Twenty Minutes to Midnight* (Transferred from WordPress Blog, Originally Posted 1-15-18

My family and I experienced what was hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event Saturday morning on Oahu, Hawaii, as we received and reacted to a state emergency warning declaring a ballistic missile was heading toward us, punctuated by the words, “This is not a drill.” Below is my account of the events showing how quickly life can be turned upside down.

“Twenty Minutes to Midnight*”
By Joel Seppala

Twenty minutes to midnight. 8:00. Scrambled eggs are in the frying pan while she pours a mix into the waffle maker nearby. “I don’t have corn starch,” she says, “So I had to use flour. The waffles will probably be too hard.” So far, this is the biggest problem of the day.

I’m writing a poem about a touching Christmas thank you note our family received the other day.

Everyone in the house is dressed and messed the same as when we woke up. No one has anywhere to be, a week’s break between the holidays and Saturday morning sports.

The indoor/outdoor thermometer on the window sill reads 66 degrees outside; cool enough to see the dew on the grass mimic a winter frost.

Fifteen minutes to midnight. 8:07. The phones’ alarms ring at once in a haunting harmony. I can’t believe what I see. As I read the message my eyes widen. “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Oh my God. Silence. Indecision. This is impossible, but it’s not. I’m craving information that is nowhere to be found. There is no local news broadcast. Every bounce of the ball on the stupid basketball game still airing on TV aggravates the situation, with only an inadequate emergency banner to confirm the phone message. Where are the news anchors? This is the biggest story of their lives, if not the last.

Ten minutes to midnight. There’s no more time for clever planning. “Kids come downstairs. There’s a missile headed toward us. Let’s stay together, over here.”

Five minutes to midnight. How many prayers mixed with utterances of disbelief are flying toward heaven from this little island? What is happening, and what will come next?

Midnight. What is happening? Did we shoot it down? Did the missile miss its target? If it impacted, where did it hit? Still nothing from the local news. The impact could be any minute now—perverse exhilaration mixed with anxiety that comes only with personal impending doom. Thoughts of preservation: Maybe it won’t hit us. An inkling of encouragement: Was this all some big mistake? If it was, someone’s fired. Gallows humor I suppose.

Five minutes after midnight. Something isn’t right, because everything is quiet. There’s no Pearl Harbor 2018.

Ten minutes after midnight. It was a mistake, a false alarm. Check for confirmation. Yes, it’s calm. There is no storm.

Then comes the post-crisis sensation, the first conscious breath in half an hour. The national news media is aware of the situation and begin to expose the details. How could this have happened, and what does it all mean?

An island group, a state, paralyzed by a ghost threat—this time. But for us it was real. For 30 minutes we were under attack. In some ways it doesn’t matter that no missiles were inbound. We know how it feels to be 20, 15, 10, 5 minutes to midnight: doomsday.

What a blessing it is to see birds and trees and know that they’re still there
And feel a breeze, 66 degrees, of sea-fed island air
To walk outside and realize the skies are safe, for now
While reflecting on this morning’s errant shot across the bow

*‘Midnight’ is a reference to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock which symbolically describes the organization’s estimation on how near the world is to global catastrophe brought on by nuclear war.