Celtic Will Trigger An All Out Ibrox Alert With A Win At Hampden In The Cup.

On 13 January 2018, things were tense on Hawaii. The reason for the tension was that Donald Trump was President and relations with North Korea were fraught to say the very least. As the Pacific fleet is based at Pearl Harbour, the people who lived there knew that if the shooting started that they were likely to be amongst the first targets.

At 08:07am, Hawaiians mobile phones began to beep with the same message, from the state emergency alert system.

This is what it said; “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

This. Is. Not. A. Drill.

Those five words are scarier than everything that precedes them.

And so the people who lived there had every reason to believe that within a short space of time – 25 minutes or so – their homes, workplaces and Hell, their very lives, would be snuffed out.

Local TV stations, who were plugged into the same alert system, interrupted their coverage and both visual and audio warnings were relayed to the viewers. Their message was more detailed and therefore even more alarming.

“The U.S. Pacific Command has detected a missile threat to Hawaii. A missile may impact on land or sea within minutes. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. Remain indoors well away from windows. If you are driving, pull safely to the side of the road and seek shelter in a building or lay on the floor. We will announce when the threat has ended. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Take immediate action measures.”

For some people, the “crisis” lasted a mere three minutes.

The military knew immediately that it was a false alarm, and so did those in the civilian chain of command. By 8.10am a message to that effect was supposed to be sent out. In fact, it wasn’t.

The state governor had posted by 8.20 on Facebook and on Twitter that the alert wasn’t real … but the actual official “all clear” message from the agency responsible for sending out the message didn’t start beeping on people’s phones until 8.45.

For 38 minutes, almost every ordinary citizen on Hawaii thought they were under attack and that Armageddon was either in progress or on its way.

The whole thing was later found to have been the result of “human error.”

A single solitary guy in the agency responsible for alerting the citizens sent out the wrong message and a series of errors followed in relation to getting out the real one.

It’s a great story, and the reason I find it particularly interesting is that the UK is finally getting its own version of that system, and the first “test” for everyone using a 4G or 5G phone will go “live” at 3pm on 23 April. Your mobile will vibrate and emit a siren sound. The message will announce that it is a test. Unless someone screws up.

It’s sort of a shame that the test isn’t coming a week later, when we’re at Hampden.

Because if we’ve already won tomorrow’s game and take the lead in that one, their club won’t need an emergency alert system to know they have big problems. Their own fans will make clear their dissatisfaction in a way that leaves no room for error.

Still, if that test was taking place on 30 April, those alerts would go off right in the middle of the second half. It’s possible that by that point some of their fans might welcome a rain of nuclear fire and their board might very well be in full on crisis mode.

The press this week was, as ever, filled with their players making big bold predictions about how we’ve not seen the “real” them yet and how this weekend at Parkhead we would. I think we did. It wasn’t very impressive, was it?

You can see the outlines of their descent to chaos starting to form already.

As a result of today, that whole club is already on high alert.

Fear and loathing run rampant through the halls.

One man has already headed for the bunker; Douglas Park will be the most relieved man connected to the whole mess. Yesterday’s chairman, which means that today and its aftermath are a problem for somebody else.

Once those alarms start to blare, The Mooch will find himself literally standing at Ground Zero. He has over-promised. If he also under delivers he will start next season with one foot already in the grave.

Get off to a bad start and his own final countdown will be well underway.

We’ve seen how Ibrox treats failed managers … even ones who reach European finals.

That’s not a nice place to be, any more than Honolulu would have been had there really been a missile, or missiles, heading towards the place. I wonder how he will handle the pressure. I think it more than possible that they’ve lose more games in the league before the campaign ends, and that of course will only add to the impression that things are slipping.

But at Hampden … man, that’s going to be his do-or-die afternoon.

This was their alert warning. They have two weeks to sort themselves out, and they are going into that game with nothing but what they have right now … which means they’re already on the back foot.

Lose that one and there won’t be any more time to run. All that’ll be left is to wait for the brilliant flash of light, and all the destruction that comes afterwards.