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A comment on The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Saturday. Parent comment

Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by cstross on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @10:15AM (#16158710)
To underline this, here's what happens when something goes wrong with an ejector seat:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-37475298

We probably won't ever know how many people died as a direct result of the Hawaii BMD mis-alert, but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on).

Similarly, consider the warning signage deployed around high tension electrical substations, and the consequences of ignoring it or failing to understand its significance.

The point is, in these types of situation bad design can kill, and we need to design accordingly and unambiguously.

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Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by imglorp on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @11:28AM (#16159352)
That guy's death was apparently complicated by a chain of failures: user error with the safety pin, user error with the firing handle, maintenance/construction error with some bolt, and several aspects of the M/B design that allowed all failures to happen at once. Overall, those seats have saved some 7500 pilots (search for the tie club) and maybe killed a few: similar odds and debate to airbag deployments.

ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sean_Cunningham_(pilo...

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Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by Clubber on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @10:34AM (#16158865)
>but I'd be surprised if the number was non-zero (think in terms of car crashes, stress-aggravated cerebrovascular accidents, and so on).

I'm assuming you meant you'd be surprised if that number was zero. It's awfully hard to, in good faith, directly associate a message with a death. I mean if you wanted to make it seem bigger than it was, you could associate any crash or heart related death that happened in that 38 minute (?) period as directly a result of the warning, but I don't think that would be in good faith.

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Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @10:44AM (#16158956)
It shouldn't be hard to check if there's a spike in mortality above the median background around the period of the test.

Statistical significance will depend on the size of the spike.

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Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by Clubber on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @11:05AM (#16159144)
Ya, but like you said, it would have to be a significant spike, particularly for a 38 minute window. I haven't heard anything reported.
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Re:The screen that set off the ballistic missile alert on Sa... by Cthulhu_ on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @11:02AM (#16159120)
> consider the warning signage deployed around high tension electrical substations, and the consequences of ignoring it or failing to understand its significance.

"not only will it kill you, it will hurt the whole time you are dying"

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