Class 1 – Minimal Threat
Destruction Potential: One room or confined space.
Firepower Needed: Handgun, taser, or basic melee force.
Example: Lone attacker with a blunt weapon or knife.
Class 2 – Low Threat
Destruction Potential: One building or vehicle.
Firepower Needed: Small arms (pistols, rifles), basic police response.
Example: Armed individual, basic IED, small drone.
Class 3 – Moderate Threat
Destruction Potential: A city block or small area.
Firepower Needed: Coordinated police or SWAT team with rifles and explosives.
Example: Armed group, vehicle-borne IED, light drone swarm.
Class 4 – Elevated Threat
Destruction Potential: Several city blocks.
Firepower Needed: Armored vehicles, explosives, precision snipers.
Example: Militant cell with automatic weapons and explosives; chemical release in a contained area.
Class 5 – Major Threat
Destruction Potential: One urban district.
Firepower Needed: Military infantry, light armor, air support.
Example: Coordinated terrorist attack with explosives, heavy weapons, or vehicle ramming; large-scale arson or toxic gas.
Class 6 – Severe Threat
Destruction Potential: Multiple urban districts, mass casualty potential.
Firepower Needed: Full military deployment (combined infantry, armor, and air assets).
Example: Armed insurgency in an urban area; bioweapon release; large-scale civil unrest with heavy weapons.
Class 7 – Urban Collapse Threat
Destruction Potential: Entire city incapacitated.
Firepower Needed: Prolonged military campaign, air-to-ground strikes, extensive logistics.
Example: Armed occupation of a major city; nuclear dirty bomb; massive industrial explosion; airborne biotoxin spread.
Class 8 – City-Killer Threat
Destruction Potential: Citywide destruction or long-term uninhabitability.
Firepower Needed: High-yield precision missiles, bunker busters, scorched-earth tactics.
Example: Tactical nuclear device (~10–50 kilotons); total chemical saturation; biological weapon outbreak (e.g., weaponized smallpox).
Class 9 – Multi-City Threat
Destruction Potential: Several major cities affected or destroyed.
Firepower Needed: Coordinated national military campaign, high-yield munitions, area denial operations.
Example: Coordinated nuclear attacks; supervirus pandemic; grid-killing cyberattack coupled with infrastructure sabotage.
Class 10 – Regional Threat
Destruction Potential: Entire geographic region (hundreds of km radius).
Firepower Needed: Strategic bombing, sustained military operations across multiple fronts.
Example: WMD exchange; continent-spanning pandemic; coordinated eco-terrorism (dam collapses, nuclear plant sabotage).
Class 11 – Infrastructure Collapse Threat
Destruction Potential: Widespread systemic failure across region; infrastructure nonfunctional.
Firepower Needed: Not military firepower but massive national intervention, emergency logistics, and containment.
Example: EMP weapon disabling power grids across multiple states; large-scale cyberattack on energy, water, and medical systems.
Class 12 – Regional Extinction-Level Event
Destruction Potential: Near-total collapse of human life support systems in the affected region.
Firepower Needed: Beyond conventional — mitigation, not neutralization (no traditional "elimination" possible).
Example: Runaway bioweapon, nuclear fallout spread, ecosystem collapse, Chernobyl-like meltdown on a massive scale.