EDITOR’S NOTE! This is a discussion about writing fictional stories. No one at NTWC (that we know of) actually has access to or has deliberately or inadvertently invented any sort of Doomsday device. All known supervillains, mad scientists, and related personnel are carefully discouraged from such activities.
So, you want to destroy the world, or at least a big chunk of it. You have the best Doomsday device ever, but you’re not sure how it all plays out. Let’s go over some basics of how the United States deals with emergency management and major disasters so your can make your Doomsday realistic and/or adaptable to your world.
Let’s start with the COA*s, the disclaimers and the legalities: I’m not writing this or presenting this information as a representative of any agency or organization. I am sharing my own knowledge and experience.
Now, the legalities of emergency management. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was established by President Jimmy Carter on April 1, 1979 (no joke). FEMA began as an independent agency that was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. In 2011, Presidential Policy Directive 8 set out the National Preparedness Goal and System for all jurisdictions, which decreed an “All Hazards” approach to emergency management. It also determined who would be the Emergency Management Director/Coordinator for all levels of government. This is the highest elected official or their designee. The FEMA Administrator is the President’s designee. At the state level, it’s the Governor or designee. In Texas, the next level is County Judge then the mayor.
The next question may be what does “All Hazards” mean? When it comes to planning for disasters, many of the base responses may be the same, the details will vary. There are four main types of disasters: Natural Disasters, Human-Made Disasters, Technical, and Pandemic.
Natural Disasters
Natural disasters are just what you might imagine: storms, earthquakes, floods. These are everywhere and anywhere. No one is safe from a tornado, hurricane, or thunderstorm. Certain regions may be more prone to certain types of weather than others, like hurricanes.
Fun Fact: All hurricanes are tropical cyclones, but not all tropical cyclones are hurricanes. Hurricanes only occur in the Atlantic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean has typhoons.
Earthquakes can happen on any fault line for any reason. Some of the more prominent are the West Coast faults – San Andreas in California and Cascadia in the Pacific Northwest. However, there is also a major fault, New Madrid, that runs basically along the Mississippi River. If you want to do something different, look at how that might impact civilization. There are emergency managers working on that now.
Our final natural disaster is flooding. Flooding is often a byproduct of another storm, either rain or snow/ice. Flash flooding happens when a large amount of rain falls in a short amount of time. Flooding happens over time when water drains to waterways and exceeds the banks or boundaries.
How bad can “bad” be when it comes to natural disasters? 2024 saw twenty-seven confirmed natural disasters with losses exceeding $1 Billion EACH in the US including seventeen severe weather events, five tropical cyclones, one wildfire, two winter storms and one drought. Drought is something we’ve only started calculating as disasters as extreme heat becomes more prevalent. These disasters have claimed 568 lives in 2024 alone. To put some perspective, between 1980 and 2024 we saw an average of nine events per year. The annual average for 2020 to 2024 is twenty-three events.
Human-Made Disasters
Human-made disasters are just what they sound like. These disasters include fires, electricity blackouts, chemical events, and civil unrest. We’ll take a quick look at these.
Did you know that 85% of all wildfires are human-caused? Only 15% can be attributed to natural causes such as lightning (and that’s actually only 5% in California). And though we normally refer to major disaster fires as wildfires, house fires can also do major damage but often at a smaller scale unless the situation could spread into a wildfire.
Blackouts can be triggered by nature, but are basically a human-caused disaster by having the power grid or lines impacted. This was most notably experienced in the major ice storm of 2021. However, we’ve also seen the blackouts with tornadoes, severe weather and extreme heat. The dangers come from lack of heat or air conditioning, refrigeration, and medical equipment.
Chemical incidents are your hazardous material spills via tanker truck, train derailment, or other industrial accident causing toxins to spread by either liquid or gas.
Civil unrest is a protest or riot that grows out of control. Violence and looting are you major dangers with this kind of hazard.
Technical Disasters
Technology-based disasters focus on disruption of infrastructure systems like power plants, pumping stations, or other utility mains up to and including a nuclear melt down. Unlike blackouts where your issue can be substations or down lines, technical disasters are often human-generated.
Many of these incidents are less physical. Cyber attacks and terrorism are in the news all the time. The Crowdstrike update incident took out computers across the country in government and industry. DOS attacks and ransomware are quite common these days. Terrorism is still alive and well. 9/11 is still a major event in our history, but there are so many more: the Boston Marathon Bombing, New Year’s Eve in New Orleans this year are all events designed to strike fear and chaos into the everyday lives of everyday people.
Pandemic
Our last category is a pandemic, an uncontrolled outbreak of a pathogenic illness. For the longest time, the primary example of this was the flu. Flu is a dangerous virus that can spread widely and quickly, and it can be deadly as we saw during its original appearance in 1918 during the Spanish Flu outbreak. But any widespread virus or illness that can spread widely enough can disrupt civilization. We all now have the shared life-experience of COVID-19 and how that impacted the entire world.
Be Prepared!
Now, let’s talk about how to prepare for these disasters. There are two levels of preparedness – jurisdictional and personal. The jurisdictional depends on the level you need: Federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial.
Jurisdictions will have Emergency Operations Plans and Hazard Mitigation Plans. These plans have to be updated every 5 years, and they identify the area’s common hazard. They also identify who takes care of what. Pandemics will generally be handled by public health departments, and civil unrest is addressed by the police. Flooding will generally fall under your Fire/Rescue departments.
Are there going to be evacuations? How do people get out? Then you have to have some idea of how to bring people back and restore a sense of normalcy. The recovery phase always takes the longest.
On the personal side, it’s all about the smaller scales. Individuals and families should know the common hazards they face. If you want someone prepared, they’ll have emergency supplies for 3-7 days including: food, water, medicines, tools, pet supplies, etc. Everyone needs to have plan for meeting up or connecting with family members. Where will they meet? Where will they go? Want a pro tip? Send texts when calls can’t get through. Texts are shorter data bursts and can get through when lines are clogged.
There is so much more to dig into. If you want to know more check out www.KnoWhat2Do.com, www.Ready.gov, or look up your town’s emergency management department.
* Cover Our Asses
Thank you for the excellent cover image by JL G from Pixabay!
