On The Morning You Wake (To The End Of The World)

On January 13, 2018, on an ordinary Saturday morning, as Hawaiian citizens went about their daily business, everyone in the state received a text message from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency:

BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII.

SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Hawaiians suddenly confronted a real and urgent nuclear threat—one that we all currently face, but rarely acknowledge. As Kauai resident Cynthia Lazaroff would later say, “The alert was false, but the nuclear threat is real…[it] is not a scenario, not a video game…we experienced it personally, felt the terror.” Although nothing happened that day, everything changed.