776: I Work Better on Deadline
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. Okay, so here's a story you probably heard and a story you have not. Remember in 2018 when Hawaiians got that alert on their phones saying that a ballistic missile was inbound, headed for Hawaii, this is not a drill, seek immediate shelter. People scrambled to find places to hide, they put their kids in storm drains, it seemed completely plausible that a missile was on the way because this was after months of President Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un threatening each other with nuclear destruction, fire and fury. Okay, so that is the story you know. Here's the one you don't. When the alert came, I was at my house, up on my lawn. My first thought was, "Wow, I'm gonna view history and then get wiped off the map." This is Mike McFarland, and he figured he'd be viewing history because his lawn is in a part of a wahoo that overlooks Pearl Harbor, which is where he figured the missile was gonna land. There's still an active military base there. So he grabs his cat to bring her inside, flips on TV and radio. The same alert, incoming missile is everywhere, which makes it more real and more terrifying. He props up an iPad at a window and points it at Pearl Harbor to livestream whatever is about to happen, which he admits. Like, I'm not rational, I just got the news my world was gonna end. Now I have about 15 minutes to live in my mind. He started thinking about his life and his grandfather, who died when he was a little. And some whiskey of his grandfather should he still had somewhere. So I grabbed, I found this thing, it's been up in the closet, and it's a beautiful bottle, and I took a big drink and I toasted my grandfather and said, "Okay, goodbye, is it?" And then I read this article once that how you survive a nuclear blast, and it just kind of came out of nowhere from the dark reaches of my mind. It's when the nuclear thing comes, you're supposed to go on a bathtub and cover yourself up with a blanket. So I took my cat in there, I had my phone in there, cover myself up and just lay there and just waited. By the way, no offense to Mike. Going into your bathtub will not protect you from a nuclear blast. But you know it's funny where your mind goes, when you think you just have minutes to live. I think I had the moment that a lot of people think about, but let me tell you it's different when it happens. It's like, "Okay, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die right here," and my life just sort of came rushing in front of my eyes. It's like, "Okay, one of my proud of what I'm sorry about," and I thought about Lynn. I thought about the last girlfriend I had, and it wasn't a pretty breakup, and I felt... They're broken up maybe six months before this, after a year together. And I thought, "Okay, well, I'll just send a text to Lynn and just tell her goodbye and tell her how important she was in my life, and love him alive." And so I did. I sent that. The exact words of the text, Lynn, I just got word that a nuclear missile on its way to Honolulu.
Transcription truncated.