Scenario playbooks
What to do when something happens.
Foundations
Five scenarios every household runs into eventually.
Power outage
FoundationsMost outages in the Netherlands are fixed within hours. Thinking ahead just makes the first evening feel calm instead of scrambly.
Read playbook →Home fire
FoundationsA home fire moves fast. The whole game is what fire services teach: get out, close doors behind you, and call from a safe spot.
Read playbook →Severe weather
FoundationsStorms, river flooding, and heatwaves are the weather hazards Dutch households face most. The same calm checklist covers all three.
Read playbook →Earthquake
FoundationsEarthquakes arrive without warning, so the safety is built on an ordinary day: securing what can fall, knowing the drop-cover-hold-on drill, and being ready for the aftershocks that follow.
Read playbook →Household separation
FoundationsIf something happens while you are not all in the same place, a short pre-agreed routine gets the household back in contact. One conversation does most of the work.
Read playbook →Medical event at home
FoundationsWhen someone at home suddenly collapses, chokes, bleeds heavily, or doesn't seem right, the first move is to dial 112, tell them three things, and start the simple actions that buy time.
Read playbook →Water outage or boil-water notice
FoundationsThe tap goes quiet, or the water flows but the utility flags it as unsafe. In NL this is rare and usually short. Confirm what is happening, cover the next day calmly, follow one clear instruction (boil, or fetch).
Read playbook →Gas leak at home
FoundationsNatural gas has a rotten-egg smell added on purpose, so a leak is usually easy to notice early. The right moves are quick, simple, and the local gas distributor handles the rest for free.
Read playbook →Home internet outage
FoundationsMost home outages are short and fixable. The first job is diagnosis: is it your modem, your street, or the whole ISP? Almost everything else follows from that.
Read playbook →Tailored
Multi-day to multi-week mechanics, for households further along.
Extended grid-down
TailoredGrid out for days to weeks. Past the 72-hour mark, the work shifts from supplies to decisions: food, heat, water, comms, when to leave.
Part of TailoredCivil disturbance / unrest
TailoredProtest or disorder near your home is a short-window safety problem, not a politics problem. Know what is happening, control who and what comes through your door, keep the household accounted for.
Part of TailoredCyber attack / extended digital outage
TailoredBank ransomware, telecom failure, a CrowdStrike-style cascade. The goal is not to live off-grid. It is to keep your household paying, eating, communicating, medicating while institutions sort it out.
Part of TailoredMulti-day evacuation
TailoredA 1–7 day departure ordered or strongly advised by the safety region. Leave cleanly, stay reachable, come back to a house you can live in.
Part of TailoredPandemic / extended household isolation
TailoredTwo to six weeks at home for an outbreak, quarantine, or shielding a vulnerable member. Mostly a logistics, routine, and shielding problem, not a survival one.
Part of TailoredMajor flooding
TailoredFlood defences buy you warning time, not certainty. Limburg 2021, Pacific Northwest 2021, Valencia 2024, flooding can outrun the model in hours, not days.
Part of TailoredIndustrial accident nearby
TailoredA chemical plant, refinery, or major-hazard facility releases smoke, gas, or fumes. The universal response is shelter indoors, seal the building, wait for the all-clear, not to drive away.
Part of TailoredEquipped
Practitioner-grade worst-case planning, in weeks and months.
Multi-month grid-down
EquippedMonths 1–6 without grid power is a logistics and sanitation problem, not a survival problem. Failure mode is cold-stress, water-borne disease, medication discontinuity, not acute risk.
Part of EquippedSevere economic disruption
EquippedCurrency collapse, banking failure, hyperinflation, capital controls. Household-finance resilience is built before stress arrives: through diversification, liquidity layering, and documentation. Not speculation.
Part of EquippedLong-term displacement
EquippedLeaving home for months or permanently — war, persistent disaster, persecution. NL passport gives genuine advantages: use them deliberately, not improvised.
Part of EquippedMulti-week supply chain failure
EquippedFood, fuel, medicine supply chains broken for 2–8 weeks. Treat as household logistics, not survival. Become a low-throughput predictable consumer, not a panic-buyer.
Part of EquippedCivil collapse / breakdown of public services
EquippedWhen state services fail, households survive on three things the academic record identifies: water-and-sanitation independence, low visibility, and strong neighbour networks. Civic resilience, not combat.
Part of EquippedNuclear or radiological incident
EquippedThe realistic scenario is a controlled or partial release from a power reactor within ~100 km (Borssele, Doel, Tihange), not a Chernobyl-class event. Shelter-first, iodine-on-instruction, selective evacuation.
Part of EquippedActive conflict or hostile-state action
EquippedSince 2022 this is no longer hypothetical for Europe. For NL the realistic shape is hybrid pressure — cyber, sabotage, GPS jamming, info ops — with kinetic risk concentrated at NATO's eastern flank.
Part of Equipped