For FEMA it has become popular to call those people not killed or injured "survivors" and not victims, which is the generally accepted term to be used, before Craig Fugate called on people to think of people impacted by disasters as survivors and not victims. However, in this case, I think it was used more in the case of "victims" who need help and can't be of service to others.
For me I think that the continuity of government and continuity of operations planning (COG and COOP) applies to everyone, not just the other agencies in our jurisdictions, it applies to us as emergency managers.
We have to have a fall-back plan for continuing to perform our function — no matter how bad it is. Even in catastrophic disasters only about 2 percent of the population actually dies, so it is likely we'll be alive. Yes, our home, our families will have impacts — but it is why I call emergency management not just a job, but a way of life. We are called to a higher level of purpose. When I was state or local emergency manager and we had windstorms, power outages or a foot of snow and ice, my wife would say, "Why do you need to go to work?" Because it is my job, people are depending on me. If you only think of your emergency management work as a job, you need to move on. Do something else, because when the chips are down, people are depending on us and our agencies to perform our missions, perhaps in a degraded state, but we should not and cannot just throw up our hands and call ourselves "Disaster survivors/victims — come rescue us."
I use the ultimate of disaster scenarios as an example — a nuclear attack! Having been in the military I know that a nuke is a bomb, a really big bomb, but still a bomb. Depending on the size of a nuclear blast, thousands or tens of thousands of people could be killed, but if you are an emergency manager and you are still standing — you have work to be done.
One last thought on this last scenario. Given North Korea's progress on missile technology and nuclear weapons, it might not be that long into the future (five-10 years max) before agencies on the West Coast are being asked to "dust off" (I'd say good luck with that) their civil defense plans of the 1950s and 1960s.
