What To Do With 15 Minutes?

The false alarm in Hawaii yesterday raised that very classic question: if you only had a few minutes to live, what would you do?  Tweet, of course.  Well, other than that?

It depends on where I am and who I am with.  If I am alone but near chocolate chip cookies or cinnamon buns, well, I gorge.  Same goes for beer.  Reflux be damned.  If alone, I would call Mrs. Spew and College Spew.  If at home with Mrs. Spew, we would try to reach our kid and tell her how proud we have been, and that we are sad that we will not see the stuff that she creates (or would have created if we are all going to die).    And then I would look for some beer. 

The story yesterday raised the other choice: to try to survive or not.  I got into an argument online about whether folks were overreacting by putting their kids into the storm drains (concrete is not a bad choice), and I thought it might be an overreaction or a dangerous reaction.  I had friends online saying that they would have gone to the roof to watch the missiles come in because who wants to live after that.  This is assuming, of course, the missiles are carrying nuclear weapons.  If they are conventional, they can be survived by most folks (the storm drain would then be a not bad idea).  If they are carrying biological or chemical weapons, again, most people will survive.  And if you are in Hawaii, and the inbound missiles are from North Korea, then the odds are not bad that the missiles will hit water. 

Which leads to the most important thing we must do if we have 5, 15 or 30 minutes of warning... wait.  Just wait before panicking as thus far all alarms of nuclear attacks have been false, and most alarms about missiles have been false unless one lives in Israel, Iran, Iraq, and a few other places.  And if it happens to be the one time a nuclear weapon is falling on your head, tweet at me afterwards to tell me I am wrong.