Nations around the globe are rolling out public campaigns urging citizens to prepare for a wide range of emergencies, including natural disasters and cyber-attacks. In contrast, the United States is steering its strategy toward hardening military infrastructure, creating a distinct divergence in how the US handles national resilience compared to its international counterparts. According to as the federal government seeks to offload some emergency management responsibilities to, And localities, it simultaneously seeks to establish the preeminent “nation’s insurance policy” through military resilience.
In the United Kingdom, officials have launched a “Be Ready” initiative, advising the public to maintain a 72-hour supply of essential goods.
This move arrives alongside increasing anxiety over technological dependencies, hostile state threats, and the climate crisis. Sweden has similarly refreshed its guidance for “crisis or war” scenarios, while Japan continues to emphasize individual preparedness; the nation’s disaster management minister, Goshi Hosono, announced that an emergency appeal to residents would be issued on November 2, coinciding with the launch of the country’s new disaster management agency. These programs generally mirror the British recommendation that households remain self-sufficient for at least three days during a catastrophe. A warning that comes amid growing concern about the impact of the climate crisis, technological dependency and hostile state threats, the United Kingdom’s latest “ Be Ready ” campaign urges the public to stock up with supplies to last 72 hours.
The Swedish Civil Defense and Resilience Agency justified the heightened vigilance by noting that the world situation has severely deteriorated. They cited the frequency of extreme weather, the rise of disinformation campaigns, terror threats, and the ongoing war in their region as primary drivers for the new guidance. Cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us.”, terror threats. “Our world has gotten very small, and threats are imminent,” she said.
Meanwhile, the US approach is centered on a directive issued by Pete Hegseth on September 30. This memorandum to senior Pentagon leadership established “FORTRESS America,” a policy designed to ensure US military bases can function without external assistance for at least 90 days. The strategy relies on five core pillars: energy independence, resilience within the supply chain and defense-industrial base, the creation of a strategic defense reserve, hardening installations against cyber threats, and ensuring resilience in space and spectrum operations. We can’t gain that capability tomorrow.”. “This is not a retreat,” the memorandum from Hegseth reads. “It is the foundation from which American strength is projected-a homeland that cannot be starved out, shut down, or cut off.”.
The announcement of this initiative triggered significant discussion on social media platforms, with the public questioning the timing and scope of the project. Experts in emergency management, including Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming office of homeland security and former president of the National Emergency Management Association (Nema), suggest that leaders are increasingly recognizing the severe threat posed by cyber-attacks. Budd warned that the world has become smaller and more volatile, noting that adversaries might exploit the chaos of natural disasters—such as a tornado striking a community—to launch concurrent cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure. From X to TikTok, with many wondering why this roll-out was happening right now, the creation of the initiative caused quite a bit of chatter on social media. Such as a cyber-attack taking place in the midst of a tornado, budd also flagged the compounding threats of natural and human-made disasters. “Everybody’s paying attention to the tornado, so our adversaries take advantage of that time and decide: ‘Oh, they’re busy with something else. “The cyber problem never gets smaller.
While the Fortress initiative is intended for military use, Budd suggests it serves as a timely prompt for private citizens to evaluate their own emergency readiness. Conversely, Dr. Tom Chandler, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, emphasized that the Pentagon’s plan underscores the gap between institutional needs and household requirements. He noted that military installations face unique, high-stakes operational mandates that are fundamentally different from those of ordinary families. While the Fortress initiative is not aimed towards the civilian sector, Budd argues that its existence should encourage everyday Americans to consider their own preparedness strategies: “People can think about [Fortress] and think, if our military is doing that, shouldn’t I be thinking about that too?”. Individuals can begin by thinking about their personal risk, based on factors like geographic location or data exposure, experts suggest that while it can be overwhelming to parse all the various emergency-planning scenarios.
Neither the US nor the UK government has identified a specific imminent threat, though both acknowledge the growing peril of digital sabotage. A global internet disruption on October 21, caused by a vulnerability in a common programming language, highlighted the systemic risk. James Trainor, a former assistant director at the FBI’s cyber division, warned that the combination of massive data growth, increased connectivity, and the emergence of AI tools is allowing adversaries to craft sophisticated spear-phishing campaigns and find vulnerabilities faster than ever. Websites around the world went dark after a serious vulnerability was discovered in a common computer-programming language, on 21 October.
Despite the high-level focus on military security, experts are concerned about the state of civilian preparedness in the US. According to Dr. DeeDee Bennett Gayle, a professor of emergency management at the University of Albany, the public remains under-prepared for common hazards. FEMA’s 2024 National Preparedness Report supported this assessment, finding that only 51% of American adults felt they were prepared for a disaster. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to get people to understand just how our emergency management system is run,” Bennett Gayle said. “The US system is fairly unique in a lot of ways, and it has been structured since the beginning to be locally executed, state-managed and federally supported,” he said. According to “The first step is understanding your local hazards,”, Bennett Gayle. “I think that can’t be overstated enough, because the types of preparedness activities you would do for one [area] might be different than another one.”.
The US government does manage Ready.gov, a platform established in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security that covers 25 disaster types including wildfires, floods, earthquakes, and cybersecurity threats. However, administrative challenges persist; a recent US Government Accountability Office report noted that 4,300 employees departed FEMA in fiscal year 2025, representing roughly 17% of the agency’s workforce. Bennett Gayle noted that while the federal government is attempting to shift more financial and operational responsibility to states and local jurisdictions, the transition remains an ongoing process that is difficult to fully evaluate. But experts say that the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce have placed new pressures on state and local governments.
