With North Korea’s nuclear capabilities growing and their leader boasting that he can hit any city in the United States, the State of Hawai’i was conducting a drill of their civil defense alert system and accidentally sent out a state-wide warning of an incoming ICBM.

Sirens wailed and it took 38 minutes for them to send out a message canceling the original message. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard confirmed it was a false alarm and sent out a Tweet but who’s watching Twitter when you think the world is about to end in nuclear war?

This is not the first time this has happened. Here’s the story of the first government induced nuclear panic from the Ricochet archives (March 17, 2015)

Had This Been an Actual Emergency…

During WWII, Allied bomber crews used the broadcast signals of German radio stations as a giant set of navigation beacons. After the war, the Truman Administration was afraid that the Soviets would use US radio and television stations in the same way and created the CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic Radiation) System. Only radio stations on 640 and 1240 AM would remain on the air, alternating in five-minute increments.

With the onset of the ICBM threat, CONELRAD was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System. The original purpose of the EBS was to find a way for the president to address all of the United States within ten minutes. It eventually morphed into a regional alert system as well for natural disasters.

One of my first duties in television was cutting my station’s EBS audio. I was also in charge of making sure the authentication codes were up to date. In case of a national emergency declared by the president, you put the system on the air only after you matched the code word that was received in a sealed envelope.

The US Air Force ran the National Emergency Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. Tests were run on Saturday mornings and tapes were loaded into the system that provided both audio and teletype information. On the morning of February 20, 1971 the civilian teletype operator on duty loaded the wrong tape and sent out an alert and the current authentication code: HATEFULNESS.

Welcome to Brown Trouserville.

Here’s how WOWO Fort Wayne reacted:

Even after the AP verified the mistake it still took the authorities 40 minutes to find the correct cancellation code:

In 1997, EBS was replaced with the Emergency Alert System. It not only encompasses broadcasters, but cable and satellite systems, as well as cell phone networks. It has never been used on a national basis. As former FCC Chairman Michael Powell (Colin’s son) points out, had it been activated on 9/11 viewers would have known less about what was going on had the network feeds been interrupted.

The Obama Administration ordered a nationwide test to be conducted on November 9, 2011. It had, ummm, a few problems.

Around 18% of the nation’s broadcasters reported that the test failed to trigger their system. In New York, all Comcast subscribers watched their TVs change channels to QVC. (Tune in now! Apocalyptic Savings! Limited Time!) Time-Warner customers got nothing. Viewers on DirecTV got a test slide but, instead of FEMA audio, they got thirty seconds of Lady Gaga singing “Paparazzi.” Of the stations that did have their systems triggered, many reported garbled audio.

Broadcast and system engineers have been working to correct the problems and another test is scheduled for this September. But now they have another problem: more and more Americans are streaming their entertainment from the web.

The system — as currently constructed — uses 77 radio stations as Primary Entry Points that the equipment of other broadcasters, cable and cell systems monitor. There’s presently no way to integrate that into the web. So, if you’re streaming reruns of The Walking Dead off of Netflix, don’t expect to be warned in the event of a real Zombie Apocalypse.