The Lab

Beyond the headlines.
Where we dig in.

Homefront’s own explainers, research and maps, plus the reading and listening we recommend.

Homefront originals

Articles, research and maps.

More from the Lab

We recommend · Reports & research

The work we lean on.

Not ours, but essential: recent reporting on hybrid warfare in Europe, and the research on how people and communities actually behave in a crisis.

Research papers

Academic studies, grouped by question. Some sit behind a paywall; "Find it" searches Google Scholar, which often turns up a free copy.

Do people panic? What crowds really do

  1. 01
    Panic: Myth or Reality?

    Clarke (2002) · Contexts

    Mass panic in disasters is rare.

  2. 02
    Everyone for themselves?

    Drury, Cocking & Reicher (2009) · British Journal of Social Psychology

    Survivors of real emergencies mostly helped strangers.

  3. 03
    The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the 2005 London bombings

    Drury, Cocking & Reicher (2009) · International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters

    How strangers on 7/7 came to feel they were in it together.

  4. 04
    Facilitating collective psychosocial resilience in the public in emergencies

    Drury et al. (2019) · Frontiers in Public Health

    Twelve recommendations for authorities on working with the public.

What makes a community resilient

  1. 05
    Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness

    Norris et al. (2008) · American Journal of Community Psychology

    The most-cited definition of community resilience.

  2. 06
    A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters

    Cutter et al. (2008) · Global Environmental Change

    Why the same shock hits different places differently.

  3. 07
    Social capital and community resilience

    Aldrich & Meyer (2015) · American Behavioral Scientist

    Ties between neighbours matter more than infrastructure in recovery.

  4. 08
    Disasters and communities

    Paton & Johnston (2001) · Disaster Prevention and Management

    Why preparedness has to be built with communities.

  5. 09
    Denaturalizing disaster

    Klinenberg (1999) · Theory and Society

    In the 1995 Chicago heat wave, isolation decided who died as much as the heat did.

Civilians, war and mental health

  1. 10
    Five essential elements of immediate and mid-term mass trauma intervention

    Hobfoll et al. (2007) · Psychiatry

    Safety, calm, connection, self-efficacy and hope.

  2. 11
    Weighing the costs of disaster

    Bonanno et al. (2010) · Psychological Science in the Public Interest

    Most people cope better than expected.

  3. 12
    Child development in the context of disaster, war, and terrorism

    Masten & Narayan (2012) · Annual Review of Psychology

    What protects children.

  4. 13
    A full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Resilience and coping within and beyond Ukraine

    Kimhi et al. (2024) · Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being

    Surveys in Ukraine and neighbouring countries, including the Baltics.

Total defence and preparedness in Europe

  1. 14
    Back to the future? Nordic total defence concepts

    Wither (2020) · Defence Studies

  2. 15
    Resilience through total defence

    Wrange, Bengtsson & Brommesson (2024) · European Journal of International Security

    Compares all eight Nordic and Baltic states.

  3. 16
    The connections between crisis and war preparedness in Sweden

    Larsson (2021) · Security Dialogue

  4. 17
    The nation-state, national security and resilience in the age of globalisation

    Fjäder (2014) · Resilience

  5. 18
    Resilience and (in)security

    Dunn Cavelty, Kaufmann & Kristensen (2015) · Security Dialogue

    A critical look at what “resilience” asks of citizens.

Standing up to disinformation

  1. 19
    Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation

    Roozenbeek & van der Linden (2019) · Palgrave Communications

    Evidence that “pre-bunking” works.

Hybrid warfare: reports and investigations

We recommend · Books

Books we recommend.

Readable, well-sourced books on the subjects the show covers, for anyone who wants to go deeper than an episode can.

Hybrid war and the grey zone

The Weaponisation of Everything

Mark Galeotti · 2022

How migration, energy, crime, law and information became tools of conflict. The book behind much of Episode 1.

The Defender's Dilemma

Elisabeth Braw · 2022

How democracies can respond to grey-zone aggression, and why business and citizens are in the front line.

The Dragons and the Snakes

David Kilcullen · 2020

How Russia, China and armed groups learned to fight the West below the threshold of war.

Disinformation and influence

Active Measures

Thomas Rid · 2020

A century of disinformation and political warfare, from the Cold War to social media.

This Is Not Propaganda

Peter Pomerantsev · 2019

A personal, reported journey through the information war.

Foolproof

Sander van der Linden · 2023

The science of why misinformation spreads and how to "pre-bunk" it.

Cyber and infrastructure

Sandworm

Andy Greenberg · 2019

The Russian hacking unit that turned off Ukraine's power and released NotPetya.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends

Nicole Perlroth · 2021

The global market in cyber weapons.

Lights Out

Ted Koppel · 2015

What a cyberattack on the power grid would mean for ordinary households.

How people and communities cope

The Unthinkable

Amanda Ripley · 2008

What actually happens in people's heads during a disaster, and who survives.

A Paradise Built in Hell

Rebecca Solnit · 2009

Why ordinary people usually help each other in disasters, rather than panic.

Building Resilience

Daniel P. Aldrich · 2012

The research showing that neighbours and social ties matter most in recovery.

Palaces for the People

Eric Klinenberg · 2018

How libraries, parks and shared spaces hold communities together.

Civilians in war

Logavina Street

Barbara Demick · 1996; updated 2012

One Sarajevo street through the siege. Companion reading for our Sarajevo episode.

Nuclear War: A Scenario

Annie Jacobsen · 2024

A minute-by-minute account of how a nuclear exchange would unfold, and why preparedness and diplomacy matter.

We recommend · Podcasts

Other podcasts and episodes we love.

Good listening from other shows on the subjects we cover.

Episode

Russia's hybrid warfare in Europe

From Mildly Alarmed

Security researchers from Norway and Sweden discuss how Russia's hybrid warfare in Europe works, and how Europe might defend against it. Several reports in our reading list are mentioned in this episode.

Open in Spotify ↗
Episode

Hybrid Warfare: Is Europe Edging Closer to Open Confrontation?

From What Just Happened? (Sibylline)

Analysts unpack the arrests near RAF Fairford, why the UK, Germany and Poland face different levels of Russian grey-zone activity, and why attribution is so hard.

Open in Spotify ↗
Episode

Could Europe face a mass-casualty attack within six months?

From What Just Happened? (Sibylline)

After the attack on a Polish Starlink ground station, a discussion of Russia's increasingly reckless hybrid campaign and the risk of unintended civilian deaths.

Open in Spotify ↗

Know a great episode?

Send us the podcasts and episodes you'd recommend to other listeners.

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How we work in the Lab

Everything in the Lab follows the same rules as the show. Plain language first. Every claim traced to a source, shown in the notes. Our own view, when we give one, is labelled as our view. We explain; we don't tell anyone what to think.

Researcher, journalist or practitioner with something to add? Get in touch.