Hello, hello. We are alive. Had gone to a farmer's market and then to the mall. Left my cell phone charging at home. When I returned I took a look at it and THERE WAS AN EMERGENCY MESSAGE SAYING A BALLISTIC MISSILE WAS LAUNCHED TOWARD US/HAWAII AND THAT THIS WAS NOT A TEST, THAT IT WAS REAL. OMG. My immediate thought was that I was far away from Pearl Harbor and other military installations, so perhaps I was safe. Then my thoughts turned to whether I had food stock for when the electricity went out. Then I called my neighbor and explained, calmly as so not to alarm her, that I'd just gotten a message on my phone ... and she immediately let me know that message came an hour ago and didn't I hear the phone keep beeping loudly? It was a mistake, she said. It had taken some time before they had let people know it was an error. People were upset and afraid. She said she hoped they would string the person up on a tree in front of everyone so we all could see. My first reaction: "Who was it?" and "Maybe someone did it on purpose," I said to her. She said they were investigating to find out what happened. Whew. Fake news. Then I started wondering with all this I Spy stuff going on and national scandals like Uranium One, if North Korea had managed to hack into our telephone systems, or if this was part of some false flag operation by the deep state. Nobody at the farmer's market or at the mall seemed alarmed or agitated. It seemed like any other day. Anyway, glad to be alive and not ballistic-missile'd today ... :)
P.S. The Governor of Hawaii, David Ige, says on Twitter: "I am meeting this morning with top officials of the State Department of Defense and the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to determine what caused this morning’s false alarm and to prevent it from happening again."
Just as an aside, David Ige is an engineer who was talked into running for public office. After serving many years in the Hawaii State Legislature, he ran for governor against an incumbent Democrat, Neal Abercrombie, and won. Incumbent Democrats were impossible to defeat in Hawaii so Ige's decision to run was surprising, but Abercrombie had become more than unpopular with public outbursts against what should have been allies and supporters, and infamously shouting, "I am not your friend, I am your Governor," or something to that effect. He was unceremoniously defeated (angrily dumped) after one term.
Abercrombie knew Barry Soetoro (Obama) when Barry was young. Abercrombie also appointed Brian Schatz to fill a U.S. Senate seat over the death bed request of then dying Senator Daniel K. Inouye, an island icon. Schatz's brother is married to Madeleine Albright's daughter. Abercrombie, Obama, and Schatz are alt-left characters. Or at least far left of the general population of Hawaii.
But I digress. Back to Abecrombie's predictable defeat by the current govenor of Hawaii, David Ige (whose daughter was law review at Georgetown University Law Centre, just FYI).
Here are links to some articles analyzing why Abercrombie lost:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/12/governor-abercrombie-primary-defeat_n_5673496.html
I'm glad that you didn't have the worry of the false alarm. But it's crazy that nobody at the farmers market talked about it.
Also I guess this is a dry run for what happens when things really get bad.
The phone alert came at 8:07am. I left the farmer's market just before or about that time so people with cell phones at the farmer's market hadn't gotten the alert yet. Then I drove to the mall and shopped briefly. No one there seemed alarmed either. Nothing out of the ordinary there. No fear, no panic, no running, no nothing but the usual. Or maybe the guys with the cell phones who were worried had already left the building ... hmmmm ?
I still can't believe that happened this morning. Some of my friends were in full blown panic mode after they got that text. Hopefully they put some safeguards in place so that never happens again.
David Ige tweeted: "I am meeting this morning with top officials of the State Department of Defense and the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to determine what caused this morning’s false alarm and to prevent it from happening again." I can imagine the panic!!!
I think the saddest thing is that people are so anxious about the strained relationship and lack of mature leadership in the US & North Korea, so an alert like this is actually believable. If adults were running both countries, people would probably have known it was a false alarm right away.
If you don't mind, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.