(Natural News) As you're probably aware by now, the government of Hawaii texted out an emergency ballistic missile warning over the weekend, terrifying its citizens with the following text:

EMERGENCY ALERT: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

It actually was a drill, it turns out, but in the 38 minutes after this text was sent out, Hawaiians panicked in the streets, crying and screaming for dear life, according to multiple media reports. Via NBC News:

The aftermath of the false alert was "crazy," she told NBC Bay Area, and prompted people to run around on the streets "crying and screaming," wondering what to do. Andy Thammavongsa, who tweeted a screenshot of his phone that showed the time between each alert, lives in Ewa Beach and told NBC in a Twitter message, "Everyone was panicking, the whole island was awake and alert."

Note to self: Don't ever get caught in Hawaii during a nuclear attack. There's no escape and the citizens panic. Oh, but on the not-so-bright side, some Hawaiians did start stuffing their children into storm drains.

Three crucial lessons in all this

There are three crucial lessons you need to learn from this false alarm episode:

#1) The government is beyond incompetent.

The entire system for sending out terrifying alerts to the population is controlled, apparently, by one extremely incompetent person who has absolute authority over sending these alerts, with no oversight whatsoever. At the same time the media is totally freaking out over President Trump's "big button" on his desk, it turns out some moron in Hawaii's emergency management hierarchy actually does have a button on his desk, and he pushed it to see if it actually did work. Guess what? The button works.

That's the official explanation, at least. I strongly suspect the more realistic explanation is that the Hawaii government's emergency alert system was hacked, just like the Atlanta airport's power grid was recently hacked and brought to its knees a few weeks ago.

By the way, did you ever wonder why the government was drilling a scenario that involves a nuclear missile striking Hawaii? The answer should be obvious. It's because the government expects that possibility to occur. Hawaii, after all, is a fairly easy target for North Korea's ICBMs. So is Guam or Seattle, for that matter. The very fact that Hawaii was drilling for this is an indication that a real risks exists for this possibility to occur.