Journalist picks up wierd chat on message boards. He hangs out on AW at night, because what he really wants to be is a writer. A guy keeps posting 'The End Is Nigh' threads. Mods come in, telling him to get off. Then someone replies, saying something about a burning-ray. Wierd stuff.
Journalist goes to a gaming forum. He figures he's too tired to think about writing tonight, anyway. Wierd thing though -- here too are bizarre posts about death rays. Some guy insists he has it from his brother in the Navy that Hawaii is gone. Gone!
Intrigued now, the journalist cheks out YouTube. Searches 'death ray hawaii'. Gets two results, posted one hour ago. Grainy home video clip of what looks like a ray from space slowly moving along the ground, burning what it hits. The unseen camera man keeps swearing -- other unseen people scream, yell incomprehensibly.
The other clip. From a boat, it looks like. Maybe a yacht. An island off in the distance. And some sort of light spreading in a band from the sky. Black smoke from the island.
Now the journalist starts googling. The web is already filling with wierd reports. So he calls a colleague at the night desk, has him take a look at these things. They make some calls seperately. The military won't talk to them, but the beaureau of meteorology confirms that something is going on, but can't say anything more at the moment. No calls to Hawaii get through.
The two journalists decide that whatever is going on, it's not nothing. Tomorrow maybe, they'll know, and whatever it is, it will be news everywhere. But right now, these two guys have the chance to break the story -- even if they're not entirely sure what the story is.
They guy at the night desk decides to to a short article on what they have: Hawaii apparently cut off from the outside world. He sends it to the web editor on duty, who puts it up as an ongoing story on the paper's website.
From there the story spreads lightening quick. Newspeople all over the world start digging, doing their own research. Within 12 hours all the world knows. The US military has tracked this thing, and knows what it's doing. By now, Sydney, Australia is gone. In fact, the entire east coast of Australia is obliterated. Japan is gone.
Now's the time for global panic.