FIR 001: Welcome to the Foundation – Member Orientation

How to read this course. This is FIR’s welcome course – the orientation for prospective and new members of the Foundation for Infrastructure Resilience (FIR). It is short by design: eight lessons, about thirty-five minutes of reading, and a single confirmation question at the end that issues your FIR Member Orientation certificate. It is not an examination and it is not a gate. It exists so that every member starts with the same picture: who FIR is and why it exists, what a Black Sky Event (BSE) is in plain language, what the Foundation actually does, how it is organized and funded, what membership looks like day to day, and where your training path begins.

The course runs in four sections. Section 1 covers the mission – the story of FIR and the threat in brief. Section 2 covers the work – the three lines of action, the FIR Framework at a glance, and the workstreams beyond assessments. Section 3 covers the organization – how FIR is funded and what volunteering actually looks like. Section 4 covers your path – the training catalog, the certification pathway, and your next steps. Lessons are read in order; the confirmation question unlocks after the final lesson.

Depth is deliberately deferred. The full threat picture – the dependency tiers, the cascading failure timeline, the named adversary campaigns, and the historical precedent – is taught in BSE 099: Why This Matters – FIR Orientation, the strongly recommended foundation course for every member. This orientation informs; the curriculum examines.