http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defenseCivil defense
Civil defense, also now often called emergency management, is an effort to prepare civilians for military attack. It uses the principles of emergency operations: prevention, mitigation, preparation, response, or emergency evacuation, and recovery. Programmes of this sort were initially discussed at least as early as the 1920s but it was only after the threat of nuclear weapons became realized that they became widespread. As the intensity of the Cold War waned emphasis shifted from military attack to emergencies and disasters in general. In the context of Civil Defense in the United States this eventually led to the replacement of the United States civil defense with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In some countries, the all-encompassing nature of civil defense is denoted by using name "total defence" such as the Swedish word totalförsvar. The name suggests committing all resources, hence the term total, of the nation to the defence. It can be compared to total war.