Disaster exercise: What if a drought paralyzes Germany?

Nationwide disaster drill If a drought were to paralyze Germany As of: November 7th, 2026 • 10:44 a.m

Hardly any rain in Germany for years, hot summers and then an extreme heat wave for weeks. This is the scenario of LÜKEX, an exercise intended to improve the crisis management of 180 participating organizations.

Assume that there has been too little rain in Germany for several years - the rivers hardly contain any water, the groundwater table has dropped and supplies of drinking water are becoming scarce. For several weeks the temperatures have been above forty degrees every day, up to 45 at peak.

In this scenario, 180 federal and state authorities, aid organizations and operators of so-called critical infrastructure (KRITIS) tested their disaster control processes decentrally but together for three days in order to be prepared for an emergency.

But no overheated patients were admitted to the emergency room during this exercise, no tankers of drinking water were brought in and no additional food was purchased from overseas. The exercise took place exclusively on the monitors of the participating organizations - throughout Germany.

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The Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) worked together with the Federal Ministry of the Interior to prepare LÜKEX for three years. It will take a year to fully evaluate the exercise.

When it comes to disaster protection, nothing is left to chance: "At a time when extreme weather events such as heat and droughts are increasing, it is crucial that we work together on solutions and strengthen structures. This year's LÜKEX, with a focus on drought and heat waves, is an important step in this direction," says BBK President Grit Tüngler.

Markus Reichstein, director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, researches the resilience of the population and the biosphere to climate extremes. He knows how soil, water and vegetation react to it.

He says: "We have already experienced in Germany that droughts can last for several years. In some regions after 2018, the soil was unusually dry to great depths for five years. We cannot predict when the next multi-year drought will come - but it is a real risk that we have to prepare for."

45 degrees in the shade and that after several years of drought. This fictional scenario is the basis for the exercise by the federal and state governments. more

The greatest danger lies in chain reactions. Heat causes drought and this promotes forest fires. The resulting smoke in turn worsens the air quality, which puts a strain on health and reduces resilience. The associated drought leads to crop failures, which causes food prices to rise. Water shortages and low water levels would deprive industry of transport routes on rivers and force energy companies to reduce their production due to a lack of cooling water. A climate extreme would result in a systemic crisis, with the consequences reinforcing each other.

In order to cushion the consequences of such a crisis, those involved from the authorities and KRITIS, which include energy, water and food suppliers as well as hospitals, telecommunications providers, insurers, banks, logisticians, waste disposal and the media, are working.

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The theme of this year's LÜKEX was decided not just after, but years before the very hot summer of 2026. However, this impressively shows its relevance, according to the organizers.

BBK spokeswoman Maren Kebbel emphasizes that the selected scenario is based on real circumstances of the past, but in an exaggerated way: "This tightening is necessary in the crisis management exercise so that all practicing organizations can test and improve their reaction mechanisms. Population behavior, i.e. information needs, risk awareness and competence, personal emergency preparedness and other resilience and vulnerability factors are an important element of the exercise implementation."

What the participants can expect are, for example, reports of warmed-up servers and IT failures, power outages, water shortages, bottlenecks in hospitals, but also how to deal with false reports and deliberate misleading of the population at home and abroad.

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Last summer there were 16,000 heat deaths in Germany, and in 2024 there would be 50,000 victims across Europe. In addition to the health risks, there are poorer supplies of everything necessary for life and problems with the infrastructure.

Each individual risk factor could be managed on its own, says Markus Reichstein. Their interaction makes such a crisis so dangerous. Existing knowledge about individual risks is then too little: "If water, energy supply, agriculture and the health system come under pressure at the same time, that is not enough. We have to think more in terms of systemic risks and prepare for the interaction of various crises. The knowledge is already available in many areas - what matters is whether we act on them in a timely manner."

He considers exercises like LÜKEX to be extremely important because they test the interaction of different crisis areas and improvements can be derived from them. This could result in a rethinking of air conditioning in living and working areas, but also urban development changes such as shading or greenery. In an emergency, decision-makers can only react correctly if they have already made themselves and society more resilient.

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In this sense, the BBK says that participation in LÜKEX should lead to an improvement in the security of action and structures of crisis management for the participating organizations and create networks on a professional and personal level - like all previous LÜKEX in the 20 years that it has existed.

Whether this will be successful will only be known next year. There should be an initial evaluation of all participating organizations in the first quarter of 2027. Building on this, the BBK will summarize all comprehensive findings by the third quarter.

This topic in the program: NDR Info | News | November 4, 2026 | 8:30 a.m