Last week, for thirty-eight agonizing minutes, more than a million and a half residents of Hawaii were in fear for their lives.  News reports tell us a button was inadvertently pushed and the alert was sounded that a missile was inbound, presumably, from North Korea.  This button-pushing was flagged, so to speak. After immediately inquiring if it was the intent of the button-pusher to sound the alarm and it being confirmed, the alert was sounded.  In less than a couple of minutes citizens all over the islands were confronted with a kind of horror no one would invite.  Given the news over the last many months about North Korea and its testing of ballistic missiles, it is completely predictable grave concern for life would erupt.  A kind of panic ensued.  Thirty-eight minutes later, it was announced as a mistake.  There was no inbound missile.  The Apocalypse was not at hand.  I ask you: what would you have done during those thirty-eight minutes?  How would you try to spend what you believed to be your very last moments of life?  Reach out to your family?  Pray? Pray some more?  Would you just leave work?  Wander the street?  Try to protect yourself from the nuclear blast and fallout and the firestorm that would rain down everywhere?  Where could you go?  What about water and food and your prescription drugs?  Life as we know it would be altered.  Hiding under our school desks, as we were taught to do back in the late 50's and early 60's, seems almost quaint.  I am relieved the button-pushing of a week ago was an error.  I hope we never have to try to survive such an event.  If what follows such a thing could be called surviving.