So I was surfing the internet yesterday when I read on CNN that North Korea is going to shoot a nuclear missile at Hawaii in early July. Obviously, as a person who is currently in Hawaii, this story concerns me. A lot. On my list of things that concern me at the moment, it is currently third behind what I’m going to eat next and whether or not I should take a nap and just ahead of cockroaches flying into my ear (trust me, if this ever happened to you it would be this high on your list too). But it’s not just me; the entire state of Hawaii is paying close attention to this story. The last time a story concerned everyone in the state this much was when they did a story on how the recession would cause the price of spam to go up. You can tell the seriousness of the issue when the West Hawaii Today’s headline reads “Lakers Continue to Hold Referee’s Wife Hostage.” Oh wait… sorry, that was the sports section. Anyway, trust me, it was the lead story. Apparently Kim Jong-il finished the “Friends Season Five” DVD his mother got him, because he got bored again and decided to say he was going to blow up America. This is nothing new obviously; Kim Jong-il threatens America so often that his threats are behind “John and Kate Plus Eight” updates on the news (somebody needs to deport that woman to Iceland before her husband and her eight children throw holy water on her and she dissolves). The last time he tried to launch a missile it went about eight feet before the rubber band powering it snapped and it just kind of fell over (further proof Asians should not be allowed to drive anything).
This time North Korea is using a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 4,000 miles, which is funny since Hawaii is more than 4,500 miles away. My guess is that, like me, Kim Jong-il was not paying attention in that part of class where they teach you how to convert from metric units. But of course it sounds a lot scarier when they say “North Korea threatens to bomb Hawaii” instead of “North Koreans aimlessly send missile into the middle of the ocean somewhere.” And remember, this is all according to Japanese Intelligence. Now, the Japanese are smart and all, but I don’t fully trust intelligence from a country that tells me to set up a VCR by “plug socket wall for best electricity and taste.” Besides, how do I know that Japan isn’t just publishing this story so the Koreans will read it and forget they were actually planning to bomb Japan? My geography is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure that Japan is a lot closer.
Regardless, the United States has said they have set up a missile defense system. Now, I’m sure this is true, but I’m still nervous because I still don’t really understand how these things work. When I hear “aerial missile defense system” I picture some guy named Earl sitting on his porch with a shotgun looking at the sky with binoculars. I would much rather have something I can see, like a big concrete dome or a giant butterfly net. This whole missile intercept thing sounds like it involves a lot of complex math, which I don’t trust.
All I do know is how everybody in Hawaii will react: they will buy toilet paper. No really, whenever there is some kind of impending natural disaster or emergency situation, people in Hawaii head to Costco to buy toilet paper, rice, and gasoline. Even when it makes no sense. For instance, a couple of years ago there was a big earthquake off the coast of Kona. I’m watching the news and I see reporters in Honolulu standing outside a Costco and there are tons of cars trying to get gas and people walking out of the store with enough toilet paper to TP the entire city. And for those of you geography challenged people, Honolulu is on a completely different island from where the earthquake was. They only felt a few tremors and lost power for a little while. Yet the first thing they think when they lose power is “oh my god I need toilet paper and gas,” even though since toilets and streetlights don’t work during power outages, making both of those items relatively useless. If the city of Honolulu were hit by Hurricane Katrina, all you would see are people floating on rafts of toilet paper holding bags of rice. But then again, I’ve heard stories of people in early Hawaii wiping their asses with Sears magazines (which were shipped to your mailbox for free whether or not you wanted them), so I can see how these people have come to hold toilet paper very near and dear to their hearts.
So anyway, I hope that North Korea won’t act on this threat, because as I’ve just told you, we are definitely not ready for it. If we suddenly heard that the missile was incoming, we would all rush to hide in our basements before we realize that nobody in Hawaii has basements. At least on the mainland people have those storm shelters installed. In Hawaii, people just go the Ace Hardware and nail plywood to their windows and duck tape their doors. Odds are that when the bomb went off, half the population would be on the road trying to fill in gas. I personally will probably just stay at home. Of course, with the speed that news reaches Kona, I’ll have to read the paper on July 5th to find out Kona’s been wiped out by a nuke. Speaking of wiped out, I’ll probably have to save the newspaper, because they were sold out of toilet paper.
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