Schools Hoax NI

[AInightingale]

Anyone else's child at a school in Northern Ireland which has been targeted by this b*mb hoax today? They have quickly established that it came from Indonesia and that 140 schools got the same message, but my son's school have emailed to say they did a 'sweep' of classrooms. Must have been terrifying for everyone. They aren't allowed phones during the day anymore so I can't call him.

Similar thing happened in the republic last week but everyone was on strike so no schools were open.

i think the same thing has happened in Scotland today 😭 haven’t heard the Indonesia part yet, just seen updates on news pages on Facebook

When I was doing GCSEs and A-Levels, back in the 80s/90s you'd occasionally get bomb threats called in to schools on exam days and we'd all have to evacuate the school for an hour or so - we always used to think it was someone who hadn't revised 🤔

Sadly, Gen X and older got used to bomb threats because they happened more often decades ago. You'd have to evacuate in the middle of films at the cinema or during shopping trips in town or during meals at restaurants or during the work day. We all got a bit casual about them - which is not normal for any society.

I really hate to think of younger generations here having to experience something that they're not used to and that would worry them.

It’s probably good that parents can’t contact kids on days like this - imagine the panic when someone’s mum phones up and says “There’s a bomb in school!”. It would be dangerous for everyone, kids would be running all over the place.

I did wonder at the level of meltdown on the class WhatsApp. The idea that someone had somehow hidden bombs in 160 schools, and not a single one had been noticed in the time it took to plant them all? I understood the initial panic, but we had parents collecting kids from school and talking about not sending them for the rest of the week, not letting them go on trips etc.

Hopefully this is the end of it; our schools didn’t tell the kids, but I’m sure parents will when they get home, and they’ll all be talking about it tomorrow.

I did have my doubts when I remembered the ROI had been through something similar last week...problem with these hoaxes is that they may well have a 'boy who cried wolf' effect if anything really were to happen. What a shower of sad timewasting assholes they must be.

If they did originate in Indonesia hopefully the Indonesian government will come down hot and heavy on the fraudsters. Isn’t Indonesia a strict country says she hopefully.