Dealing with the chaos, fear and danger of a major contingency relies on preparation and knowledge. Those charged with managing such crises must have the training to understand the unique challenges that crop up when the normal operation of society are interrupted. As with most things human, coherent discourse is essential to action, and that depends in large part to emergency communication equipment.

The animal kingdom has a number of species which form societal groups which rely on the ability of their leader to keep them safe. A pride of lions depends on the large male to fend of other encroaching males. When the water sources dry up, a parade of elephants follows the oldest female elephant, relying on her memory to find alternate sources of water, humans also set up leaders to guide the population in crises.

Each city and state, as well as the nation as a whole, depend on their leaders to be ready for such crises, and to guide the rest when it happens. Regardless the source f the crisis, natural or created by man, society holds leadership responsible for reacting to it. The problem has grown over time as cities become larger and more complex.

In the US, each community develops a method of dealing with the chaos and fear that crises generate. Sharing ideas with other cities, studying past problems and including the experience of long time residents help create a working framework. There are also large companies in a community or military bases with expertise and processes already set up.

For the most part, the responsibilities and tasks are assigned to people who do something entirely different as a job. When an emergency occurs, the ease of response and recovery depends in large part to the skills of those individuals assigned to act. How well these individuals can actually respond is a matter of training, exercises and experience.

A number of private companies and some governmental agencies have developed their own courses of instruction. Each military organization, for example, holds a required number of exercises each year designed to test the leadership and resources of the organization in the aftermath of a number of different contingencies. The process was different for each service, just as it was for each city or private organization.

A large scale response in any community will likely be more than any single organization or population center can handle alone. Working together with neighboring communities is the natural conclusion, but because it happens rarely, this can be a difficult endeavor. It is in these times that the problems with each group developing their own methods makes it painfully difficult to work together.

Following such major catastrophes as the Oklahoma bombing and Hurricane Katrina the after action analysis led to the development of a nation-wide formal process called National Incident Management System. With all military and government entities required to participate and private organizations encouraged to, standardization has come a long way. The key to being able to work together for mutual assistance was standardizing and training on emergency communication equipment.