It was a nightmare scenario for Taiwan: a Chinese blockade, a strong earthquake seized on by Beijing to sow chaos, hijacked television broadcasts, sabotaged infrastructure, a run on banks, civil unrest — and then a full-scale invasion.
That was the cascading crisis presented to more than 370 government and military officials during an exercise in central Taiwan this week, part of President Lai Ching-te's push to harden the island's war preparedness as Chinese military pressure on the democratically governed island intensifies.
Reuters was granted rare exclusive access to the closed-door drill, the first such test of whether officials in Nantou, working with central government and military agencies, could keep the mountainous county functioning under attack.
Taiwan has been ramping up its so-called "resilience" exercises to prepare civilians and officials for crises ranging from natural disasters to war, moving beyond past drills often criticised as scripted, performative and of limited value.
"Our adversary is right on our doorstep, just across the Taiwan Strait. That is very close," Chi Lien-cheng, the minister without portfolio overseeing the two-day drill, told Reuters .
"If you don't defend your own country, who else will defend you? I think people are beginning to understand that," he said, acknowledging there were still many shortcomings and that resources could fall short in a real disaster.
"But that's all right. We are here to see how they carry out the exercise — whether they have the will to absorb these concepts and put them into practice."
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control. Taiwan's government says only the island's people can decide their future.
On Thursday, as the drill was ending, Taiwan reported that China had carried out another "joint combat readiness patrol" around the island with warships and at least 22 military aircraft, including nuclear-capable H-6 bombers.
"This will only push Taiwan into the dangerous situation of war and conflict. He is, through and through, a destroyer of cross-strait peace, a creator of crises in the Taiwan Strait, and an instigator of war," spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said on Thursday.
The drill began with a seven-hour tabletop exercise before moving the next day to field drills that included shooting down a Chinese drone threatening a power plant and setting up food ration stations.
The magnitude 6.8 earthquake scenario, in which 12 people were killed, added another layer of stress, forcing officials to juggle disaster relief, disrupted infrastructure, rising public unrest and wartime contingency planning.
Displayed on large screens in the drill's response centre were a US military-developed tactical mapping and communications system giving officials real-time locations of enemy targets.
Alongside were two Taiwan government platforms using interactive maps and icons to visualize unfolding crises, including the movement of ambulances and other resources that underscored a major focus of this year's drill: deeper civil-military integration.
Military reserve commands coordinated directly with local governments, said Lin Fei-fan, deputy secretary-general of Taiwan's National Security Council, who oversees the resilience-building programme.
"The message to our adversary is clear: when they know Taiwan's society is prepared, they will have to think very carefully about whether to launch such a costly war against Taiwan — one that may not succeed."
Drawing lessons from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, officials said they had made the tests more realistic for emergency responders and infrastructure operators, including by moving hospital operations underground and having professional hackers attack and stress-test government networks and websites.
One scenario included a Chinese drone attack on the response centre, leaving the fate of 75 officials unknown and forcing authorities to respond with plans to activate a backup operations centre.
"We can't actually put them through a real war, so we can only use scenarios to help them understand that war is extremely cruel — all situations will be severe and urgent," said an official who participated in the drill, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
"If you have not made these preparations in peacetime, you will not be able to respond."
Nantou officials were given one important strategic mission: to transform Taiwan's only landlocked county into a "rear area", a refuge for people fleeing other counties and a fallback zone for operations as frontline troops fought Chinese forces.
Dozens of grassroots government units across the country also joined the drills by livestream, responding to scenarios and rapid-fire questions from commanders in the response centre.
The officials were questioned in granular detail on whether grassroots units were ready — from how many draft-age men the local government could mobilise overnight to how many cans of baby formula the county currently had in stock.
It was not, however, the kind of everyday work local officials — from utilities staff to household registration officers — were used to.
As the scenarios darkened, the atmosphere in the response centre grew more intense, with occasionally tense exchanges between commanders and subordinates, some of whom struggled to provide answers.
The drill also tested how local authorities would counter information warfare. As the scenario unfolded, Chinese disinformation and sabotage took centre stage.
At one point, local television broadcasts were hijacked and replaced with Beijing propaganda, while misinformation flyers appeared on the streets — echoing a scenario in the 2025 Taiwanese television drama "Zero Day Attack".
Officials responded by holding mock press conferences, with participants taught to identify misinformation.
Lee I-yuan, a 75-year-old borough chief who led a community response team, said the drill helped him learn how to distinguish what was real from what was fake.
"If the other side attacks, they will definitely use AI to spread false information," he said.
