You receive an emergency alert: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." What do you do? How do you think your neighborhood will react? What memes be on Lemmy?

We were in this scenario last year, when NK launched a missile towards Hokkaido, and we were on the west coast, just next to a nuclear reactor.

After getting the altert, we put on clothes, went downstairs to the sturdiest room, stuck on the TV to the NHK news, and waited. The missle plopped into the ocean off the coast, and we had tempura for lunch.

There's really nothing you can do in these situations but stay calm and do the small, sensible things.

At my current location, I'd expect it to be an error, since I'm about 1500 miles away from the nearest worthwhile target (Chilean Antartica Region).

I'd immediately go into the basement and start memeing. I have redundant internet connections for these kinds of situations so I should still be able to post memes. I'm locally hosting a Mastodon instance so I can post even if the internet is down globally. I also have a TCP-over-HF setup so that I can post memes anywhere in the world without intermediate infrastructure. If humanity is completely destroyed, I would start memeing and rickrolling on cave walls for future generation

What a dumb message. Of course this is not a drill. This is a phone. My drill doesn't have the means to accept incoming messages.

I do the same thing for a missile alert that I do for a tornado alert...

Film it from my front porch as it gets uncomfortably close, while my wife screams in the background for me to get back in the house.

The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes weaved their way up to Ford.
'I thought,’ he said ‘that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.’
‘If you like, yes,’ said Ford. ‘That’s what they told us in the army,’ said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back towards his whisky. ‘Will that help?’ asked the barman. ‘No,’ said Ford and gave him a friendly smile.

Nothing. Everyone is going to get the same alert and freak the fuck out, clogging all the roads, making it impossible to get to a shelter.

I have 2 choices:

Center of my cinderblock house and hope for the best.
Submerged in the hot tub and hope for the best.

Hope I get obliterated by a direct hit

Just another Tuesday for me

Update: oh hey, there's one right now

I would invite everyone to my bomb shelter.

I would know it's fake because nobody is nuking our small country.

My phone is usually dead, misplaced, or the volume is at 0%. So I would probably crack a beer and stand on the porch wondering why the neighbors are freaking out.

I'll dodge.

I live with my mom and my wife 40 mins from the vancouver city centre… Honestly I’d probably go sit with my wife, kiss them ‘n hope for the best.

Also sobbing, that too. Can’t forget that.

Wank

Assuming it's nuclear, sit around and mourn the fact I don't have a basement. Hope that either A: missle defence works, or B: I'm in the evaporation zone. Radiation sickness sounds awful.

Even if the explosion and fallout completely missed my area, I think EMP disruption would be a huge issue and lots of people would be panicking, stealing, murdering trying to survive.

There's nothing to do.

I go outside with arms open wide, saying "it's about time".

Meh, I'm in Scotland and the nearest even vaguely major city is 30 miles away, they could be setting off tsar bombas and I'd be fine from the several km of solid rock from various winding hills between me and the blast, probably wouldn't even feel much of a pressure wave. Probably just start filling every container I can find with clean water.

Chug some NyQuil, take some sleeping pills and some Benadryl and deal with it later.

Put on Tom Lehrer's We Will All Go Together When We Go

I live near a strategic asset. I bend over and kiss my ass good bye because the good roads out of town just got super clogged.

Maybe get the good bottle out and hope the ABM stuff actually works this decade.

Make sure my phone was actually on silent, put ear plugs in and go back to sleep. I'm too fucking tired to try and survive anything more.

Go stand in the street and flip off the CIA satellite overhead. I'm ready.

I've got one hell of a cold right now. I'd welcome the sweet relief.

I would text my housemate my location and where I planned to shelter.
if i was at home I would go to the lowest floor in the middle of the house away from the windows. in my current place, I think I'd be in the ground-floor bathroom, so I'd also fill any available containers with tap water while I still could
I'd follow the news online as long as I could, switching to my radio if/when necessary
see web pages like this for more tips: https://www.ready.gov/ especially: http://www.ready.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/are-you-ready-guide.pdf

Ha we don't have text alerts in my country! I would die happy and ignorant in my pretty toilet

Clearly, war has come. My town won't be the one getting hit though.

Load a few jerry cans in the car, take out cash at the ATM, fill up as much fuel, clean water and firewood as possible, then stop by the local hospital and ask if they need extra hands. Meanwhile give my sis a call.

Oh! Oh! I have an answer for this. I remember around the time that The Day After aired, one of the local news stations ran a story simulating what would happen to my city were it hit by an ICBM. We lived on the far side of a hill, far enough away from downtown for it to be potentially survivable. I decided that if we got the warning, I'd grab my bike and light out for ground zero. Fuck surviving, I don't wanna take the chance of being alive but horribly injured, and that aftermath shit just wasn't worth it.

Oh, so if you ever wonder why Gen X/Xennials are so fucked up, there ya go.

Ah just dump all my cat's treats in her bowl and probably go lie down.

@IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol

I go to the residential shelter.
Neighbors go to their shelters.
No memes, everyone continues to do their stuff as usual after 10-min shelter stay.

Nothing new here, actually

I live in a shithole 100km from a NATO capital. I'm not expecting a direct or near hit, so the fallout is my main concern. I should have at least 20-30 minutes to get comfy.

I've got potable water in jugs in the basement already. I'll just grab a couple of mattresses, sleeping bags, camping stove, food, solar/crank radio and head down there. Also some duct tape to seal up the ventilation.

Hopefully it's a nice day so I could go outside and lay down in the grass or climb a tree to chill and completely relax.

I'm about 45 minutes from the Sierra Nevada mountains so I'm headed there to a place I know.

Go to basement. Got enough emergency supplies to last a while.

I am "lucky" enough to live within a few miles of a place I'm pretty sure would be a ground zero in an all out nuclear attack. I live in a university town. And the university I attend has a nuclear engineering program along with an accompanying research reactor. In any all-out nuclear exchange, anything related to nuclear technology is at the top of the target list. A facility that trains new nuclear engineers is definitely on the target list. We've actually talked about this. If we get this message, our plan is to round up the cats, throw then in the car, grab every mind altering substance we can get our hands on, and go get wasted outside the front gate of the reactor building. We won't try to break into the building or anything; the alert could always be in error and we don't need a felony for trying to break into a nuclear facility on our records. But when hydrogen bombs are involved, the front gate of the reactor building is close enough to ground zero to do the job.

Sorry, but there are indeed fates worse than death. For one, we would be unlikely to survive the initial bombing anyway. But most people have this idea that you'll get vaporized by a bomb. That's not how these things actually work. If you're killed in the first hour by the bomb, odds are it will be from being slowly cooked alive in the burning collapsed remnants of your own home. And sure, we could drive out into the country, but that would only ensure that we would die slowly from fallout induced radiation sickness, slow starvation after the complete collapse of all supply chains, or worse.

Trust me. If that alert comes, the ones close enough to ground zero to be atomized will be the lucky ones. This is something that you do not want to survive. I would encourage anyone that if they ever get that alert, to try to travel as close to whatever you think is your most likely ground zero as possible. You'll be doing yourself and your loved ones a favor. Unless you're already an off-grid survivalist type living in a self-sufficient compound way outside of any blast or fallout zone, all you're doing by escaping the blasts is stretching out your own misery. Do you and yours a favor by making it quick and painless.

On another note, Happy New Year!

Drugs. So the usual.

I'm going to the drug store to buy them out of iodine. If I survive, probably going to need it.

I guess I'd seek shelter 🤷‍♂️

I will do the following:

Duck and cover

Double it and give it to the next person

If I’m in a country that isn’t at war, and has a strong military:

Ignore it and go about what I was doing. Later on, probably read about some idiot who sent the warning by accident.

Possibly, die in a fiery explosion.

Meh. I can still doom scroll in that time. Best use of my time I tell you.

I assume pizza delivery times will be through the roof, so I'd try to get mine in ASAP.

Seek immediate shelter, probably. And wonder why someone would send a ballistic missile to New Hampshire.

I'd either go take a nap, or go hide in my basement. Not sure which.

If I'm at work, I go to the gym (the gym's in a cold war bomb shelter) if I'm at home I start heading north. Put a couple of mountains between me and the city.

Take me and my cat down to the basement with my phone, water, power bank and lantern/candles, call my mom so we could all be on the phone together, and hope I'm taken out instantly.

Given how slow the elevator is in my building, I’d do nothing. I’d be dead before it showed up.

I'd be setting off the pair of sirens I own, then awaiting the inevitable. Thankfully I live in an area where the chance of being vaporized is quite high.

If you're my family, sleep through it while I frantically close windows because I didn't know what else to do. Most Hawaii homes have no basements usually, so its kind of just fucked

Get in the cool dirt under my house.

I'm going to get some beer and weed and enjoy the rest of my day.

Immediately get in my car and drive like a bat out of hell out of my city. It’s small but it’s for sure a nuclear target

I'd probably be safe and sound, since I'm in a small town a bit away from Melbourne, so an air strike wouldn't affect me unless they tzar bomba the shit out of Melbourne.

I wonder if my neighbours will think fucking around with Russia was worth finding out, or rejoice in the victory of retaliation.

This is how this situation was depicted in a made for TV movie on NBC. https://youtu.be/n28NoLNarNs?si=DHOgJqb1QWzulkqg

I don't have to fully imagine since northern Japan has gotten alerts thanks to a certain neighbor. As for us, there's that can be done. Nowhere has basements. I do t know if anyone nearby even lives in a concrete building. Wed likely then make our way to the municipal office at some point as it's our closest designated disaster/evac point.

opening some of the jails.

they are far enough away from any reasonable target to be safe, and with a few motivated friends, I might be able to pull a few bank jobs.

I assume it's a mistake because I live in a small town that would never be a target.