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Comment by vtail | Hacker News Reader

I’m in Hawaii and received it this morning. First thought: there is probably no shelter close by anyway, and if they would send a missile they would probably target Honolulu (I’m in Kauai).

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I know this isn't a comforting thought, but: Missiles from the most likely source (North Korea) are not thought to have very good accuracy. They may be as likely to hit Kauai or the big island (or the ocean nearby) as Honolulu.

I hope this event wasn't too stressful for you and your family.

Funny - my gf had the same idea. We basically decided it’s most likely a mistake, so were not particularly worried.

They would probably send multiple warheads to increase the odds...

That's trickier than you'd think. You either have to send the warheads one well after the other, or you have to set them up so they detonate at precisely the same time, so as to avoid the first warhead to detonate destroying all the others. (This is why, at one time, missile silos were placed relatively close together. The enemy could presumably get one of them in a preemptive strike, but not all of them.)

At Korea's level of technology, for example, you'd probably just pick a secondary target in some other place entirely.

The lack of sirens going off in Honolulu this morning tipped me off that it wasn't a real alert, but it took way too long (officially) to find out it was a mistake. Twitter was the first line of defense in getting information (within 10 minutes of the alert): https://twitter.com/wfh1901/status/952242062304227328

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