Hawaii Missile Alert: Touching Tales Of How Locals Reacted

15 January 2018, 08:45

On Saturday, all citizens of Hawaii were told that a missile was coming and they should take immediate shelter. It turned out to be a false alarm.

This is how people reacted, as told to Reddit.

"I got drunk for the first time in 4 years of sobriety... oops."

"I live on Oahu, I broke the window to the empty beach house that is my neighbour to get some alcohol. Took a bottle of vodka and mixed with my orange juice. I don't really regret it, I don't think they would blame me, I wont be saying anything, just leave it and they will think it was kids messing around. Officially a criminal now."

"Thinking about my life I started to feel content with my inevitable death. Then I imagined my last moments slowly burning in intense pain, that thought was followed by a minor anxiety attack and involuntary shaking for the next 30 minutes."

"I regret telling our children what we thought was happening. My oldest child is seven. We explained it very simply with as little detail as we could but fuck. We told him a bomb was on the way from North Korea. We told him about the missile defence systems and that all we could do was hope that they worked. We took away a lot of his innocence and he's really shook up still. My younger child is autistic and was just mad that the plans changed again. He was annoyed that the missile didn't come and didn't understand that the message was a mistake. He felt better when we went back to our original plan to hit the beach."

"Went to Honokohau to dive. Figured 100 ft underwater was as good a place as any. No boom."

"I regret not calling my parents. I was in total denial mode and only called my fiancé to ask if he got the alert too. He was working at Honolulu airport, where the scene was more chaotic. He didn’t think he’d ever see me again. He was at HNL airport at the time and passengers started walking off the aircraft. The captain eventually deplaned everyone. Security and TSA were as clueless as everyone, and couldn’t direct anyone to shelter because there really isn’t one. I was at Hilo airport at the time. It was pretty calm, but some tourists were huddled together, praying and/or crying."

"My 70 year old dad ate two loaves of bread while hiding in his closet. He said he only regrets it because he has to buy more bread now."

"Rolled out of bed and told my boyfriend "Well, how about i make us one last cup of coffee before we die". Then proceeded to the kitchen to brew a small pot. All I wanted was one last time to do one of my favourite things, sit and talk stories with him with coffee and cigarettes in the morning. Maybe it wasn't so impulsive, but there was something about it being the last time to ever do that."

"I work at a huge tourist location on Oahu. Pretty quickly after the alert went out, we started herding all of our guests into large buses and moving them to a huge WWII bunker we have on property. In the middle of directing guests on where to go I realised I hadn't clocked in yet, and decided that if I was going to die in a thermonuclear detonation, I might as well be getting paid for it."

"I was In my living room sitting next to my husband and sleeping two month old. Saw the alert on my phone, we grabbed the baby and his pacifier and went and sat in the bathroom. I started calling people who work on base to see if they knew anything, my husband was checking Twitter. The sirens started going off and I sat there holding my two month old baby crying thinking we were going to die and I had no way to protect him .Got the false alarm message and husband took the baby back out to the living room while I cried for a little while longer in the bathroom."

"I live pretty close to town centre so for me I looked at my girlfriend and said “I love you and I hope it’s fast”. Sat in bed with her looking at pictures of our trip we took to big island and just was with her."

"I was about to go to the university since I had an event there but decided not to go. I ended up playing with my dog because if I'm dying soon, I'd rather be with my dog."