I saw a high-effort self-post on Reddit that gave a good framework for evaluating what might have happened. I thought it was good enough that I've recopied it here in full hoping that author appreciates reaching a larger audience and that discussion here might be better than that on Reddit. Repeating, I'm not the author of what's written below.

---

A couple of possibilities for what REALLY went down in Hawaii yesterday

I used to work on the Minutemen 3 ICBMs for a high profile company. Can't share too many details for obvious reasons. But I think the "mistake" of an employee accidentally pressed the mass alert button is very unlikely. In fact, I can think of a lot of things way more likely. Here's my two cents, in no particular order:

The threat was real, the missile was shot down

As others on this subreddit have already pointed out, the amount of time it takes an ICBM to travel from Southeast Asia to Hawaii is approximately 20-30 min ( ~10 min to hit ICBM max speed of 7 km/s, ~7200 km, (7200/7)/(60) = ~17 min for total travel time of ~27 min, not accounting for earth's rotation in that time period). The amount of time it took for the false alarm to be sent out was 38 min. Now, the way the US's ABM system works is that they basically launch a giant chunk of metal at the ICBM and hit it really hard. The ABMs have no ordinance or anything, they just destroy the incoming missile through shear impact. However, even though our ABM system is the best in the world, it's still only successful around 50% of the time. So when the incoming threat was discovered, it would still be protocol to alert the intended target of the threat in the event that the ABM systems fail (and whatever other defenses we have that I don't know about). I think it's at least feasible that the threat was real, and the threat was dealt with successfully (and thankfully). The question that tears this theory apart is: why would the US not tell us they shot down an enemy ICBM? The most likely answer I can come up with is that Trump doesn't want war. Maybe he just talks a big game. Or perhaps it's not financially beneficial to start a war when there were no causalities. Whatever it is, it's not that we don't know who launched the missile. When those things take off we pretty much immediately know where it's going and where it came from. So if there was a real threat, the US Gov is for whatever reason not sharing this information with the public. Maybe they don't want to cause panic. I don't know.

The EAS was hacked to provoke reaction from Trump

The EAS has been hacked before, it's possible that it was hacked again. The person or persons who hacked the system either did so for shits and giggles, which is extremely fucked up considering how many people could have died if we had retaliated, or they did so to intentionally cause a retaliation from Trump in order to make him look bad. See, ICBMs function on something called Mutually Assured Destruction. If someone like Russia launches their full force of ICBMs at us, we have that half hour to retaliate. In a situation like that, both countries lose. Using ICBMs against another country with ICBM's is essentially committing suicide. If we had launched missiles towards Southeast Asia, they would then have a chance to retaliate against us. I have hard time believing that any hacker would do this, but then, there are some truly crazy people out there. This could also explain why it took so long for them to send out the second alert, because the system was hacked or down and they needed to regain control or reset it. Also, if one of the employees didn't send the message, they may not have even known about it for several minutes after.

The EAS was commandeered by a disgruntled employee

This is the scenario I find most likely. Trump tends to piss an enormous amount of people off. Perhaps one of the workers manning that operation decided to try and make Trump look bad by sending out a false alert. It certainly is a bit embarrassing to send an entire state into full panic mode on accident. This is going to be a national incident for several days still.

The monitoring system used to look for incoming threats malfunctioned

This happens more often than you would think. The early alert systems are very sensitive. They're a lot better than they used to be, but they've detected false missiles before. I've heard of them being triggered by sunlight reflecting off large pieces of metal. They're sensitive for a reason, I mean better safe than sorry, right? Somehow, yesterday, the conditions were just right to trigger a false alarm. Instead of sharing with everyone how fallible the system really is, the Gov decided to blame it on a careless employee. It would cause a lot less panic.

The "false alert" was staged

In an attempt to distract the MSM from some policy he is currently pursuing, Trump ordered the "fake" threat. Now the news cycles will be dominated day and night by this "mistake" allowing him to pursue his true intentions. Or, alternatively, he wanted to demonstrate to the people that the U.S has an early warning system, although I don't think this is likely as the amount of panic that the alert would have caused (car crashes, heart attacks, etc) would not have been worth it.

The mistake was exactly that; a mistake

Honestly, I have a hard time believing that any operator could accidentally send out a message like that. These guys are trained for months before they are put at that station, and it seems to me like sending out a state wide alert takes more than just one press of a button. Also, the operator would have immediately noticed that the alert went out, and they would have been able to correct it much faster (not the 38 min that is did).

Whatever really happened yesterday, I don't think it was just an errant press of a button. But no matter what the actual cause was, this event was still a tragedy. Why? If there ever is a real threat and people get this message, they are now less likely to believe it, and that means they are less likely to seek shelter or prepare in anyway. Remember guys, don't let this turn into a "the Gov cried wolf" story. If you ever get a notification like this, your first thought should be finding shelter, then questioning.

Good night everyone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/7qax47/a_couple...