The civil protection and preparedness conditions in Europe have radically changed in the last couple of decades. Hazards and risks are no longer confined and controllable but global, systemic, and interconnected. Compound, consecutive, and cascading consequences have a mounting impact and far-reaching ripple effects on the social and natural environments. A majority of research in risk, crisis, and disaster management studies urban environments, their infrastructures, and governing structures. Thus, most knowledge and frameworks mainly support urban stakeholders in dealing with risk and resilience. Because of the increasing pace of European urbanisation, there are good reasons for this focus. At the same time, large parts of the continent sit on critical natural resources and hosts considerable, albeit in many cases dispersed, populations. In Sweden, the place for this study, the risk preparedness, legislation, and governance structure have not changed at the same pace as the risk landscape—strong norms and principles in emergency management and civil protection prevail. The ultra-rural Northern inland of Sweden witnessed economic restructuring and a changing demographical structure in the same period as above. In this paper, we study the organising and workings of local authorities in charge of civil protection in this region. The preliminary results from interviews with public officials and policy documents indicate huge challenges due to an imbalance between the available resources and competence, along with the governing of vast geographical areas on the one hand and the same statutory duties and responsibilities as the rest of the country, on the other. The analysis identified four crucial aspects for maintaining local resilience: (i) knowledge of the place, (ii) informal networks, (iii) key-person dependency, and (iv) adaptive capacity. These aspects involve pros and cons in practical application and organising for civil protection and preparedness.