For a forward-thinking organization, the prospect of an emergency or disaster is not a matter of 'if' but of 'when', and of course, the problem is that when there is an emergency, the costs of getting a little help can range from the outrageous to the criminal, for various reasons... so a little bit of planning can go a long way in

1. Ensuring that adequate and appropriate resources will be available for emergencies
2. Controlling costs in emergencies
3. Preventing some types of emergencies
4. Reducing the scale of some types of emergencies
5. Recovering from other types of emergencies

There are various types of emergencies:

1. Big Emergencies, such as:
   1. World-wide Financial Crisis
   2. Terrorist attack
   3. Leadership Vacuum
   4. Imminent Collapse of Government
   5. Civil War
   6. World War
   7. Major accident such as reactor meltdown
   8. Isolated incident such as airplane or single occupancy vehicle crash
   9. Forest fire
   10. Acute air and/or water pollution
   11. Contamination of food supply
   12. Shutdown of Public Transport System
   13. Shutdown of Commercial Transport System
   14. Virus or Pandemic
2. Small Emergencies, such as:
   1. Hard Drive Crash
   2. RAID Server Crash
   3. Database Corruption
   4. Internet Down
   5. Projects Running Late
   6. Missed Deadlines / Late for Work
   7. Financial Problems or Bankruptcies

There are many ways to plan and prepare for emergencies, such as:

1. Keeping extra food and supplies
2. Paying for early warning in case of emergencies such as tornadoes or earthquakes or terrorist attacks
3. Providing regular Emergency Preparedness Training
4. Establishing 'If and When' Contracts to ensure that the appropriate resources can be made available in case of emergency for not-too-exhorbitant prices.
5. Assessing the most likely emergencies and taking steps to prevent or reduce the impact of the emergencies.