Die(cleanly)!
This article: Contingency Design - Leveraging Google when your database server takes a holiday shows how a small change to your code helps create a much more pleasing user experience. Combine this with a smart use of “hand rolled error reporting”:http://nl.php.net/manual/en/ref.errorfunc.php#ini.display-errors and you got some mean contingency design in place in no time at all.