Jim Carrey admitted he took a photo of the moment he thought he had 10 minutes to live after receiving a terrifying emergency alert on his phone – and it’s actually an image you may have seen before without realising what it was.
There are various countries that have public alert systems to let people know about disasters such as flooding or wildfires in their area, including the likes of the US, Canada, Japan and the Netherlands.
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The UK is set to trial its very own version this weekend, when a 10-second sound blast will be sent to phones.
But while Brits have had plenty of notice about the test, many people across the pond weren’t quite so lucky in 2018, when a false missile warning sent people into instant panic.
The infamous incident saw a ballistic missile alert accidentally issued via phones, television and radio across the state of Hawaii.
“EMERGENCY MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII,” it said.
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“SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
Hawaii Governor David Ige later apologised for the message, which state officials blamed on a miscommunication during a drill at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency.
While the alert ended up being false, it didn’t stop widespread fear setting in before an official explanation was issued, some 38 minutes later.
Actor Jim Carrey was among those affected by the unexpectedly alarming message, having taken a photo of the exact moment he thought he had just 10 minutes left to live.
Speaking about the bizarre experience on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon a couple of years ago, he explained how it made it into his book Memoirs and Misinformation – or, rather, onto it.
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When asked how he came up with the cover artwork for the book, Carrey revealed it had some pretty ‘wild’ origins.
“The cover is actually my face after being told that I have 10 minutes to live – and that’s for real,” he told Fallon.
“It was a fake missile alert in Hawaii. I was there. I was writing, my assistant Linda called me, she was crying. She said, ‘We have 10 minutes left.’
“And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘The missiles are coming.’”
Carrey continued: “It was completely real to us. And my brain started winding and I tried to get off the island with my daughter, I couldn’t get off the island.
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“And then the question was, should we all try to get together? I said, ‘I don’t want to die in my car.’
“And we had to say goodbye.”
Carrey said he ‘sat on the lanai and looked out at the ocean’, at which point, he started thinking what he could do with this ‘last moment of time’.
He continued: “I just decided to through a list of gratitudes and, honest to God, I just could not stop thinking of wonderful things that have happened to me, and blessings that I’ve had. So it was lovely.
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“And I got to a point of grace, with about two minutes to spare when I found out it wasn’t actually happening.
“All I was planning to do was close my eyes and be thankful, because it's been a good ride.”
When Fallon asked what happened when he found out it was a fake missile test, Carrey replied: “Then I got p**sed off and heads rolled!”
A clip of the interview resurfaced on TikTok this week, where one user commented: "I was living in Hawaii at the time. Couldn't go anywhere. I was sitting in my hammock playing my guitar with my dog laying on it with me."
Another said: "He's not kidding. I was there too. I couldn't reach my husband so I wrote him a goodbye letter on FB and stared at our sleeping baby feeling gratitude."
A third added: "My ex called me and told me he'll always love me... We just swept that one under the rug."
Featured Image Credit: Image Press Agency/Ted Pink/Alamy Stock PhotoTopics: Celebrity, Jim Carrey, US News