How Emergency Management Helps Fight Terrorism

  • Emergency Management Cycle
  • Understanding Terrorism
  • The Role of Social Media
  • Maintaining Balance
  • Civil Protection Versus Civil Defense

Terrorism is on the rise both domestically and across the globe. Like a social cancer, it is wiping out entire groups of people and leaving the rest in a helpless panic about what to do and how not to be next. Fortunately, well planned and executed emergency management systems help combat terrorism.

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1. Emergency Management Cycle

Emergency management operates on a cycle of four stages. The first stage is mitigation, or working during times of calm to analyze, reduce, and prevent risks from emergencies. This involves creating laws and regulations, and organizing resources. The second stage is preparedness. This involves training both professionals and civilians on how to cooperate during an emergency. The third stage, response, is the actual execution of emergency plans and resources during an event. The final stage is recovery. If the first three stages were successful, recovery from an emergency should be faster each time, and communities should be able to rebuild stronger for the next event. The Urban Assembly School for Emergency Management offers a clear overview of these stages. This cycle is imperative in all emergencies, but perhaps especially so in terrorism, for reasons that will become clear in the next section.

2. Understanding Terrorism

Terrorists have three goals. One is to catch their victims off guard, the second is to incite as much fear as possible, and the third is to take control. Terrorist attacks are often harder to predict than natural disasters. It takes a great deal of time, resources, and intelligence, which is why the mitigation stage of emergency management is so crucial. Modern terrorists purposely target everyday civilians in the midst of their everyday lives, because it leaves the rest of the members of that community, race, religion, or nation wondering if they will be next. They hope to take control by immobilizing the people with fear. To combat terrorism, people be able to prepare for the unexpected and combat fear itself.

3. The Role of Social Media

Social media is a key component in combating fear. It is a dangerous tool that can empower either the world or the terrorists. When social media is full of the blind fear and panic that terrorists aim for, they have won. It is an invitation for them to keep up their fight. People are also susceptible to self-motivation. Publicly documenting and reading back their own fear, and having it mirrored by others, increases the fear itself. Believing that terrorists have control makes it so. One of the biggest threats is the spreading of inaccurate news via social media. It is imperative to maintain the stages of emergency management within social media, as a message to terrorists that they are not succeeding. The New York Times discusses the struggle over finding the right role for social media in combating terrorism.

4. Maintaining Balance

One way that terrorists take hold of large groups people is by making terrorism their sole focus. If individually targeted social groups begin focusing inward, societies become divided and therefore more vulnerable. If a nation focuses solely on terrorist attacks, other crimes rise. Preparedness for and recovery from natural disasters diminishes. The outcome of a tunnel focus on terrorism is a greater susceptibility to it through an overall weakening of society’s emergency management systems.

5. Civil Protection Versus Civil Defense

There are terms for these abstract concepts. Civil Defense is the notion of being in a constant state of attack and defense. It is born of widespread fear and loss of control, the essence of terrorism. Civil Protection is the result of the emergency management cycle. It does not mean turning a blind eye to terrorism and other disasters. It means acknowledging its possibility and preparing for it, rather than living in fear of it.

When blinded by fear, it is impossible to think clearly enough to formulate prevention and rebuild stronger. This is the central them connecting these five aspects of emergency management. If everyone joins together, this mindset and action plan will help combat today’s terrorism.