40% of businesses don't plan for unexpected disruptions

I disagree; we can and should plan for the unexpected.
Should I get rid of my first aid kit at home because I don't expect to have an accident?
Should I also cancel my home insurance because I don't expect to have a problem?
This is all about a sensible risk assessment.
What is likely to go wrong?
How likely is it to happen?
How serious are the consequences?
How much do preventative measures cost?
Now decide what to do.
I don’t have a Tsunami, meteorite or earthquake plan. I do plan for a power cut, hard drive failure and accidents. We have torches, first aid kit and a fire evac plan (night and day).
We lived in remote Wales when a winter storm knocked out a lot of electricity cables. Our power lines could be seen running for miles over fields so a storm was quite likely to disrupt them. I had some precautions so was warm and fed. I had to rescue my 2 elderly neighbours from hypothermia because, they had no heat, light, means of heating food or even a torch.
Sensible precautions are just that - sensible. All we need is a little forethought.

An example in the organisation I work for, one of the waste disposal sites is in large open ground. In January 2010, the pipes froze and there was no fixed sanitary accomodation for a fortnight. Water at work was supplied for drinking but the staff did not have access to a toilet. It took management 8 days to bring in portaloos. The union put forward a suggestion for a plan for all buildings that had a history of susceptibility to pipes freezing because of the nature of the sites. This could be adapted for a variety of "catastrophic" events.
January 2011, cold snap pipes frozen, 7 days until portaloos came in... a day better but pigeons learn quicker.
It is this kind of event that there is no planning for.

Maybe so but "success is no accident" and without considering a basic risk assessment of the "reasonably foreseeable" from extremes of weather, water & wind, too cold or too hot, power outage or even power serge taking out computers & communications, even acts of God and a plague of frogs or blocked drains or loss of water supply might be something, however unlikely or probable, should make it onto the list of "what if's" as civil unrest and potholes are a lot more common these days.

How do you plan for the unexpected? Where do you draw the line?
Meteorite strike?
Tsunami in Manchester?
The walking dead?

By its very nature, the unexpected, is……. unexpected and as such unlikely to be planned for!

Simple'ss, I don't suppose too many of us expect the 'Spanish Inquasisition' to return or a tsunami in Birmingham and if there was one hay ho, whateveer we're stuffed along with everyone else anyway.

So, what are we talking about ? Another nuclear winter, power failures, flu pandemic or other major outage of workers affecting everyones capacity to continue trading ?

Or, external cyber-attack on the company or country maybe, internal systems failure to proceed founded in people and machines where there is no back-up system in place to limit damage to functionality of operations.....

Most not bovered that DSE operators have been running at 80% capacity for the last 20 odd years anyway as it has become the 'norm' along with poor levels of well-being, productivity, ill-health, staff turnover and roughly only 30-60% moaning a little and that drops to less than 1 in 10 actually taking any action so why get ya knickers in a twist ?

Well it's all about remaining or just being competititive as regardless of people I think I've seen it quoted that on average take a firms computers and they have around three to six weeks before they are gone without being fully backed-up with the ability to replace their machines and intranet within a week.

That reminds me must nip down to Staples over the weekend and get one of those portable hard drives to take home at the end of day.