2020 was a year of unprecedented problems that highlighted countries’ need to improve managing their responses to crises and disasters. Part of doing so is to be better prepared, and for this the idea of mobilisation is useful. National mobilisation involves using a society’s resources to achieve national objectives in a time of conflict, competition, crisis or disaster. Such a description by intent is all-encompassing, pitched at the national level and implies mobilisation could be used to seize opportunities, as much as to react to catastrophes. It is also a bit ambiguous.