This Is Not a Drill: Hawaii's Text Message Debacle [from Very Special Episodes]
Noble Blood
iHeartPodcasts and Grim & Mild
4.7 • 13.9K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On a quiet morning in Hawaii in 2018, cell phones lit up with a text message that felt impossible. A ballistic missile was inbound, and this was not a drill. For 38 minutes, hundreds of thousands of people believed they were living their final moments. For Very Special Episodes, Dana tells the story of what happens when ordinary folks are forced to confront the end of everything, all at once.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:07.1 | This is an I-Heart Original. |
| 0:14.4 | It's early 2018. |
| 0:19.4 | John Aaron, a morning news anchor for WTOP in Washington, |
| 0:24.2 | is enjoying one of the best days of his life. |
| 0:27.9 | He's on his honeymoon in Hawaii. |
| 0:30.2 | Went to the highest mountain, watched the sunrise, the whole nine, |
| 0:33.9 | and we were just loving it. |
| 0:35.6 | We were staying in Maui. |
| 0:37.0 | We had been to Honolulu before, and Maui just blew it. We were staying in Maui. We had been to Honolulu before, |
| 0:38.8 | and Maui just blew it out of the water. We loved it. That's John. Some Honolulu shade being |
| 0:44.9 | thrown here, but okay. Out kayaking, they see something incredible. And then the whale surfaced, |
| 0:52.1 | like, a few yards from us and did like a tail splash and everything. |
| 0:56.0 | And I was like, wow, I'm going to tell everybody about this. |
| 0:58.8 | What could possibly top this as a big thing that happened on our honeymoon? |
| 1:04.8 | What indeed? |
| 1:07.6 | On the morning of January 13th, he and his new wife, Natalia, are busy getting ready for the day. |
| 1:14.9 | It also happens to be Natalia's birthday. |
| 1:17.8 | But then, at exactly 8.07 a.m. local time, something odd happens, |
| 1:24.2 | something that most people would give an almost zero chance of ever happening. |
| 1:30.1 | We heard our phones buzzing up a storm in the corner and thought that it was maybe a bunch of |
... |
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