False Red Alarms
The text message that sent Hawai’i into panic, and our own threat detection system.
Shelby Betz woke early.
It was the final morning of her holiday on Maui, and she wanted to finish packing before flying home to Texas.
While her boyfriend took one last ocean swim, every phone on the island lit up:
EMERGENCY ALERT
BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Crowds sprinted from the beach. Hotel loudspeakers ordered guests to seal windows and take immediate shelter.
Thirty‑eight minutes later, Betz discovered—via Twitter—that it was a false alarm.¹
A single wrong click during a routine shift change sent the alert to roughly 1.5 million residents and tens of thousands of tourists.
Our threat detection system
What Betz (and the rest of Hawai‘i) felt in those minutes is governed by neuroception. Our subconscious threat detection system, named by Dr Stephen Porges, can be thought of as a traffic light.
- 🟢 GREEN — safe, social, learning
- 🟠 AMBER — caution, scanning
- 🔴 RED — survival: fight / flight / freeze
We flick through these states thousands of times a day.
It’s all handled subconsciously; our thinking brain only gets the report after the body reacts.
Stuck on red
Chronic early threat—neglect, violence, war—wires the detector. Ordinary cues (a door slam, raised voice, fireworks) can trigger a false red alarm. That’s faulty neuroception: a missile warning that exists only inside the nervous system.
Imagine if only Betz got the alert. What would others think of her behaviour?
Yet we see this all the time. A child detects a threat when there is none—faulty neuroception driving behaviour. They are safe, but they don’t feel safe.
“Their behaviour is simply information about how safe they feel.” — Claire Wilson, TEDx²
The body decides safety before the mind.
Repeated danger can force the detection system to get stuck on red.
Just as Hawai‘i’s alert system blared “incoming” with no missile in sight, a traumatised child’s nervous system blares “danger” in a safe room.
Calming a false alarm: five practical shifts
- Predict: Forewarning shrinks surprise.
“In two minutes we’ll switch activity.” - Narrate: State the benign reality.
“That bang was the door in the wind, not trouble.” - Match & lower: Slow breath, soft voice.
The child’s nervous system syncs with ours. - Rhythm & movement: Rocking, walking, drumming.
Reset the vagus nerve, tip Amber → Green. - Name & repair: After a spike.
“Your body felt unsafe; let’s tell it what really happened.”
From islands to living rooms
Those thirty-eight minutes after the alert showed an entire state how powerful a false alarm can be. For some children, that same chemistry floods the body every day, triggered by cues the rest of us barely notice.
We can’t punish the detection system into silence. We can’t logic it into trust.
We can only supply enough predictable, co‑regulated moments for the system to relearn safety.
Because safety is never just provided; it must be felt, again and again.
¹False "Inbound Missile" Alert Terrifies People In Hawaii (CNN Transcript)
²Neuroception: the missing piece in our children's mental health crisis | Claire Wilson | TEDxTelford