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Comment by herbst | Hacker News Reader

> However, my initial instinct was "either the system doesn't work, or someone messed up".

Why? What really surprises me the most is that this seems to be a common thought. Did that happen before? Do you simply misstrust your government so deeply that you can not even assume something important like this is done right?

Really if i would get such a message on my phone (not even sure if my country does that) i would definitly expect the worst and act like that.

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I felt the same way, but its not because I distrusted the government. The situation didn't feel like one wherein nuclear missiles would start being fired (or any missiles of any kind).

There's got to be some sort of build up before a conflict before it can't catch people in shock (hence the rational of actual surprise-attacks).

If tomorrow you read that Canada had invaded New York City, would you believe it instantly out of trust for your news agencies and government, or think that perhaps someone somewhere screwed up or was making a silly joke?

Personally i dont think a attack to the U.S. would be to much of a surprise. But true there is currently no direct tension in that direction. Also as someone else said, Hawaii really is a unlikely target.

I get it now i guess.

Irony that Hawaii was actually the first target in ww2

Bayesian reasoning. Most positive tests for unlikely events are false positives.

(Assuming plausible alternatives, being those false positives. Which is true in this case, of course.)

For me it's 2 things:

1) it seems incredibly unlikely, and

2) these systems haven't really been tested adequately for me to have much confidence in their utility.

The emergency alert system has been used here in Minnesota for tornadoes, amber alerts, and flash flooding. Sitting in a room and hearing every phone go off or waking up to your own phone making the warning tone is quite alarming.

If I received one about a nuclear missile I'd assume it's legitimate and at least take some minor precautions while trying to verify the alert. It's foolish to assume every unlikely alert is a false alarm.

That said, a single nuclear missile seems incredibly unlikely to me. I'd expect multiple missiles and an associated cyber attack if another nation state was willing to start a nuclear exchange. A single missile is just inviting the wrath of the US and rest of the world for little benefit.

From the screenshots of the message, I don't think you would know if it was one or many missles or whether they were nuclear or not.

Hawaii does not seem like a plausible target for a nuclear missile.

Why not? Until recently it was one of the few places North Korea could reasonably expect to reach.

What would NK have to gain by nuking Hawaii? It would cause the US to retaliate massively, while not doing serious damage to its military capabilities.

No amount of nuclear missles would do much to prevent the US from retaliating with it's nuclear arsenal. The majority of the US nuclear arsenal is floating underwater in always moving, undisclosed places via submarine spread throughout the world's oceans.

You think the US would actually retaliate against a limited nuclear attack in an isolated place with a massive nuclear counterattack? (I can see it in a cold war scenario against the USSR, with tanks moving into Europe and the world order at stake)

I think the US woudln't and, of course, shouldn't. The usual game-theoretical reasonings in this regard are misguided and shortsighted.

I don't think a normal, sanely led US would do that either. More likely the president and joint chiefs would sit in a room and discuss "a proportional response". Turning most of North Korea uninhabitable for generations does not meet that standard.

On the other hand, I can see President MAGA saying "turn the entire peninsula into one large crater," a series of Generals trying to talk him out of it and getting fired. An apocalyptic Saturday Night Massacre until he found the just-promoted-ex-Colonel who would issue the order for him.

Not sure why this has been downvoted. It may have been lyrically written but the point is sound. The guy with his finger on your button is a fucking madman.

I'd be interested for you to expand on your last sentence, because it seems to me that we would have no choice but to respond massively. Once Kim demonstrated a willingness to launch an offensive attack killing or endangering civilians, we'd have to assume he would do it again, and would therefore have to do our best at destroying all his launchers, and make every effort to kill him. He knows that, of course, which is why he's not going to do anything so stupid.

I think the most extreme and remotely plausible thing NK could want to do (but that would already mean taking an incredible risk) is to direct a nuclear missile to explode somewhere on the ocean, far from any populated place but close enough to the west cost of the US to send a clear warning about their capabilities to reach a major US city if provoked. NK is never going to actually attack the US first, it would simply mean squandering all the effort made so far in building a credible deterrence. Deterrence is not deterrent anymore when you force the enemy to respond.

I can't think of a scenario where a US counterattack isn't more damaging to NK than whatever damage NK would manage to inflict on the US by nuking Hawaii.

Tragically "the US" now means "Donald Trump" specifically regarding their propensity/ability to retaliate to a nuclear strike. Yeah, I think he'd do it. He's a maniac.

No, because the DPRK can't even do reentry right, let alone actually fit a nuke on a missile, for all of those huge swaths of people assuming it meant a nuclear attack. Regardless, it is uncontroversial that aiming at a target like Hawaii and actually hitting it is at this time beyond the technical means of the DPRK.

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