Usually people in Taipei walk quite slowly. Notoriously so. But at 1.27pm on Thursday some were almost sprinting through the busy shopping district of Ximen. They knew they had three minutes to get where they needed to be or they would be stuck in the nearest underground bunker for half an hour.
At 1.30pm exactly, deafening sirens wailed across the city, and a text hit every mobile phone warning: “The enemy has launched a missile attack toward northern Taiwan.”
