Slashdot Mirror
Days After Hawaii's False Missile Alarm, a New One in Japan (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Japan's public broadcaster on Tuesday accidentally sent news alerts that North Korea had launched a missile and that citizens should take shelter -- just days after the government of Hawaii had sent a similar warning to its citizens. The broadcaster, NHK, corrected itself five minutes later and apologized for the error on its evening news (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The initial texts cited J-Alert, a system used by the government to issue warnings to its citizens about missiles, tsunamis and other natural disasters. But NHK later said that the system was not to blame for the false alarm. Makoto Sasaki, a spokesman for NHK, apologized, saying that "staff had mistakenly operated the equipment to deliver news alerts over the internet."
A 10 kiloton warhead in the centre of any city would cause at least 45,000 immediate deaths and about 250,000 injuries. That's a warhead smaller than either of the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
With a standard 300 kiloton warhead you would have over 600,000 immediate deaths and over 2 million injuries.
How much good is it going to do to "take warnings seriously"?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
If Japan and Hawaii's missile alarm systems had been compromised by hacker savvy North Koreans, the respective governments wouldn't tell us. That would cause widespread panic. Telling the public it was 'human error' is their only option. Just sayin'.