I guess a silver lining of the Hawaii alert is that it provided data on how people would react. As I understand, some went to shelters, some drove off somewhere, most were waiting to see what will happen. Did something like this happened before? Cc: @wellerstein
There was a similar incident in 1971: http://ebstest.stlmedia.net/
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Did that one go to the public? Not quite clear from the description. And it seems to have been cancelled almost immediately - "he didn't even read [the teletype message] until a notice came cancelling the alert." It wasn't 38 minutes
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And it was a vague "it's an emergency broadcast" without specifying the nature of emergency or where it came from. The Hawaii one was much more specific.
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Transmitting an Emergency Action Notification from the president via the Emergency Broadcast System to cease immediately all broadcasts meant only one thing during the Cold War: a nuclear attack was underway. Also, that incident lasted 40 min. before NORAD canceled first message.
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Maybe. But there was nothing about the actual emergency. In the video, they didn't say "it's an emergency message" - it was "we are participating in the emergency broadcast system at the request of the government." Hard for me to say what room for interpretation people had then
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Again, the fact that the Emergency Broadcast System cut into _all_ regularly scheduled programming made it, by definition, “an emergency.” Had it been an actual emergency, details and instructions would have followed.
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