They have already planned to cause the maximum amount of chaos on March 1. If people notice a degradation of essential functions it is entirely deliberate and willful.
In fact, their strategists admit that the worst thing that could happen for them in the sequester is that people don’t notice it.
Every few years, DC gets buried under a couple feet of snow. The city shuts down for an entire week. And nobody throughout the rest of the country even notices, because the majority of these Fed workers are “non-essential.”