Epistemic Civil Defense: How Communities Can Protect Shared Reality Without Policing Belief

Disaster preparedness depends on more than roads, radios, hospitals, and emergency personnel. It also depends on whether people can determine what happened, which information is current, why a source deserves trust, and how a correction will reach everyone who received the wrong version. Epistemic civil defense is the public infrastructure that protects that capacity—without turning uncertainty into suspicion or public safety into a ministry of truth.