Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience: A Handbook Delivered to 9.8 Million Households

30-second overview: In September 2025, Taiwan's Ministry of Defense released a new edition of the Taiwan Civil Safety Guide. Beginning November 19, the first batch entered printing and inspection. Following the distribution method used for election bulletins, village chiefs will deliver copies to each household through local civil administration systems. The target is to complete distribution to Taiwan's 9.8 million households by January 5, 2026. The total print run is approximately 11 million copies, with an English-language edition also prepared. For the first time, the handbook explicitly states: any message about government surrender or national defeat is disinformation.

A Handbook Delivered to Homes

On November 17, 2025, Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆), Deputy Secretary-General of the National Security Council, briefed the media on the distribution plan for the new Taiwan Civil Safety Guide. The handbook is produced and printed by the Ministry of Defense's All-People Defense Mobilization Agency. Beginning around November 19, the first batch enters printing and inspection; afterward, through local civil administration systems, village chiefs will assist in household delivery using a method similar to the distribution of election bulletins.¹

The target date is January 5, 2026, covering Taiwan's 9.8 million households, with one copy per household. The total print run is approximately 11 million copies. In addition to the Chinese-language edition, an English-language edition has been prepared and will be distributed to foreign nationals in Taiwan through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' coordination with diplomatic missions.¹

President Lai Ching-te stated at the September 2025 Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Forum that the Ministry of Defense has released a new edition of the All-People National Defense Handbook titled "When Crisis Arrives: Taiwan Civil Safety Guide," ensuring that every household receives this guidance.¹

Five Pillars of the Committee

This handbook is not a publication of a single agency; it operates under a committee at the Presidential Office level.

On December 26, 2024, President Lai Ching-te chaired the second meeting of the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee. He outlined that the committee's objective is to establish action plans through five strategic pillars to comprehensively enhance four dimensions of resilience: national defense, civil livelihood, disaster prevention, and democracy.²

The five strategic pillars are: civil force training and deployment; strategic material inventory and essential supply distribution; energy and critical infrastructure operations; social welfare, medical care, and evacuation facility preparation; and cybersecurity, transportation, and financial network security.²

That same morning, the Presidential Office conducted the first cross-sector tabletop exercise jointly involving central ministries, local governments, and private-sector observers. The exercise was designed with "predetermined scenarios but no script"—participating units did not prepare speeches in advance but responded extemporaneously. The two scenarios addressed high-intensity gray-zone operations and near-conflict situations; the core objective was to maintain normal daily life for citizens and ensure continued social functioning.²

The President also announced that beginning in 2025, the "Wan An" (air defense) and "Min An" (civil safety) exercises will be integrated into a unified "Urban Resilience Exercise," aligning with international exercise nomenclature and designed to operate without reliance on military support, thereby validating the capacity of civil defense and disaster prevention systems to protect citizens.²

What's in the Handbook

Lin Fei-fan outlined that the new handbook was compiled with reference to international experience, particularly practices from Nordic countries, and features three characteristics.¹

First, it aligns with international experience: the content covers peacetime material preparation and disaster response across different scenarios, including natural disasters and extreme wartime situations. Household stockpiling recommendations advocate for each family to maintain sufficient food, water, and essential supplies, and to prepare basic items for emergency evacuation kits.¹

Second, it integrates multiple scenarios: the handbook addresses how to respond to natural disasters, earthquakes, landslides, and dam overflow situations; it also provides corresponding safety guidance for extreme situations such as war.¹

Third, for the first time, the handbook clearly declares to all citizens: facing military threats, Taiwan will never surrender. Any message about government surrender or national defeat is disinformation. The purpose is to demonstrate defense consciousness and help the public understand that adversaries may use disinformation to sow confusion and undermine confidence. The handbook also informs citizens how to participate in civil defense efforts, including information on the Ministry of the Interior's disaster prevention specialist training program and coordination details for reserve personnel and alternative service members.¹

Why Learn from the Nordic Model

Lin Fei-fan emphasized at the briefing that distributing handbooks to all citizens is not unique to Taiwan. Sweden and Finland have distributed all-people defense handbooks to their populations; the Czech Republic is preparing to distribute a "72-hour" survival guide; France also plans to distribute survival guides to all citizens, including battlefield response guidance.¹

The significance of this comparison is that the handbook is not a hastily conceived publicity measure but rather an institutionalization of "peacetime preparation." Nordic countries treat it as part of their civil defense system, not as a leaflet printed only after a crisis occurs.

A Statement Written into the Handbook for the First Time

Among the three characteristics Lin Fei-fan listed, the third is most concrete: "Any message about government surrender or national defeat is disinformation."¹

It addresses a specific information problem: during conflict or major disaster, true and false information circulate simultaneously in large volumes, and social collapse often begins with rumors such as "the government has given up." By writing this into a handbook that reaches every household, the government essentially moves the work of debunking from press releases to living rooms.

Whether the handbook achieves its effect depends on two things: whether citizens actually open and read it, and whether peacetime drills keep pace. The former depends on distribution rates; the latter depends on the Urban Resilience Exercise. Neither of these can be accomplished by a handbook alone.

Further reading:

• Grid Resilience — another resilience dimension of critical infrastructure
• Cognitive Warfare — disinformation and social trust
• Taiwan's National Defense and Military Modernization — military-side defense preparation, complementing the civil defense focus of this article
• The Invisible State — a documentary on national identity and security anxiety

References