Line of Effort Three · State Planning & Readiness

If every state is resilient, the nation is resilient.

States hold the statutory responsibility for disaster management within their borders. In a Black Sky Event — a grid outage of thirty days or more — that responsibility arrives all at once, in every state, simultaneously. No help comes from a neighboring state, because there is no unaffected neighbor. Each state must be able to stand on its own — and the states that planned will.

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The model is already settled federal policy: preparedness owned closest to the people it protects, with a competent federal government in support. The Black Sky case is where that principle gets real — and the state is where it lives.

Why states

The state is the level where nation-wide Black Sky planning works

Households can’t harden a refinery. Cities can’t see the dependency chains that cross county lines. And the federal government can’t plan fifty states’ infrastructure from Washington. The state seat is the one place with both the authority to plan and the visibility to plan well.

Statutory responsibilityDisaster management within state borders is the state’s job by law — a Black Sky Event doesn’t change who owns it, only how much it demands.
No unaffected neighborMutual aid assumes someone nearby has power. In a Black Sky Event, every jurisdiction manages its own crisis at the same time — the compact you’re counting on is busy.
The visibility communities lackOnly the state sees the full infrastructure stack across its territory: which nodes feed which regions, where the single points of failure sit, which dependency chains cross local lines.
The force in the stateThe Adjutant General — as dual-status commander — is the natural lead defense representative for Black Sky planning in every state, bridging the Guard, active forces, and the governor’s plan.
What the draft Executive Order provides

A defined state role — with federal support behind it

FIR’s draft Executive Order — Implementing Black Sky Event Resilience — doesn’t take the mission from the states. It resources it, and it turns the federal presence in each state into support for the governor’s plan.

A state Black Sky planning teamStood up by each governor, with the time and talent to work the problem — building to a common national template so every state’s plan can interoperate.
Federally funded plannersDedicated planner–coordinators in every state, resourced by DHS until the state’s infrastructure is deemed resilient.
Federal agencies in supportEvery federal presence in the state — including military forces — directed to support the state’s plan, not the other way around.
Planning before hardeningA cyclic process: the plan drives hardening priorities; hardening exposes the gaps that refine the plan. Limited dollars go to the right nodes, in the right order.
Read the full policy case See the strategic documents
Before Washington moves

Five moves a state can make now

None of these requires federal action, new statute, or major appropriation. Every one of them merges cleanly into the national program when it arrives — that’s the federated design.

1

Charter a Black Sky planning team

A governor’s directive and a small, senior, cross-agency team — emergency management, the TAG, utilities regulation, agriculture, health — with a mandate to plan for the 30-plus-day case.

2

Inventory the state’s infrastructure stack

Map the tiers — energy at the foundation; water, communications, transportation, and fuel above it; food, healthcare, and emergency services above those — and the workforce that operates all of it.

3

Prioritize the city–node portfolio

Identify the critical anchors — installations, refineries, ports, chemical plants — and the communities they depend on. Rank them by how far their dependency chains reach. This is the decision only the state can make.

4

Adopt a common Resilient Community template

Point cities and counties at one repeatable framework — same assessment, same archetypes, same standards — so every local effort produces a conformant building block instead of a one-off.

5

Run the planning–hardening cycle

Plan first, harden the highest-priority nodes, feed what you learn back into the plan. Start with one region — a base, a refinery, a port and their towns — and prove the model at state scale.

The decision only the state can make

Communities build the blocks. The state chooses the portfolio.

Any town can decide to become resilient — and with a repeatable template, it can. What no community can decide for itself is which nodes matter most to everyone else: which refinery feeds the region’s fuel, which port carries its trade, which chemical plant keeps its water treatable, which installation anchors its defense missions. Those dependency chains cross city and county lines, and only the state seat sees them whole.

That makes portfolio prioritization the state’s distinctive Black Sky contribution: an optimal balance of city–node pairs, sequenced by reach and grouped into defensible regional clusters. It is the federated model working in both directions — communities supply ready, conformant building blocks; the state supplies prioritization, sequencing, and coordination — and it is the piece the national program will need from every state on day one.

The state that has already done this work doesn’t wait for the national template. It becomes the national template.

1
Community building blocksCities and counties build to one repeatable Resilient Community template.
2
The state’s node portfolioThe planning team ranks city–node pairs by dependency reach and groups them regionally.
3
The governor’s Black Sky planClusters roll up into one state plan; hardening dollars follow the priorities.
4
National mergeThe state plan slots into the national program — nothing torn up, nothing redone.
The federated loop: building blocks flow up. Prioritization and coordination flow down.
How FIR supports the state seat

The team, the template, and the method — ready to work

FIR is a 501(c)(3) staffed by 140+ professional members — engineers, planners, first responders, veterans. We’ve built the Resilient Community framework, the assessment methodology, and the training pipeline. For a state, that means the planning effort doesn’t start from a blank page.

Executive briefingA working session for the governor’s office, state emergency management, and the TAG: the Black Sky case, the stack, the state role, and the first five moves.
Planning-team supportTemplates, methodology, and working support for the state Black Sky planning team — built to merge with the national framework the draft EO describes.
Node-portfolio assessmentA data-driven ranking of the state’s critical city–node pairs — installations, refineries, ports, chemical plants — by dependency reach and hardening priority.
Training and certificationA course catalog, certification pathway, and practitioner registry, so state and local staff do the work to one professional standard.
Request a state briefing See the training pipeline

Fifty resilient states is a resilient nation. Yours can be first.

The planning seat is yours by law. The method, the template, and the team are ready. The states that move now write the standard everyone else follows.

Request a state briefing Read the policy case