The emergency in your municipality. Who does what now?
Blackout, flood or nuclear accident: rehearse it before it happens. Prepper Scenarios puts the crisis onto the real map of your municipality: your waterworks, your care home, your fire brigade, your villages, your roads. Eight roles, every participant on their own phone, the facilitator at the situation wall. Vehicles drive on real roads, decisions have visible consequences, the facilitator injects disruptions. At the end a report with stars, figures and lessons. No installation, no accounts, in 60 to 120 minutes.
The trial exercise is free and guided. All you need are phones and one screen for the situation wall.
Facilitator's situation wall (schematic). Example municipality Pöchlarn, data from OpenStreetMap.
Three crises, the same municipality, the same crisis team
Each scenario has its own mechanics, events and figures. The eight roles stay the same, so your crisis team improves from one exercise to the next.
Blackout
The power is gone across the whole region. Nobody knows for how long. The exercise ends twelve hours after power returns.
- Generators, diesel resupply, feed-in points
- Reservoir, water points, sewage plant
- No mobile network: radio, runners, loudspeaker van
- Days 2 to 4: cold snap, snow, milking parlour, empty ATMs
Flood
Persistent rain in the catchment. The river rises, the crest arrives within hours, and nobody knows how high.
- Water-level board with forecast, risk per village
- Sandbags, pumps, boat, buses for evacuation
- Flooded roads close themselves, mudslides block
- Dam, oil tank, underground car park, sixty volunteers
Nuclear accident
Something goes wrong at the nearest nuclear plant. The wind is set, and nobody knows for how long.
- Nearest active plant out of 113 in Europe, wind selectable
- Radiation board: cloud coming, here, gone; the wind can turn
- Iodine tablets, shelter in place, evacuation, measuring
- Evacuating into the cloud costs more than staying
Also for chartered cities and districts of large cities, such as Graz, Wiener Neustadt or Vienna-Favoriten.
A blackout is not a power cut. It is a water, heating and communication outage.
Within a few hours the mobile network is gone, the water reservoir lasts about a day without pumps, and the care home's oxygen devices run on batteries. The fire brigade has generators, but the diesel will not cover everyone. Whoever starts thinking about who reaches whom, and how, only then loses hours. The exercise asks exactly these questions, with the facilities and villages of your municipality, in a safe setting where mistakes cost nothing.
Is the feed-in point known?
Without a known feed-in point the technician in the exercise needs 6 to 8 hours before the generator supplies the pumping station. With a known point it works at once. For many municipalities this is the first lesson.
Who reaches whom without a mobile network?
Emergency radio, runners on foot, loudspeaker van, notices at the town hall: every message has a path and a delay. Whoever did not bring a radio to the care home finds out late that the batteries are empty.
Who needs help and does not say so?
Home-ventilated patients, helpless people, carbon monoxide from makeshift heating, hypothermia on day three: nobody reports these needs. They are only found if someone scouts the villages or the doctor makes house calls.
You can get it wrong. And you see it at once.
An exercise where nothing can go wrong teaches nothing. That is why every decision has consequences, every trip takes time, and the municipality reacts to what the crisis team does or fails to do.
Real roads, real travel times
Units drive on the OpenStreetMap road network, not as the crow flies. Before every order a preview shows kilometres, travel time, duration and whether the deadline holds. Trees, mudslides, accidents and water close roads; detour or no way through until a crew clears it.
Needs with a face
Not “need 7”, but Mrs Novak, 84, Brunn, 3 hours left
. If she is missed, it appears in every role's log. Three stars only without fatalities.
Consequence of every decision
After every choice a sheet: what happened, what it cost, what would have been better. Some options sound sensible and are not. Whoever fails to answer by the end of the round gets the weakest one.
Status line and round sheet
At the top of every role: stars, fatalities, hospital, people without water and heat, help too late, each with the change since the last round. After every round a sheet with the consequences.
The population reacts
Without information rumours travel from village to village. When mood drops, people hoard; when safety drops, there is unrest and finally looting of the local shop. Early announcements and patrols prevent it.
Crews are people
Exhausted crews fall ill, working at night they get injured. Send everyone out all night and you have fewer in the morning. Resting is an action, not a weakness.
From choosing the municipality to the report in one session
Choose the municipality, the map is built from open data
Type the name, done. The exercise fetches the municipal boundary, villages with population, waterworks and reservoir, fire station, town hall, care home, substation, road network and nearby hospitals from OpenStreetMap, Wikidata and climate data. What is missing is assumed plausibly. Takes a few minutes, once per municipality.
Set scenario, equipment and bot strength
Blackout, flood or nuclear accident; month and round pace; for the nuclear accident, plant and wind. Then the equipment: crews, generators, diesel, radios, stores, flood risk per village. And how well the computer plays the vacant roles: normal, smart or sluggish.
Hand out roles, by code or QR code
The facilitator receives a six-character code. Every participant opens the address on their phone, enters code and name and takes a role. Every role has instructions and “first steps” for the first two rounds. Observers see the situation wall without intervening.
Round by round: orders, messages, events, injects
Each round stands for 2, later 3 and 6 hours. Each role sees only what it can know, tasks its units, requests from others and sends messages over whichever channel still works. Once everyone is ready, time moves: vehicles drive, generators run dry, events arrive, the facilitator injects disruptions.
Report with stars, figures, mistakes and lessons
Water, heat and health per village over time, needs met and missed, mistakes avoided, decisions missed, and the lessons from your own rounds. A separate part “your contribution” shows how much the humans carried and how much the bots did. One to three stars, three only without fatalities.
You steer the exercise, not the computer
Anyone who has run staff exercises knows: the best learning moments come when the facilitator injects a disruption at the right time. That is exactly what the facilitator sheet is for.
Facilitator injects
Ready-made templates per scenario, aimed at one role, with response options and effects. Or a free inject with your own title, text and up to three answers. The participant sees “Facilitator: …” and has to decide.
Pace, bots and situation wall
- Force a round when the discussion drags on, or set a round pace in minutes
- Bot strength normal, smart or sluggish: on “normal” the computer roles only act once a human contacts them. The bots do not carry the exercise.
- Situation wall on the projector: all villages, facilities, units on the move, road closures, needs with deadlines, ready status of every role
- Observers without limit, for example councillors or commanders of the neighbouring brigade
- Repeat with the same municipality and a different scenario, season or bot strength
Everyone sees only their part. That is the point.
The roles match what almost every municipality has. Those who do not coordinate work past each other, exactly as in a real emergency.
Mayor's office
Leads the crisis team. No vehicles, but works yard and loudspeaker van: set up a help point, hand out radios, make announcements, manage stores.
Fire brigade
Crews, generators, diesel, in the flood the boat. Without power everything depends on them: pumping station, care home, petrol station. Clear road closures, refuel generators.
Water supply
The reservoir lasts about a day without pumps. Control the network, report early, set up water points, in the nuclear accident protect the reservoir.
General practitioner
Knows who is chronically ill. House calls find people in need; an emergency practice at the help point reaches many. In the nuclear accident: iodine, but correctly.
Care home
Residents need heat and power for oxygen devices. No vehicle, no radio at first: request power early, move residents together, in the flood get out in time.
Local shop
No power, no tills, no cooling. Give away chilled goods before they spoil, sell for cash, report what is left. In unrest, looting looms.
Police
Visible presence calms, traffic lights are out. Patrol where safety drops, check rumours, search for missing persons, emergency radio to fire brigade and district.
District
Sits outside and supplies many municipalities. Diesel, water tanks, sandbags, iodine and buses go to those who report early and precisely. Help takes hours.
An excerpt from 50 blackout events
Some are fixed, some are drawn from a pool for each exercise, so no two exercises are the same. When things happen depends on the municipality, the season and your decisions.
Rehearse with the equipment you actually have
When creating the exercise you enter what your municipality owns: fire-brigade crews and generators, stored diesel, feed-in point at the pumping station, backup power and residents of the care home, radios per role, reservoir range. Plus the stores: blankets, camp beds, light masts, sandbags, pumps, iodine tablets, buses. For the flood, the risk per village. The exercise proposes estimates, you accept or correct them.
Visible only in your exercise
Your equipment stays in your session. It does not feed into the public municipality package and is not visible to other municipalities. The session is deleted after 30 days.
Gaps become visible
Is there enough diesel for four days? Does the care home have a radio? Are there enough sandbags for the lowest village? Enough iodine for everyone in the sector? The exercise shows the gap before the real emergency does.
Repeat after procurement
Bought a new generator, retrofitted a feed-in point, handed out radios? Run the same exercise again with the new figures. The difference in the report is your argument for the council.
Municipalities first, but not only
Municipalities
Crisis-team exercise with mayor, administration, works yard and emergency services. Basis for the emergency plan.
Fire brigades
Training evening on generator logistics, diesel resupply, clearing road closures and radio. Also as a comparison between brigades.
Districts and associations
Several municipalities in turn, or take the district role yourself: who reports well, who gets help?
Schools and civil protection
Upper school or civil-protection course: make crisis management tangible, in a double lesson, on their own phones.
Companies
Emergency drill for companies located in the municipality: what does the blackout mean for your supply chain, your staff, your neighbours?
Try first, then decide
No price list, no subscription: you write to us, we talk about your municipality and make an invoiced offer.
Trial exercise
- One exercise for your municipality, guided by video call
- Scenario of your choice: blackout, flood or nuclear accident
- Up to 8 participants plus observers
- Report viewable in the exercise
- Own equipment with estimates only
Municipality licence
- Unlimited exercises for one municipality for one year, all three scenarios
- Enter your own equipment and stores, compare after procurement
- Onboarding for the facilitator (90 minutes, online or on site)
- New scenarios and events included as they become available
- Debrief of the first exercise on request
District, association, school
- Licence for all municipalities of a district or association
- Fire-brigade sections, schools, civil-protection associations
- Exercise day on site with several groups
- Custom injects and events for your region on request
For private individuals and families, the household blackout drill in the Prepper app remains free.
Little data, no installation, open sources
What is stored
- Display name per participant, freely chosen, no account, no e-mail
- Exercise state including your equipment, deleted automatically after 30 days
- No message texts in the server log, no analysis across municipalities
- Servers in the EU, operated from Austria, encrypted connection
What you need
- Phones with a browser for the roles, one screen or projector for the situation wall
- Internet during the exercise; the map stays visible through short dropouts
- No installation, no IT approval, no access to your systems
- Open data: OpenStreetMap (ODbL) for map and road network, Wikidata, NASA POWER climate. Verified municipality profiles for Austria, Germany, Switzerland; more countries in preparation
What municipalities want to know first
How long does an exercise take?
60 to 120 minutes, depending on how much each round is discussed. The facilitator can force rounds or set a pace in minutes. Flood and nuclear accident are shorter than the blackout. A 30-minute debrief is always worthwhile.
How many participants are needed?
Two are enough, eight is ideal. Each role is played by exactly one person, vacant roles are played by the computer. Any number of observers can follow the situation wall.
What if participants do little and the computer sorts everything out?
That used to be possible and no longer is. In the default setting the computer roles only act once a human contacts them. The report shows “your contribution” separately: whoever lets the bots carry the exercise gets at most two stars, and every missed decision costs points.
Can the facilitator intervene?
Yes, that is the core. The facilitator injects disruptions at any time, from 25 templates or freely written with up to three answers, sees everything on the situation wall and forces rounds. The computer provides the background noise, the facilitator sets the learning moments.
Does anything need to be installed?
No. The exercise runs in the browser on phone, tablet or computer. Participants open an address, enter the code and are in. There is no access to your systems and nothing your IT would need to approve.
Is the data for my municipality correct?
Map and road network come from OpenStreetMap. What is missing there, say an unmapped waterworks, is assumed at a plausible location inside the municipality and marked as such. Every facility can be checked in OpenStreetMap with one tap. You enter your real equipment yourself when creating the exercise.
Does it work outside Austria?
Yes. The exercise is available in German, English, Slovak and Ukrainian, all three scenarios fully translated. Municipality profiles for Austria, Germany and Switzerland are verified, Slovakia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom are in preparation. Other countries run with a generic profile. Nuclear plants are on file across Europe.
Will there be more scenarios?
Blackout, flood and nuclear accident are complete and are continually extended with new events. Further scenarios and custom injects for a region are possible on request and free of charge for licence holders.
Does this replace an official exercise?
No. Prepper Scenarios is a simulation game that makes procedures, communication and gaps visible. It replaces neither the disaster-protection plan nor the exercises of state, district or emergency services. It prepares for them and makes them cheaper.
Who is behind it?
Prepper Scenarios is part of prepper.team, an emergency app for families from Austria. The municipality exercise is the offering for organisations that funds the further development of the app, which remains free for families.
One exercise says more than any plan in the cupboard
Send us the name of your municipality, the scenario you want and a preferred date. We prepare the municipality package and guide the first exercise, free and without obligation.
Prepper Scenarios is a preparedness simulation and not an official warning or operations centre. In a real emergency, follow the instructions of authorities and emergency services.