The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of biomimetic resilience and to elaborate the differences to resilience concepts based on established risk management. First, we briefly reconsider what biomimetics is all about and examine two important sources of biomimetic resilience design principles, evolution and ecosystem theory. Then, being aware that biomimetics is not an easy undertaking, we discuss restrictions for the transfer from natural role models to socio-techno-economic implementations. Finally, we discuss the claim of biomimetic resilience to offer a solution path to prepare for real surprises (unknown unknowns) in the sense of a far-reaching precautionary principle.