This Is Not a Drill/Quotes

"Action stations, action stations. Set condition one throughout the ship. This Is Not a Drill."

—Felix Gaeta, Battlestar Galactica

"Fire: The Untamed Element, Oldest of Man's Mysteries, Giver of Warmth, Destroyer of Forests! Right Now This Building is on Fire!"
"What?"

"Yes! The Building is on Fire! Leave the Building! Enact the Age-Old Drama of Self-Preservation!"

—Gremlins 2

"The fireboat got caught in the explosion! Two - no, three ships are burning now!"
"This is not a drill.."

"Oh, thanks for the heads-up, you idiot!"

—Ace Combat 5 The Unsung War

There was the communications software package for the natural gas pipeline control room.
[...]
The development coordinator gave the contractor (me) a test message to test the new comm device driver.
It said "station 6 / building 1 / heater / thermostat / temperature = 512" It was supposed to be innocuous and obviously wrong.
The contractor put it into the system through the test port.
I've never seen two guys move so fast as those control room guys. By the time the coordinator could say "it's a test" they had helicopters in the air and fire trucks rolling from the nearest prairie town.
I guess, when pipeline compressors catch fire, they CATCH FIRE. And the building thermostat survives a few milliseconds longer than other stuff.
Moral of the story. PLEASE include real test data points in your monitoring system design.

—Oliver Jones, comment on this Daily WTF story