The Hawaii Missile False Alarm meme originated from a terrifying real-life event on January 13, 2018, when a state employee accidentally sent an emergency ballistic missile alert to the entire state of Hawaii. The screenshot of the phone notification, featuring the ominous phrase 'THIS IS NOT A DRILL,' immediately went viral as people used humor to cope with the 38 minutes of sheer panic that followed. It has since evolved into a versatile template used to represent moments of extreme, often unnecessary, anxiety or situations where a minor mistake causes massive, widespread alarm.