The Contingency Plan is the overall title of a pair of plays by the British playwright Steve Waters that opened at the Bush Theatre on 22 April 2009.

Paxton is a scientist who has returned from research in Antarctica with a new understanding of glacial melting due to climate change and the corresponding possibilities of a rise in sea levels and of coastal flooding.

Michael Billington wrote of the pair of plays that their "flaws pale beside Waters' massive achievement which is to have made the most important issue of our times into engrossing theatre.

Robin had unexpectedly retired from his own promising career as an Antarctic glaciologist shortly before Will's birth, and moved his family to an isolated house above a coastal salt marsh in Norfolk.

In Resilience, Will and Sarika (a career civil servant) are jockeying for influence in a new Tory government with Colin Jenks (played by Soans).