False Hawaii Missile Alert Sent After Drill Recording Said 'This Is Not A Drill' (npr.org) 221
A false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii was sent on January 13 because an emergency worker believed there really was a missile threat, according to a preliminary investigation by The Federal Communications Commission. From a report: The report finds that the false alert was not the result of a worker choosing the wrong alert by accident from a drop-down menu, but rather because the worker misunderstood a drill as a true emergency. The drill incorrectly included the language "This is not a drill."
So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, it said it wasn't a drill, so the worker treated the alert as the real deal.
I'm glad we have that person ready to save Hawaii from a missile strike. If anything they deserve a raise for doing such a standup job.
Captcha: grenade
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And of course management immediately blamed the worker for clicking the wrong button when he was just following orders.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course management immediately blamed the worker for clicking the wrong button
Indeed. They lied to millions of people about what happened. So will anyone lose their job over this? Or will our emergency response system continue to be managed by irresponsible blame shifting liars?
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The message played for the drill said "excercise, exercise, exercise" according to TFA, followed by the real message that would be played, which includes "this is not a drill".
One would presume that someone who was paying attention at the time would at least seek clarification on the mixed message before sending a whole state into a panic.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
One would presume that someone who was paying attention at the time would at least seek clarification on the mixed message before sending a whole state into a panic.
When there are mere seconds between thousands of lives being saved or lost, I would hope that they do not seek clarification, but err on the side of caution. I would commend this person and fire the idiot who approved the text "This is not a drill" in a drill.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Funny)
This may be a drill, or it may not be a drill.
Ask yourself, do you feel lucky?
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Unfortunately, it's not unthinkable for language to be misused to the point of becoming meaningless. It may well be that the phrase "this is not a drill" is headed that way. This certainly isn't the first time I heard obvious drills begin with "this is not a drill" - usually followed by sheepish announcements immediately thereafter that, eh, sorry, it kind of was a drill.
I don't think you're going to be able to avoid the need for people to simply use common sense, and *not* follow instructions sometimes,
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Fortunately, Mr. Petrov [wikipedia.org] didn't follow your advice or you may well not have been alive today.
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Fortunately, Mr. Petrov didn't follow your advice or you may well not have been alive today.
Huh? He did err on the side of caution.
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One would presume that someone who was paying attention at the time would at least seek clarification...
Even better would be requiring the operator to get confirmation from a second person before issuing such an important alert. I can't even complete a software purchase request without 2 additional signatures.
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That's a great plan in case of a drill, but a terrible one if it's not. Time is too valuable.
Missile flight time to Hawaii is 20 minutes (Score:5, Insightful)
The message played for the drill said "excercise, exercise, exercise" according to TFA, followed by the real message that would be played, which includes "this is not a drill".
One would presume that someone who was paying attention at the time would at least seek clarification on the mixed message before sending a whole state into a panic.
That is pre-12/7 thinking.
More seriously, missile flight time from North Korea to Hawaii is 20 minutes. How many minutes did military detection and verification consume? How many more minutes to notifying Hawaii Emergency Services? How many for the information to propagate to the worker? How many minutes does it take civilians to take shelter?
Each minute of delay will cost lives in a real attack. In a false alarm people suffered some temporary stress and the government embarrassment. If this is a one off as the government debugs the alert process and procedures there is no real problem here. If its recurring and the public begins to ignore alerts assuming its another false alarm, then there is a problem.
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I want to focus a moment on the idea that, "Each minute of delay will cost lives in a real attack."
Are we sure we can do enough in 20 minutes, to make much difference? I don't mean that Hawaiians are expendable, or that more warning isn't better. However this isn't the 1950's anymore; civil defense measures have mostly been dismantled. It has been fashionable for decades to suggest that "nuclear war isn't survivable, bomb shelters are useless."
You surely have heard of "duck and cover"? There are steps that civilians can take in a matter of minutes that will reduce casualties in large areas affected by the attack. "Duck and cover" is the fastest and most basic, but it can prevent serious flash burns, injury by flying glass and other objects. Getting under cover, behind cover, and so forth take longer and likely needs minutes to accomplish in many cases.
Of course, all this depends on civilians who know what to do. How many is that, at present? But
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He was paying attention. He exercised, then he hit the button.
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Management deliberately violates good human factors practices, then blames humans for errors.
Single pass, audio only, conflicting messages. What kind of idiot devised that system?
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What kind of idiot devised that system?
The kind of person who believes in "train like you fight, fight like you train", who uses the real message prefixed by a clear statement that it is an exercise so that the "worker" will not be "shocked" when hears the message for real. But the "worker" should not be shocked, this message is part of his job, and the part about not being a drill that might "shock" a casual listener occurs well after the "exercise" part. He's not "shocked" to hear "exercise", so has little reason to forget or get flustered whe
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No doubt one of those crappy half duplex speakerphones that rather than doing real feedback control squelches if the ambient sound reaches a trigger level.
The whole Exercise part was probably lost while people realized they needed to be quiet and listen.
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Which is the worse outcome? Falsely declaring a real emergency, or delaying a real emergency notice when minutes count?
Don't let the boy who cried wolf's wolf's tail wag the dog.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:4, Informative)
> Funny, it said it wasn't a drill, so the worker treated the alert as the real deal.
Exactly. The worker did not misunderstand the message - the message *was* wrong.
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I have read about your hosts file program elsewhere on the net, along with some bizarre comments about your weird behavior on Slashdot. I was on the edge of purchasing your software, but reading this comment has made me reconsider. Thank you, I guess. You saved me some money.
No, no, no! That comment was simply a drill. See the part at the end, "all talk & no action"? That signifies that this was a practice comment. In the event of a real hosts file anomaly, you would be directed to your nearest governmental DNS resolver.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Informative)
For most mistakes made in a professional setting, it is usually a failure in the process vs a mistake of the individual.
Having been the person who had hit the go button to kick off a colossal failure. I can tell you it could happen to anyone. I have gotten approvals and did every step I was suppose to do. However the process had shortcuts because no one wanted to deal with the full complexity or waste their departments resources on looking at it. So they had blanketed approved the data where I was the one who hit the start button.
I didn't get into any trouble, but I had documented all the approvals. However I was the first on the list to be questioned. So I can feel for the guy who is under the public pressure for pushing the button to send.
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to send the missiles?
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But I am le tired.
Hawaii takes "this is not a drill" seriously ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, it said it wasn't a drill, so the worker treated the alert as the real deal.
For some reason people in Hawaii take the phrase "this is not a drill" seriously.
https://www.archives.gov/bosto... [archives.gov]
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Stanislav Petrov.
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"According to the FCC account, the night supervisor started the drill by calling the day shift warning officers, who had not been told their was to be an exercise, and pretending to be US Pacific Command. The supervisor played a recorded message which began and ended with the words “exercise, exercise, exercise”. However, the main text of the message was not the same as that used for a routine drill, and instead followed a script used for an actual alert, including the sentence: “This is not a drill.” Somehow, one of the day shift warning officers heard “this is not a drill”, but not the words “exercise, exercise, exercise”, and “therefore believed that the missile threat was real.” The officer who had misheard was sitting at that terminal used to send out alerts, and chose to send a live alert from a drop-down menu. A prompt appeared on the screen saying: “Are you sure that you want to send this alert?” and at 8.07 am, the officer clicked ‘yes’, sending out an all-capitals text message to mobile phones all over the state, saying: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”"
So the guy is not warned about the exercise and is given a recorded message, that states both that this is exercise and that this is not a drill. Even if he heard it correctly, what was he supposed to believe and how was he supposed to act? If I were him I would also send the actual warning, because if there was an actual missile attack sending out a timely alert is critical. It is another question that the Hawaii population is unlikely to know what to do and t
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While this update tells a completely different story than was previously told (selecting wrong item in a menu) the problem is the same: bad user interface.
It's obvious that the correct action when having the job of alerting the public of a missile attack and hearing "this is not a drill" is to send the warning message.
Compare the SLBM launch training (as documented in public media - never been on board a submarine) where it the fact that it is an exercise/simulation is always repeated embedded into orders.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the things every system designer needs to understand is the role of emotion in human cognition. Survival-related reactions like fear or anger have absolute priority over all higher levels of cognition. Once you suspect a tiger in the grass, your perceptions will tend to process only confirmatory data. That's your reptilian brain trying to get you the hell out of Dodge.
So it's a statistical certainty that if you broadcast an emergency announcement that concludes with "exercise, exercise, exercise", a substantial fraction of the recpients will not perceive that concluding disclaimer at all. That inability to process contradictory data will continue until the level of emotional arousal drops. Cognitive psychologists call this the "Emotional Refractory Period", or ERP. Until the ERP is over you can't count on rational judgment, only on rote training.
So from a systems or exercise designer's standpoint, you need to start the drill with the disclaimer. Ending it with a disclaimer is nearly useless. What's more, introducing conflicting signals ("this is not a drill") is a really bad idea, because you risk triggering a higher priority behavior control system.
The refractory nature of emotions is why it's so important to control things like anger, which served us well when we were living in paleolithic hunter-gatherer bands but causes mostly mischief in modern society. If you get angry or fearful because of misinformation, you literally can't fix that until you stop being angry or afraid. That's what makes survival related emotions such potent tools of political manipulation.
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So it's a statistical certainty that if you broadcast an emergency announcement that concludes with "exercise, exercise, exercise",
So that's why they put "exercise" repeated three times at the start of the message. Your reptilian brain should be sound asleep by the time the rest of the message arrives.
So from a systems or exercise designer's standpoint, you need to start the drill with the disclaimer.
So that's what they do.
What's more, introducing conflicting signals ("this is not a drill") is a really bad idea, because you risk triggering a higher priority behavior control system.
You want the recipient to hear the message he'd actually hear if there was an emergency. That way he's used to hearing it and his "reptilian brain" isn't going to go ape-shit panic mode when it comes through for real. He knows the message, he knows what he needs to do because he's practiced it. He also knows what th
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no purpose to the phrase "this is not a drill" if you use it in drills. Better to omit it.
I've just heard an exercise message that began "exercise exercise exercise." I'm so angry I'm going to forget that I heard it. What?
The relevant emotion here is fear.
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There is no purpose to the phrase "this is not a drill" if you use it in drills. Better to omit it.
If it is part of the real message, then it needs to be in the exercise message. That way you know what the real one sounds like. It's called "training". That way you don't have to wonder why the alert message you just got didn't sound like what you're used to.
The relevant emotion here is fear.
Ok. I just heard a message that began "exercise exercise exercise" and it made me so afraid that I have already forgotten that I heard it. Does that work better for you? Really? You're scared of the words "exercise"? You better not be working in an eme
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According to the NPR story the message concluded with "exercise, exercise, exercise". I don't know where you're getting your information.
If it is part of the real message, then it needs to be in the exercise message.
What I'm saying is if that is true, it shouldn't be part of the real message. Otherwise, what purpose do you imagine it serving in a real emergency?
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According to the NPR story the message concluded with "exercise, exercise, exercise". I don't know where you're getting your information.
An earlier comment said that, and it is standard practice to do it that way. NPR has never been wrong, though. Ever.
What I'm saying is if that is true, it shouldn't be part of the real message.
Of course it should. It is isn't a drill you don't want people wasting their time wondering "this can't be right, is it a drill?" You say it isn't a drill. Period.
Otherwise, what purpose do you imagine it serving in a real emergency?
Umm, I don't know. Maybe to emphasize it is a real emergency? That time is critical? That you don't go for coffee before you process the message?
This kind of thing has been done for decades now. Lessons learned from previous exerc
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How can that phrase emphasize that it's a real emergency if it's also used in drills? And if you want to emphasize that time is critical, why not say that?
The solution seems simple to me: use the phrase "this IS a drill" in drills, and "this is NOT a drill" in real emergencies.
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How can that phrase emphasize that it's a real emergency if it's also used in drills?
Because the exercise messages all say that they are exercise messages, and thus the contents are NOT REAL.
And if you want to emphasize that time is critical, why not say that?
"This is not a drill" is five words. It is the result of decades of experience of people who do this for a living and have done exercises on a regular basis. You're demanding explanations as to why they do it that way as if they had no reason at all.
The solution seems simple to me
We shall discard decades of experience of people who do this for a living and substitute your feelings. We shall create an exercise message that differs fr
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I blame Hollywood. Yes. How many TV shows and movies blare "THIS IS NOT A DRILL" to make things sound super important and serious? I chuckle every time.
Military folk, back me up here: in any of the drills that you experienced during your service, has the phrase "this is a drill" or "this is not a drill" ever occurred?
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Military folk, back me up here: in any of the drills that you experienced during your service, has the phrase "this is a drill" or "this is not a drill" ever occurred?
Yes. You want to limit your question to "military folk", but it is not just "military folk" who deal with emergency alert systems.
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Here's the thing: if you want people to understand "this is NOT a drill" to mean, not what the words plainly say, but to mean "this is time critical", you have to (a) have a policy that states this and (b) train people on that meaning.
In fact there apparently was no such training, so there was apparently no such policy.
In any case if the word count is more paramount than clarity here, you could use an arbitrary phrase like "code black" and train people on what that means.
Re:So the worker did their job (Score:5, Interesting)
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When the trope got started in the 50s, a lot of people had experience about US ships in WW2. It's not hard to find recordings of things like general quarters from actual where the phrases "This IS a drill" and "This is NOT a drill" are used, or in which neither phrase is used. Apparently the practice varies from ship to ship and situation to situation.
The most famous use of the phrase is from the Pearl Harbor attack, in which radiomen were instructed to say "AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL.
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Here's the thing: if you want people to understand "this is NOT a drill" to mean, not what the words plainly say, but to mean "this is time critical", you have to (a) have a policy that states this and (b) train people on that meaning.
They are.
In fact there apparently was no such training, so there was apparently no such policy.
No, not "in fact" there was no training. I've already pointed out that the operator did not claim there was ambiguity in the message, but that he didn't hear part of it. He was trained and knows what "this is not a drill" means. In fact, HE DID IT.
In any case if the word count is more paramount than clarity here,
The clarity is PERFECT, when you know the meaning. YOU haven't had the training because nobody gives a fuck if YOU understand that message. You don't work in an emergency operations center.
you could use an arbitrary phrase like "code black" and train people on what that means.
Once again we are expected to replace decades of experience with
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What decades of experience has taught the people who do this for real (and aren't just nimrods pontificating about what "common sense" tells them how it ought to be done, on slashdot) is that plain language is much better than codes or secret decoder rings.
I don't dispute this, but this is exactly what you are recommending -- in fact it's worse than secret decoder ring BS because it contradicts what the language plainly says.
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Well, actually sending out the emergency alert and people actually diving for cover is part of the real emergency too. The similarity to an actual emergency has stop at some point. I suggest that point be before it causes confusion and mass panic.
What TFA ACTUALLY said was that because the alert was on speakerphone, the operator did not here "EXERCISE" but did hear "this is not a drill", and so concluded it was not a drill (DUH).
So no, if it IS a drill, do not claim it is not unless you want a mass panic.
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Funny, it said it wasn't a drill, so the worker treated the alert as the real deal.
I'm glad we have that person ready to save Hawaii from a missile strike. If anything they deserve a raise for doing such a standup job.
Captcha: grenade
It also told the worker to exercise a lot, which apparently they didn't do.
Okay... That was funny.
And so a new inquiry is launched... (Score:5, Funny)
Except... Software project was rushed (Score:2)
and the management decided it was finished and "ship it" after the first iteration whereas the programmers assumed that was just an initial prototype, to be refined and tested in the second iteration.
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http://www.welovedosgames.net/... [welovedosgames.net]
false alert, just higher up the chain (Score:5, Insightful)
Still a false alert, just that level of the alert chain wasn't to blame. Whomever put "This is not a drill" in the drill message was to blame.
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Let's imagine we weren't arguing this in hindsight. Instead, let's imagine we've just received contradictory information: this is a drill, this is NOT a drill. On what basis should we decide how to act?
If you say, "choose which option is mostly likely to be true," then the result is you treat this as a drill spuriously identified as a real situation.
If you say, "choose the action which results in the least potential harm," the course of action isn't altogether clear. A false alarm causes emotional di
The worker didn't misunderstand anything (Score:5, Insightful)
the worker misunderstood a drill as a true emergency. The drill incorrectly included the language "This is not a drill."
If "This is not a drill" was included, the worker didn't misunderstand anything. He correctly understood the message and performed as expected. Dont' blame him, blame the person who sent the drill.
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If "This is not a drill" was included, the worker didn't misunderstand anything. He correctly understood the message and performed as expected. Dont' blame him, blame the person who sent the drill.
If you're told in the same message that it's a drill and it's not a drill, then there is a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding came because he claimed he didn't hear the "exercise" disclaimer like the other folks got.
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If you're told in the same message that it's a drill and it's not a drill, then there is a misunderstanding.
No. It is STANDARD PRACTICE to use the phrase "exercise exercise exercise" to indicate that no matter what follows, this is an exercise message. This is not something new.
Do you believe that an exercise message that reads "exercise exercise exercise please send 500 gallons of potable water to the Waimea rescue shelter" should actually result in 500 gallons of water being sent? Of course not. "Exercise exercise exercise", words repeated three times so they are not missed, means the rest of the message is n
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Really? "Exercise" is a little vague to me. "This is not a drill" is definitely clear.
Nobody cares what is clear to you, you don't work in an emergency operations center. It is PERFECTLY clear to anyone who does, and who has ever had any training on how to do this kind of thing. The excuse being given by the alert operator is not that the message was vague, it is that he didn't hear part of it. Had he heard it, he would have known immediately and without doubt that the message was not a real alert, it was an exercise.
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Thing is, if you say "exercise" at the beginning and then say "this is not a drill" it's quite reasonable to assume that the later one countermands the earlier one.
A drill should never say "this is not a drill". That should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense.
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Thing is, if you say "exercise" at the beginning and then say "this is not a drill" it's quite reasonable to assume that the later one countermands the earlier one.
No. It is not reasonable to assume that. The people who do this, and to whom these messages are sent and processed, understand the system a LOT better than you do, and aren't supposed to make assumptions. "EXERCISE" three times means it is an exercise, no matter what the message contains, because knowing what the REAL message says is important even if you are conducting an exercise.
irony (Score:3)
Here's some irony for you: see http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mcc/002/0001.jpg [loc.gov] and note the date sent.
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Not sure how that's irony.
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Same message ("this is not [a] drill"), same geographic area (Hawaii), polar opposite outcomes. Under the definition of irony ("an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected"), I claim irony.
And it was completely accurate (Score:3)
It wasn't a drill - it was a mistake.
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Re:And it was completely accurate (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on how serious you are about your drills. After all, the real thing isn't going to be scheduled a day in advance, so a drill that is doesn't really tell you how well prepared you are for the real thing.
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Aren't drills usually *scheduled*? I know when there is a fire drill at the office, we usually get an email at least a day in advance. This prevents everyone from panicking because they know there is no real danger. In this case, it would prevent a Statewide alert from being sent.
Yeah, it sounds like the supervisors knew, but the workers did not. Also according to the story: "The supervisor specifically decided to run a drill during a shift change to train officers for a challenging situation." Sounds like they found out what would happen!
more of an fire system test vs an fire drill at sc (Score:2)
more of an fire system test vs an fire drill at schools.
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It would also tell our enemies when the best time to push the button would be!
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When did Americans become so INSANELY afraid?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a trend I have noticed for the last 10 years: Americans have become so ridiculously afraid of literally everything... Constantly on the edge, flipping by a hair trigger. Everything is OMG this, and creepy that, and don't dare or try anything that could even remotely make one imagine it might possibly cause dreams where one might dream of dreaming of imagining that there might be a chance it might be imaginable that there might be a risk.
It's mad, to see it from the outside.
Is it the fearmongering? Is it psychotropic drugs given to livestock and then in the meat? Is it the constant fearmongering of the news? Is it because intelligence has actually gone up and everyone now being better at coming up with possible ways it could go wrong?
I just know, this won't end well.
Or maybe I'm just affected by it too.
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But most lives and property are lost due to fires, floods, and other natural disasters.
Actually, no. Statistically, I'll probably get killed by an old woman driving while texting, applying makeup, and eating a Big Mac.
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The only thing you could do is getting into an underground parking space. Or a real anti missile/anti nuclear shelter. A standard basement would help if you are far away enough from ground zero.
However if you nock at the door of a random house, showing the missile alert, I wonder if the inhabitants would let you hide in thier basement :)
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This is a trend I have noticed for the last 10 years: Americans have become so ridiculously afraid of literally everything... Constantly on the edge, flipping by a hair trigger. Everything is OMG this, and creepy that, and don't dare or try anything that could even remotely make one imagine it might possibly cause dreams where one might dream of dreaming of imagining that there might be a chance it might be imaginable that there might be a risk.
Is it actual americans you're noticing, or american news reporting about americans?
Granted I may just live in a bubble, but with the exception of one guy who has a legitimate anxiety disorder everyone I know is generally the exact opposite of what you describe.
I think what you may be seeing is a combination of media reporting sensationalist headlines riling people up, then reporting on those riled up people in a sensationalist way. e.g. the media goes out and says "omg worst flu epidemic evar!!11one"
Uneasy sleeps the head that wears the crown (Score:2)
This is not a drill (Score:2)
The english language is imprecise. [betterthanpants.com]
Taken from the FCC Open meeting (Score:2)
...At 8:05 a.m., the midnight shift supervisor initiated the drill by placing a call to the day
shift warning officers, pretending to be U.S. Pacific Command. The supervisor played a
recorded message over the phone. The recording began by saying “exercise, exercise, exercise,”
language that is consistent with the beginning of the script for the drill. After that, however, the
recording did not follow the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s standard operating
procedures for this drill. Instead,
Re:Fear Mongering (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm curious to know what big failure you are referring to? Russia annexing some bordering territory? Oh, wait, that was the last two administrations. North Korea developing advanced missile and nuclear technology? Oops, it was those last two administrations. Oh, you mean that quagmire in the Middle East! ...That he inherited from the last two administrations.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think he has any clue what he's doing, but lets not pretend he's straying far off the recent track record of US foreign policy.
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In fact I've heard a lot of people in the CIA as well as military families voted for Trump because he threatened to stray off the US track record with anti-interventionist promises.
Unfortunately those claims quickly were overturned and now he even digs in in Afghanistan.
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That's easy to say but do you expect these people to vote Clinton instead?
http://www.theamericanconserva... [theamerica...vative.com]
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/new... [mcclatchydc.com]
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How's that worldview working out for you?
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So let me get this thesis straight... the Hawaii botched drill was an elaborate ruse in a solid blue state to distract from Trump's failure to significantly change US foreign policy from it's historic course? Alrighty then.
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What, no lizards in tin foil hats?
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Tad Cooper.
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Close enough.
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I'll only believe someone a politician who claims not to be less interventionist if they promise to cut the military budget. In the USA, the only argument is over how much to raise it by, with each party competing to promise a bigger raise, and Trump promising the bigliest of all. You don't expand the most bloated military in the history of the planet without coming up with uses for it.
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That does look like a good criterium though with such a frontal assault one wonders what counteractions would have followed. And now look whose protection Trump can count on for his survival: the Pentagon. Without it he'd never be able to hang on. He manages without the CIA but they only started mobilizing after the election.
Trump did say things that were definitely anti-interventionist: he said it was possible to get along with North Korea and with Russia and he wanted to get out of Afghanistan. I don't th
Re:Fear Mongering (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wait, that was the last two administrations.
Is that code for "started under Bush?"
Oops, it was those last two administrations.
Is that code for "started under Bush?"
That he inherited from the last two administrations.
Is that code for "started under Bush?"
You can see the Republican apologists. It's like for Vietnam, where the Republicans still blame JFK, when the first American boots on the ground in Vietnam and first American losses were under Eisenhower. And it was Eisenhower who explicitly interrupted the elections that was the proximate cause of the "civil war" that became a proxy war. But that's forgotten and "continuing a failed policy by a Republican" is somehow turned into "started by a Democrat."
I'm not a Democrat, but I do believe in telling the truth.
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OK? Not sure how this answers my question about Trump's big foreign policy flop. I think my post was pretty damning of Bush's foreign policy - and Obama's for that matter. I think you are preaching to the converted.
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There's plenty of blame to go around. Bush and Ike deserve criticism for starting wars, but their successors equally deserve criticism for committing the nation to a course of perpetual unending war because they were too chicken to acknowledge the unwinnable situation and risk being called a chicken.
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If you paid attention to the news (which I don't recommend, it's depressing as fuck) You would know the answer to some of those questions. For a more recent run-down of how Trump and the Republicans are single-handedly dismantling the FBI to cover their respective asses and distract the public -- watch Rachel Maddow's most recent Jan.29th episode, or even last weeks Jan 24th or 25th episode.
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So, no answer about foreign policy failures, then?
Gutting and undercutting American diplomacy (Score:2)
Trumps National Security & Foreign Policy Failures - Year One [americanprogress.org]
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Don't ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Doesn't mean it's not malice, but this whole thing exposes some flaws in the system.
The biggest flaw being that they had no way to send a retraction for 38 minutes because the system only allowed for a pre-programmed list of responses, and they had to figure out how to hack it/reprogram it to send a custom alert.
No such thing as a computer error (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds to me like they didn't want to spend resources improving/replacing their existing system, so they decided to say it's a human's fault instead of a system's fault.
At some level it is essentially always a human's fault if there was a human decision involved at any point. It might be the human(s) who designed the system or the one(s) who built the system or the one(s) who operated the system but at some level it is a human failure. That's why when someone tells you "the computer failed" they are saying a false statement because while it might not have been their fault, it almost certainly wasn't the fault of the machine - it was the fault of some person somewhere. The machine is simply doing exactly what it was designed and instructed to do. If something bad happens and you trace back why far enough the answer almost always is that some person made a mistake.
Now I'm not talking about blame here. That's different. It rarely is a productive exercise to seek out the person who failed and (figuratively) execute them. Most mistakes are unintentional and caused by putting a person in a situation where they were set up to fail. It's more useful to figure out how to design the system so that the failure mode cannot recur. Fix the problem, not the blame.
(Yes I'm aware that technically computers can actually make mistakes but this is so rare as to be inconsequential to my point - and even then those errors are typically errors made by the designer of the machine making it insufficiently robust)
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Yes, procedures that require humans to never make mistakes are doomed to failure. Too many people design processes where they assume each operation is performed flawlessly 100% of the time instead of asking themselves what happens if X does Y instead of Z.
I'm not sure why they do this. My best guess is that a lot of people just don't have the experience to know how to anticipate things before they actually occur.
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Ironically, this *is* a pipe.