What happens if a highly lethal pathogen spreads so fast that cities fall into chaos within days? What contingency exists if the normal machinery of government ceases to function?

According to recent discussions on the Shawn Ryan Show, the U.S. government maintains a classified continuity program known as Devolution. The name itself is unclassified. Nearly everything else about it is not.

What Is Devolution?

Devolution is the plan for what comes after anarchy or catastrophic collapse. In the scenario described, a pre-selected group of officials and specialists disappears into a network of hardened facilities—referred to as hot sites, warm sites, and cold sites—while the broader population endures whatever disaster has struck. The explicit purpose is to preserve a functioning core of government that can later rebuild institutions once the acute phase of the crisis has passed.

Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA Administrator under President Obama and signed off on the 2016 version of the plan, has spoken about its existence while carefully staying within legal bounds. The list of people authorized to enter these sites, the criteria used to select them, and the precise locations remain classified. The roster is said to include “mirror-image” backups for critical roles—president, national security advisor, defense officials, public-health leadership, and others—so that the loss of any single person does not eliminate institutional knowledge.

The 100% Fatality Scenario

The plan is designed for extreme cases, including a biological event with a near-100% case fatality rate. One example repeatedly cited is pneumonic plague (as opposed to the more commonly known bubonic form). Once the bacteria reach the lungs, untreated cases can kill within roughly 24 hours. A genetically engineered or antibiotic-resistant version of such a pathogen would be even more devastating.

In that specific contingency, the president is not taken to the better-known continuity facilities such as Raven Rock or Mount Weather. Instead, he is moved alone to a remote “cold site.” The image painted is stark: the president isolated in a secure room, wearing protective gear, with a military aide carrying the nuclear football stationed outside the door and a small Secret Service detail securing the perimeter. The logic is simple and cold—minimize any chance that the nation’s highest office becomes a vector or a casualty.

Continuity Versus Transparency

Supporters of such planning argue that every serious nation maintains some form of continuity-of-government protocol. The alternative—complete governmental disintegration during a mass-casualty event—would leave the country even more vulnerable. Critics counter that the extreme secrecy surrounding who is chosen, how the list is maintained, and what authorities those people would exercise after a collapse raises legitimate questions about democratic accountability.

The conversation also touches on a broader cultural point: the difficulty institutions have in admitting error. Whether the issue is pandemic origins, airborne transmission timelines, or other sensitive topics, the reluctance to say “we got this wrong” has eroded public trust. Some participants in the discussion prefer the phrase “speculative narrative” over “conspiracy theory,” arguing that the latter term is often used to shut down inquiry rather than test ideas against evidence.

Why This Matters Now

Continuity planning is not new. What has changed is the growing public awareness of biological risk—lab accidents, gain-of-function research, and the theoretical possibility of engineered pathogens. When officials discuss scenarios in which large portions of the population could die in a matter of days, ordinary citizens naturally want to know what, if anything, is being done to prevent such outcomes rather than merely survive them.

Devolution is not a doomsday cult manifesto. It is a bureaucratic contingency plan with a deliberately opaque name. Whether one finds it reassuring or chilling depends largely on how much confidence one places in the institutions charged with deciding who gets to enter the bunkers—and who does not.

The existence of the plan is no longer speculative. The details that remain classified continue to invite the very public debate the program was designed to operate beyond.