I agree, the means of giving the alert needs to be instantly available, but protected against accidental operation.
A good way of achieving this is a simple switch that is located behind a breakable glass panel, similar to some types of fire alarm call point.
Located about 6 feet above floor level so as to be within reach of a person of less than average height, but unlikely to be broken accidently when moving furniture.

If the warning needs to be given, it takes a very few seconds for the operator to stand up, reach upwards, break the glass and operate the switch. Quick and simple but almost impossible to do by mistake.

Not sure how the system works in hawaii, but these days a manual button is rarely used. Those are handy for a general emergency shut down. For these alert system i would expect a comuter program, with buttons to click for a range of predetermined messages. The where doing tests, so somebody forgot to put it in test/practise mode or the system is setup incorrectly (test mode made to activate everything, in a silent/invisible mode).

Reminds me of WOPR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecPeSmF_ikc

Seems like what Hawaii needs is an emergency system with text alerts, loud sirens, and a visual warning beacon (maybe several beacons on the high hills). They need ALL of these signals to go off together. That would give the "confirmation" that people need to really get running in an emergency.

As one of many that have experienced real life nuclear war alarms, I strongly identify with the stories I have heard of people spending what they thought was their last few minutes with (or without) their loved ones.

In my case I was trained and I understood the risks. I can only imagine what it must be like for a parent to hold their child and wait......

This was not a simple error to be corrected but a severe trauma inflicted on a large population, well beyond the residents directly threatened.

And for many of us, it re-awakened long dormant feelings. We as sentient beings must somehow get beyond this "nuke-em" attitude.

Nomad.

Well said, Nomad. Sadly it appears we're reentering "interesting times" that I'd hoped we had left behind us. If there's to be any silver lining to this debacle I would say it must be to be better prepared. It would appear that there was no plan in place. No one seemed to be headed towards shelters or even know if there were any around. This should be a teachable moment! Whatever civil defense assets are available in HI they should be discussed and the public informed as to what to do if the balloon goes up for real.

I am fortunate I suppose to live in a 'boring' place. As a kid I grew up about 35 miles from Elsworth AFB and maybe five to ten miles from a Minuteman missile silo. If the Cold War would have gone hot my house probably would have been pretty near one of the highest priority targets in SAC. Now a small rogue state like DPRK almost certainly could not reach the city where I now live. In a full scale nuke exchange it probably wouldn't much matter where you live though.

They did. (Save for beacons.)

Sirens, road signs, cell and email. Some local authorities denied they used sirens until proved wrong.

What they need is people to authenticate before warning. And a statewide plan in place.

People were told to take shelter in buildings, but Walmart, Courthouses, etc. were either closed (Sat). or locked their doors.

Many other buildings there are not concrete or masonry or have insulation. So taking shelter that would do any good would be challenging.

So it's just "hide beneath the school desk, waiting for the atom bombs to fall"

Inn later stages of a disaster, self defense from looters and rioters would be hard too, owing to the weapon control laws.

I agree that these days, that a physical button or switch is seldom used, but IMHO this should be reviewed for something as important as the issuing of a nuclear attack warning.
An actual switch behind a "break glass in case of emergency" panel is quick and simple to operate but almost impossible to operate by mistake.
It may also be operated by anyone who is authorised to be in the control room. The person at a computer may suffer sudden illness or panic and forget the correct procedure to follow.
If it is a simple procedure with only one or two steps, it could be activated by mistake as has just happened.
A more complex procedure has a real risk of being forgotten or misapplied in the stress of a very serious situation.

What we need are two keys to activate it:

https://youtu.be/t4okAfKCwRk?t=2m23s

Jeanette Isabelle

Having visited many incident command and crisis centers locally and abroad, the only button on the desk I have seen is for operators to open the door for visitors.

I think the issue is a procedural thing. Somebody needs to verify training, test and active mode of the systems before the buttons are pushed.

The system interface might need to have big highlights about the mode being used. However active mode is the default, so that might not trigger somebody that they aren't in training or a test mode. So this is of limited use. Having a giant blinker saying you are real mode all the time, basically makes people not see it any more pretty quickly.

A physical switch can be added to the system and procedure. A training or test can start with a coordinator manually switching and a second person verifying. This might include a switch controlled by a key.

Actively making test mode different, means people never actually get to use the real thing and means things go wrong when something does happen. It also makes it virtually impossible to test the system correctly.

Having a completely independent identical training setup can help, but is expensive. I have seen duplicate systems also being the backup system but completely separated. The computer systems were made to be able to pull out of the training server rack and inserted in the 'real' rack as emergency replacements. But somehow that system was never really working well in practice and the software always seems to be different in the training one.