war time preparedness for civilians

I mentioned this a few months ago. I feel as most Americans don’t consider disaster preparedness as having to do with what we used to call “civil defense.” That old Cold War term seems to be behind us.

And yet, here is the breakdown from the recent NATO summit where nations agreed to ramp up their national defense spending to 5% of their economy. A breakdown of that is as follows, “That amount consists of 3.5 percent on traditional military needs like troops, weapons, shells and missiles, up sharply from the current target of 2 percent. It also includes another 1.5 percent on “militarily adjacent” projects like improved roads and bridges, better emergency health care, better cybersecurity and civic resilience.”

You can translate “civic resilience” to civil defense. Having the general population doing their part to become prepared to endure a war—much like Ukraine is enduring right now. While we have oceans protecting us and the Canadian—USA border being the longest undefended border in the world to our north, there are still those who would like to bring death and destruction to the United States, by any means possible.

I don’t know of anyone specifically including civil defense in their disaster preparedness presentations these days, but that day could come in the future.