Hacker News Reader

For market overvaluation, it says: 9.1 / 10 "DEFCON 4"

DEFCON 5 is peacetime, DEFCON 1 is imminent nuclear war. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US reached DEFCON 2. Should this say DEFCON 2 instead? Or is "above" normal readiness the intended meaning?

View on HN

Yeah was trying to communicate "moderate risk", but it's kinda tongue in cheek.

We got the tongue in cheek point of the comment. However what is being discussed is the ordering. Defcon 1 is more serious than Defcon 5. ie it counts backwards from 5 to 1 as situations become more serious. So your comment should be Defcon 2.

Pedantics aside, I did enjoy those little comments you put alongside the threat level.

You can just write DEFCON 3 and this will communicate the same "moderate risk" message to everyone, no matter their understanding of how DEFCON levels work.

The movie Wargames guessed wrong. As a result, the public understanding is backwards from the real NORAD numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFCON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHBqJj0znYo Seems consistent to me, DEFCON 1 is war, 5 is peace

My comment was from memory, based on my recollection of the director's commentary on the DVD. I'll have to see if I can find any supporting doc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com