California TV viewers left confused and scared at false emergency evacuation broadcast

Television viewers in California just got a nasty surprise when all programming was interrupted by an emergency broadcast telling them to immediately evacuate not just Los Angeles, but the “Eastern North Pacific Ocean”. Here’s what the frankly quite terrifying sounding message looked like:

So far as we can tell, the message may have been limited to those in Ventura County, with the Sheriff’s department making the following statement:

This appears to have been a mistaken activation of the service rather than in response to any incident, though Deadline theorizes that it may be connected to the Castaic brush fire burning near 5 Freeway in Ventura County.

One viewer said they were literally watching Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear apocalypse comedy Dr. Strangelove when the alert displayed – which probably only makes the story work better:

One viewer wasn’t taking any chances (though may not be entirely serious):

Others report that it did indeed display in multiple formats across different counties:

This is not going to be good for anyone’s anxiety:

Given that this is California there were many options for potential disaster:

Some theorized a massive tsunami was on the way:

Could it finally be happening?

Many quickly drew parallels between this and the panic after the 2018 false nuclear missile alert in Hawaii. That saw the residents of the state informed that a ballistic missile was inbound, that this was not a drill, and to seek shelter immediately. Faced with impending death many did, though it was later discovered that the entire situation was down to a fat-fingered government employee hitting the wrong button.

Presumably something similar is the case here. More on this as we hear it.