Bloomfield Hills Couple Tell Of Terrifying Minutes In Hawaii Believing Nuclear Missile Attack Imminent

DETROIT (WWJ) - At first he didn't think it was real ... then he thought he and his wife were about to die.

A metro Detroit area couple who are in Hawaii tell of the terrifying minutes after receiving a text alert warning of an incoming nuclear missile attack.

Ken Gold of Bloomfield Hills, an attorney for General Motors, spoke with WWJ's Stephanie Davis from Maui. He went along with his wife to the island while she attended a medical conference this week.

That's when he received the text message urging him to take shelter because of an imminent nuclear attack.

"Everyone was seriously thinking 'is this my last moment on earth?'" says Gold. "People were texting their homes and telling people they loved them. People were crying."

"Where do you hide from a nuclear attack?" asks Gold. "So, everyone just kind of milled around and asked each other where they were going and ultimately we settled on an interior conference room - sort of as far away from the outside as possible but we recognized it would probably be pretty weak shelter from a nuclear attack. But it was the best we could do."

He and hundreds of others at the conference would find out, from hotel authorities, about 30 minutes later that the alert was a false alarm.