Oops, pushed the wrong button 10

[Sparweb]

No injuries know during the panic, but it could have been much worse:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/us/hawaii-missile.html

STF

 

[IRstuff]

The operator in question also missed another mention of it being a drill AFTER the preamble that ALL his coworkers clearly heard.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[LionelHutz]

So, the system was setup to give a message to the final operators on their screens to ignore a near future message that will come through saying it's not a drill? That sounds like a really stupid setup. What happens if there is a real alert during the testing time? What happens if the operator decides to not send a real alert? What happens if the operator is slow to push the button or wants more confirmation? Shouldn't the system simulate a real alert start to the end, and just capture the message sending?

Just wondering. How many people man this systems at once? It doesn't sound like you need more than a person on duty to click an option on a computer terminal. BUT, it sounds like something that should require 2 people to confirm the action. Otherwise, what stops someone who's sick of their job or having a bad day or has decided they're going to quit from clicking the wrong button just for fun to see what happens.

The reports and explanations sound like typical cover my ass BS. I agree with the other comments. If you're told "this is not a drill, press the warning button" then you should be pressing the warning button.

 

[roydm]

What!!!!!
Are you kidding me?

An on screen button, not even a real button

That's just crazy

 

So many failures at so many levels... I would expect multiple people to get the axe, not just one.

If that was the case, then why fire the poor bugger who pushed the button? If the failures occurred on multiple levels, it means he wasn't trained, his superiors did not understand what was required, bureaucratic inertia, etc. IMO he is just the scapegoat here.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

 

[JStephen]

You know, it makes me wonder if that wasn't just an intentional screw-the-system action and not an accident. Either that, or there's somebody dumber than a rock involved.

Of course, now they're going to set it up where they have to have a committee meeting and vote on it before doing anything, so if there IS an incoming ICBM, no warning will go out.

 

[12345abc6ttyui67]

It sounds to me like someone "making a point" that if it says "this is not a drill" then they should press the button...

I.e. if it is a drill, don't say it isn't!

 

[racookpe1978]

From a political discussion website ....

For more comments, none of them excusing the incident that paniced hundreds of thousands - and would have cost trillions of dollars if done during a stock trading day - see

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3628737/posts

 

[Spartan5]

Looks like missile warning guy was picked up by AccuWeather:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tsunami-was-coming-except-it-was-only-a-test/

Partly sunny with a chance of tsunami — that’s the forecast residents along the East Coast woke up to on Tuesday morning.

Actually, only the AccuWeather customers woke up to the alert, that a tsunami was imminent. Phones buzzed with the push alert from Connecticut to Florida. Somewhere along the line, the fact that this was only a test got lost in translation for Accuweather’s mobile apps and notification services.

If users had clicked through the app and then into the warning text itself, they may have seen that it was just a test. But that’s the kind of nuance that gets lost in the threat of a tsunami.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Years ago Jay Leno, when he was still doing the Tonight Show, joked about how whenever there was a tsunami warning in SoCal, that hundreds of people would flock to the beaches to see if it was real. After all, if there actually was going to be a tsunami, why would you want to miss it.

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[cranky108]

Or go surfing in it.