Book excerpt: Addressing the vulnerabilities in today's critical infrastructure to natural disasters and terrorism, this practical book describes what public safety and other officials need to do to protect should be doing to pipelines, power plants, telecommunications, and other essential services before the unthinkable happens. The book explains how to maintain command and control in any disaster, and how to predict the probability of those disasters. Written by two highly regarded experts in the field, this one-of-a-kind guidebook shows how to simplify risk assessments and emergency response procedures to disasters affecting our critical national and local infrastructure.