During a massive flood in London, nearly every datacentre went down."

During a massive flood in London, nearly every datacentre went down.

Except one: Rackspace.

Their backup systems worked. Their power held. They stayed online. When asked why, the CEO didn’t present a whitepaper. He held up a key.

Every month, he walked into the power room and pulled the main breaker. On purpose. Shut the whole thing off. Live test. No excuses.

It was painful. Risky. Uncomfortable. And that’s exactly why it worked.

You don’t build resilience by talking about it. You build it by living through the failure—on your terms, not the disaster’s.

If your systems only work when conditions are perfect, you’ve already lost. If your team has never practised failing safely, they won’t know how to recover when it’s real.

Real resilience is earned through pain. If it’s hard, do it more often.