If major urban water supplies fail, societies collapse. Despite low likelihoods, severe and prolonged droughts carry high risks due to their extreme consequences. The recent drought has revealed yet again our vulnerability to water supply shortages, food production losses and extreme fires. Water resource planning faces numerous compounding challenges: increasing demand, high variability and systematic changes to the climate, land-surface and human systems. Despite our risk exposure to water scarcity, severe and prolonged drought remains poorly understood. This has resulted in insufficient capacity to prepare for and adapt to drought. In this talk, I argue that the study of drought in isolated disciplines is futile. A new understanding of the mechanisms, risks and solutions to drought can only come about when we integrate deep disciplinary research across our specialist areas. We need to think outside of the box and utilise diverse knowledge, tools and skill sets to improve our understanding of, and resilience to, severe and prolonged drought. Because, we know it will bite again.