Well, I think having contingency plans for various scenarios (and ideally practising those at regular intervals) can be a tremendous help when those scenarios a

Well, I think having contingency plans for various scenarios (and ideally practising those at regular intervals) can be a tremendous help when those scenarios actually take place. I know that NASA spent months doing full-scale simulations of every mission with astronauts and ground control, and that experience (especially of all the failure simulations) was invaluable for getting the actual missions right. I can echo this from personal experience: in a high-pressure situation, you function much better if you've thought out what to do ahead of time. Of course, the glaring problem is that this preparation comes at a big opportunity cost - it takes a lot of time, may never be needed, and may in fact prepare for the wrong crisis. But I think in any case one ought to make sure that one has a communication and decision-making structure in place that can function smoothly in crises, regardless of what they are.