of Tulsi Gabbard, but she gets major props from me for taking the initiative on calming the public, despite the complaints from this “expert”
Ohio Mom
@J R in WV: I watched the whole video and all I can say is Wow. I had no idea.
2,000+ nuclear bombs “tested.” A euphemism if I ever heard one. They were detonated.
It’s amazing we don’t all have active cancers.
SC54HI
@sharl:
No fan here either but her timely tweet was greatly appreciated by many, including me.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@The Moar You Know: It’s okay. You and Chelsea can both be wrong.