Performance is a key tool in emergency preparedness and the rehearsal of professional response, simultaneously raising questions about the practice of cultural assumptions in this context. Usually the actors in preparedness exercises are civil servants who perform the work of the nihilistic imagination in often-apocalyptic fictional scenarios, performing the unthinkable without an audience. Their improvised words and actions reveal decisions of life and death made by the few on behalf of the many which are then filtered, through preparedness publications, to the public. This article examines a public preparedness exercise called "Emergency Exercise 2010: Operation Snowman", which took place during the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science in 2010. It formed part of an ESRC-funded project, "Preparedness Pedagogies, and Race: An Interdisciplinary Approach" (2009-10) which was informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and psychoanalytic interpretation. The exercise was held in a local authority nuclear bunker in Sussex. Young drama students were invited to perform in the roles of preparedness professionals to explore the validity of cultural assumptions perceived in preparedness exercises. Through the use of Freud's writing on the "uncanny", this article explores the performance of race in the preparedness exercise, focusing in particular on the "uncanny" role assigned to a black minority ethnic (BME) corpse in this context. Following Zizek's analysis of the relationship between government and cultural industries (2002, 16), this paper critiques such a use of theatre application as a tool for the elite and argues for the application of "othered" performance for public preparedness. (Contains 1 figure and 5 notes.)