Threat board
Ranked highest risk first. Select any threat for a full briefing — what it is, what it means for Aotearoa, warning signs, how to prepare and where to read more.
Global · Technological
Artificial Intelligence
Frontier models are outpacing governance. Labour displacement, autonomous weapons and loss-of-control scenarios all sit on the same curve.
Full briefingGlobal · Conflict
Nuclear War
Arms control treaties have lapsed, warhead modernisation is accelerating, and multiple nuclear-armed states are in active confrontation.
Full briefingGlobal · Technological
Critical Infrastructure Cyberattack
State actors are pre-positioned inside power, water and telecom networks. The first move of the next war is unlikely to be kinetic.
Full briefingGlobal · Climate
Severe Weather
Record ocean heat is loading the dice for compound events: floods, drought and cyclones arriving in the same season.
Reading live feed…
Global · Society
Information Collapse
Synthetic media is now cheaper than truth. Shared reality is the substrate every other response depends on.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Geophysical
Alpine Fault Rupture
A 75% chance of a major rupture within 50 years, with an 82% chance it is M8+. The South Island would be cut in pieces for weeks.
Full briefingGlobal · Economic
Supply Chain Failure
Chokepoint shipping, chip concentration and just-in-time inventory. Most cities hold roughly three days of food on shelves.
Full briefingGlobal · Conflict
Great Power War
Simultaneous flashpoints in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. Alliance tripwires make local wars go global.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Climate
NZ Cyclones & Flooding
Gabrielle was the costliest disaster in NZ history. Warmer seas mean ex-tropical systems arrive further south, more often.
Full briefingGlobal · Biological
Bioweapons & Pandemics
Gene synthesis is cheap and increasingly automated. Engineered pathogens are now a garage-scale risk, not a state-scale one.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Economic
NZ Import Dependence
Fuel, pharmaceuticals and fertiliser almost entirely imported, with no refinery. A shipping disruption is a national event.
Full briefingGlobal · Society
Civil Unrest & Democratic Breakdown
Contested elections, political violence and institutional distrust across multiple major democracies at the same time.
Full briefingGlobal · Climate
Food & Water Security
Aquifer depletion, fertiliser dependence and simultaneous breadbasket failures. Four countries supply most of the world's exported grain.
Full briefingGlobal · Economic
Hyper-inflation & Debt
Sovereign debt loads at wartime highs during peacetime. Currency confidence is the thin layer holding the system together.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Economic
NZ Electricity & Fuel Security
A dry-year hydro system, no domestic refinery, and roughly three weeks of onshore fuel cover for the whole country.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Geophysical
NZ Earthquakes
Aotearoa sits on the plate boundary. The Alpine Fault has a high probability of rupture within the next 50 years.
Reading live feed…
Global · Biological
Antimicrobial Resistance
A slow-motion pandemic. Routine surgery and childbirth get dangerous again as last-line antibiotics fail faster than replacements arrive.
Full briefingGlobal · Technological
Power Grid Collapse
Ageing transformers with multi-year lead times, rising load from electrification and AI datacentres. Cascading failure is the failure mode.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Geophysical
Hikurangi Tsunami
The subduction zone off the East Coast can produce a local tsunami arriving in minutes. Long or strong, get gone.
Full briefingAotearoa NZ · Biological
NZ Biosecurity Incursion
Foot-and-mouth or a major horticultural pest would halt exports overnight. Primary industry is over 80% of goods exports.
Full briefingGlobal · Space Weather
Coronal Mass Ejection
A Carrington-class storm would take down transformers, satellites and GPS. Live geomagnetic activity is tracked below.
Reading live feed…
Global · Technological
Autonomous Systems
Armed drones and autonomous ground systems are being fielded faster than the rules that govern them. Human-in-the-loop is eroding.
Full briefingGlobal · Space
Solar Flare Activity
X-class flares black out HF radio and GPS within minutes of the light arriving — no warning time, unlike a CME.
Reading live feed…
Aotearoa NZ · Geophysical
NZ Volcanic Activity
Twelve monitored volcanic systems, including the Auckland field and the Taupō caldera. Alert levels are read live from GeoNet.
Reading live feed…
Global · Geophysical
Global Seismicity
A live count of significant earthquakes worldwide, plus the largest magnitude recorded in the past day.
Reading live feed…
Global · Technological
EMP Event
A high-altitude detonation or severe solar event would strand a modern grid for months. Almost nothing critical is hardened.
Full briefingGlobal · Space
Asteroid Impact
Low probability, absolute consequence. Live count of near-Earth objects passing today, and how many are flagged hazardous.
Reading live feed…
It is not if, but when
A century of Aotearoa's own reminders. Every one of these arrived on an ordinary day.
- 2023CycloneCyclone GabrielleNZ's costliest natural disaster. 11 lives lost, Hawke's Bay and Tairāwhiti cut off for days.
- 2023FloodAuckland Anniversary FloodsRecord rainfall in hours. Four deaths, thousands of homes damaged, the airport underwater.
- 2020PandemicCOVID-19Borders closed, supply chains disrupted, four years of aftershocks in prices and health systems.
- 2019VolcanicWhakaari eruption22 killed with no useful warning window. Alert levels are not a forecast.
- 2016EarthquakeKaikōura M7.825 faults ruptured at once. State Highway 1 and the main trunk line severed for over a year.
- 2011EarthquakeChristchurch M6.3185 deaths. A city centre lost, and a decade of insurance and rebuild disruption.
- 1998InfrastructureAuckland CBD power crisisFive weeks without power in the central city after all four supply cables failed.
- 1931EarthquakeHawke's Bay M7.8256 deaths — still the deadliest disaster in New Zealand's recorded history.
What actually helps
None of the numbers above are actionable. These four are.
Water
3 litres per person per day, minimum 7 days stored. Rotate it. Know where your nearest untreated source is.
Power & comms
Battery or solar radio, power bank, printed contact list. Assume no cell network and no EFTPOS.
Food & warmth
Two weeks of food that needs no cooking, plus a way to cook outdoors. Blankets, sturdy shoes by the bed.
Plan & people
A meeting point, an out-of-town contact, and neighbours who know who lives alone on your street.
Get prepared
Want to do something useful with this information?
Preparing.nz is a practical guide for New Zealanders who want to be ready for the unexpected — earthquakes, storms, power cuts, pandemics and more.
How the index works
Each threat carries a baseline severity drawn from expert assessment. Every 24 hours, on the server, absolutely everything is reassessed: all seven live feeds are re-synced (USGS for global seismicity, GeoNet for New Zealand quakes and volcanic alert levels, NOAA SWPC for geomagnetic storms and GOES X-ray flares, NASA NeoWs for near-Earth objects, and NASA EONET for active severe storms) and an AI analyst re-scores every threat's baseline against current world conditions plus headline digests from official sources (CISA, WHO, USGS) — nothing on the board is left stale. Live feeds are blended into their threat at 55% weight. The clock maps the average of all threat scores onto minutes remaining before midnight.
This is an awareness tool, not a forecast. The only useful response to any of it is the boring one: water, food, power, comms, a plan and people who know it.
