Something interesting happened just a few years ago on January 13th, 2018.

What started out as a calm Saturday morning in Hawaii suddenly took a sharp turn.

Eight minutes after 8 a.m., everyone's cell phones started blaring an alarm.

TV broadcasts were interrupted. It was an urgent update from the

Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. When they checked their screens, what everyone then read

was probably the last thing anybody expected. The message simply said, ballistic missile threat

inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter.

This is not a drill.

You can imagine the panic that followed.

Phone lines to emergency services and government offices became overwhelmed by frantic people trying to figure out what was happening.

Others started preparing for what they thought was a legitimate nuclear attack.

People were calling loved ones for one last goodbye, or spending what they thought could be their

final moments with their family. One friend of mine, Jack, was there in Honolulu at a business

conference and he had left his hotel early to go walk along Waikiki Beach. His brother Rex called

him after the alarm went out and told him he needed to get back to the hotel right away. Rex later

said that Jack just kind of laughed and replied, why, I might as well stay here. My marine friends

were going wild on social media. I believe there was some kind of lockdown issued on all the bases.

I wasn't on the island at the time, having left a few years earlier, but knowing how Marines are.

If they were locked down in their barracks, my guess is that most of them started drinking early that day. But here's the thing, Hawaii wasn't

in danger. There wasn't a missile or meteor or any threat whatsoever. Turns out it was just a big

mix-up, a simple miscommunication during what was supposed to be a routine test of Hawaii's

emergency alert system.

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