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The critical failure mode that emergency planners work against is cascade failure: power disrupts water treatment, distribution networks degrade, and immediate demand presses onto emergency services that cannot absorb it at scale.
UK ministers are stepping up work on a national "war book" precisely against that scenario, in a push for resilience against both extreme weather and cyber threats, including plans to direct citizens to store water and tinned food as a household-level buffer.
The war book is a pre-coordination instrument.
Rather than managing the decision overhead of who holds authority over what during an active incident, it codifies those structures in advance, removing deliberation from the critical path when time carries operational weight.
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