True enough. Katrina and Fukushima were pretty bad but still far from a worst case scenario like all-out nuclear war, global natural disaster or deadly epidemic. Not saying that one should live in constant fear of a TEOTWAWKI scenario but recent experience suggests that even the most prosperous countries on Earth have serious issues dealing with large-scale emergencies.

I don't even want to know what might happen in an actual "MoM" situation. But I daresay it would be way worse than Katrina, Fukushima or Chernobyl - and way beyond what we could fix quickly with our existing resources and emergency preparedness strategies.

Curiously enough, I don't think that most developed Western countries are equipped to deal with that sort of scenario. I can't quite resists the impression that the overall level of emergency preparedness was a lot higher during the Cold War.