Bernard GorePortfolio, Programme & Project Professional| NZ PoliceWellington, New Zealand
Who here has taken part in a zombie apocalypse planning or even exercise?
For those not familiar with the idea - we aren't suggesting there is a real risk of the dead rising from their graves and engaging in a massacre of the living (but you never know...), but the idea has become a useful exercise in public health and other other public sector "worst case scenario" crisis planning - just what would we do if the worst happened?
What services would we treat as most critical to keep some sort of functioning society with some chance of recovery? What would give us the greatest chance of keeping functioning services that would allow us to continue to respond to whatever the threat was?
And it's actually not that far beyond a genuine worst-case threat. Our modern society is so interconnected - everything depends on everything else, that it is reckoned that a flu or similar pandemic, even mostly non-lethal, that incapacitated 10% of our population at one time, plus the 5% who would stay with their ill family to care for them, would be sufficient for supply chains to break down, power infrastructure to be missing enough critical people, law enforcement to be too thinly spread, that we'd be at risk of real catastrophe.
Just to emphasize the point - this doesn't need an illness as serious a pandemic as Spanish Flu was nearly a century ago, just our society has made us far more reliant on complex interactions and "just in time" resources that would be disrupted.
So, zombie apocalypse planning and exercises - because if you can find a way to hold things together through that, you'll be better prepared for the real challenges we might one day face.
Would love to hear how many have been involved in this sort of thing, and your experiences? Saving Changes...
I haven't been involved in these but when I was doing my MBA we looked at Shell petrol company and they regularly did disaster scenario planning. Any one from Shell out there who could comment further? Saving Changes...
