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A moving account from Jason Jones seeking shelter in Hawaii

Jason Scott Jones is a filmmaker and human rights activist. He works directly to aid the homeless, peoples facing genocide, and women with crisis pregnancies.

Stream of consciousness on today. this will be the bones of my article for tomorrow. Forgive typos, etc, Wrote this with my kids on my lap, while they watched AFV.


In the Shade of the Mountain. Thirty-Eight minutes in Hawaii. #FalseAlarm

I was abruptly woken up by the sound of overzealous JROTC Cadets running on the high school track across the street. I rolled over, grabbed my reading glasses and was excited to return to the book I fell asleep reading the night before- Leo Strauss and the Politics of Exile by Eugene Sheppard. After about a half hour of reading, I was debating whether I should go down and check on my children or watch an old Lomachenko fight on Youtube when my wife called from downstairs, "Babe, it's garbage day. Take out the trash!" I grabbed my phone, turned it on and rushed downstairs. My typical Saturday ritual. As I was dragging the trash out a shockingly unusual sound emanated from my phone, "Ballistic missile threat inbound... seek immediate shelter... this is not a drill.

"So it's today," I thought. Living on Oahu for almost 30 years, a student of the history of genocide, democide, and total war, I have meditated on the thought that Oahu could be the location of the great tragedy of the 21st Century. Decades of thinking on this inspired me to write a book on the subject with John Zmirak, The Race to Save Our Century. I also recently co-authored a white paper outlining a path to abolish city busting, strategic nuclear weapons.

Whenever I am commended for being some do-gooding lover of humanity, I respond, "no I'm just trying to save my children." Living on a small island, that is one of the most important strategic locations for the projection of US power to the East, you come to accept the reality that we are one of the most likely flashpoints for the start of WWIII. When I saw the alert on my iPhone 8, I received it with the same realism as midwesterners must acknowledge tornado warnings. And like thoughtful midwesterners I had a plan. I walked in the house, "kids get in the car, babe grab the case of water bottles." As my five children loaded into the car and my wife grabbed the case of water, I filled water jugs, filled two mugs of coffee and grabbed my 9mm.

My first thought was to get my family in the shade of the Waianae mountain range-to put the mountain between my family and Pearl Harbor. My guess was I had 10 minutes to get there. I planned to keep driving, hoping the first missile would be intercepted, and if there were more, we could arrive at the Makua Cave before impact.

Ignoring signs, police and the rules of the road I gunned the minivan. I had to get my family in the shade of the mountain. The entire time my thoughts were with my daughter and mother-in-law. They both live in Waikiki. I wrestled with the idea of calling them but knew there was no place for them to go. Then the phone rang. Living in DC during 9/11 I couldn't understand why the phones were working. My mother-in-law wanted to know what she should do. She lives about 5 min from Diamond head crater, so I told her to drive into the crater and go inside the abandoned bomb shelter. As I was talking to my mother in law my daughter, who was working on the beach in Waikiki called on my son's phone and asked the same question. I gave her the same answer. As I talked to my daughter, I knew that if this was a real attack and our missile defense fails this would be the last time I heard my daughter's voice. My wife noticed the tears in my eyes. As we made the turn into the shadow of the mountain, I felt we won a small victory. I assumed if it was an attack the first missile must have been intercepted or the inept North Koreans dropped a rocket in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Now my goal was to get my family to Makua Cave.

My hopes that this was a hack or a mistake were beginning to fade. "If this was a hack or a hoax," I thought "Why haven't we received a text saying so." This thought made my foot fall heavier on the peddle. I turned onto the incoming lane and passed about 20 cars. A man in a pickup gunned his truck and began to follow me. He was honking his horn trying to get my attention. "This dude wants to fight me for driving like an idiot. He must have his phone off" I thought. He was a big Hawaiian guy and was animated in his gestures. I slowed down and let him pull up next to me; I rolled down the windows." "Bro, what should I do? You seem like you have a plan? Where should I go?" relieved I didn't have to explain myself and the situation I shouted, "Get to Makua Cave! Put as much mountain between you and Pearl Harbor." The man held up his phone and with a look of despair said, "I can't reach my wife! What should I do." "There is no time bro. Drive to Makua Cave!" He looked at me and looked at his phone. I watched as he did a U-turn and drove his truck away from Makua Cave and drove toward town, toward Pearl Harbor, obviously toward his wife.

Just as we pulled up to Makua Cave a destination when I left my home, I never imagined we could reach before impact my cell phone rang and the State of Hawaii finally let us know that this had all been a mistake.

In 38 minutes I went from rolling my trash can out to loading five of my seven children into our minivan in a desperate attempt to outrun a nuclear missile. Thought I heard my oldest daughter's voice for the last time, gave my mother-in-law a destination I knew provided nothing but hope and watched a total stranger choose to turn away from safety and drive to save his wife.

We made it to the cave, so there was only one thing left to do. Unload the kids out of the car and take a photo on Instagram. As we entered the cave, a tourist was there with his walking cane and backpack. "I guess we won't die today," I said. He gave me a look of fear and confusion that let me know he didn't get the alert. I realized I still had the 9mm in my waist. I explained to him what happened and ironically that gave him relief.

On the drive home, my ten-year-old son said, "Dad, why don't we just nuke North Korea off the face of the earth, so we don't have to worry about this anymore."

"Are there children in North Korea son?" "Yes." "Are they as precious as you?" "I don't know." "Of course they are, son." "Are there fathers in North Korea, son?" "Yes." "Are their lives as precious as your father's?" "It is better to suffer injustice than inflict injustice."

It will be hard for people outside of Hawaii to understand the profound impact of this false alarm. A neighbor child told us how her family hid in the closest and her mother cried for an hour. A family prayed the rosary and "waited to meet Jesus." Another friend told me, "I watched TV and hoped it was a mistake."

As a filmmaker, writer, and activist I have reflected on democide and total war for almost three decades. Travelled the world from Sudan to Iraq. A year ago this week I was in eyeshot of ISIS traveling with Yazidi and Kurdish soldiers as they fought to defend their families; families that had fled annihilation seeking shelter in caves.

Today, in Hawaii, I hid in a cave fleeing the annihilation of my family.