Guy Yeomans
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guyyeomans.bsky.social
Guy Yeomans
@guyyeomans.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.8K following 560 posts
Professional: Foresight & Horizon Scanning | Research: Resilience (CNI / Societal) & Comprehensive Security, Total Defence, National Preparedness | Emerging Risks & CM / EM | Military mobility | High North, GIUK-NGap & Arctic Futures | Personal: #OnXII
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guyyeomans.bsky.social
IYKYK...
October 2, 2025 at 5:28 PM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
#GIUKGap: a slightly tongue-in-check klaxon on my part, but I wonder what recent events may have contributed to such a late August surge in interest?
Screenshot of a Google Trends results page for the search term "GIUK Gap"
August 30, 2025 at 9:54 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
I'll also be trying to map the civil defence sections next time!
Screenshot of the Helsinki Service Map online tool, showing the city's civil defence sections.
August 16, 2025 at 11:36 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
And keeping the discipline going from previous years! Now to re-set the target again... 4/4 #solviturambulando #OnXII
Screenshot of two linked Twitter posts, with each displaying a confirmation message of achieving a walking target of 1000 miles in a year. These represent 2022-2023 and 2023-2024.
August 16, 2025 at 7:53 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
And then an extended loop around Djurgården & back into the centre of #Stockholm for evening beers with @warmatters.bsky.social & some ’shelter spotting’ ... 3/4 #solviturambulando #OnXII
Screenshot of an OpenSreetMap record of a walk I made in Stockholm which covered Djurgården and the city centre. The distance was 13.83 miles. Photo taken in Stockholm of the entrance to an office building displaying the international civil defence symbol, denoting a shelter or location of a civil defence related organisation. The symbol is a dark blue triangle set within an orange square.
August 16, 2025 at 7:53 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
In early December, doing the southern half of the Innerstadens strandstråk / Inner city waterfront trail in #Helsinki. With a stop at Löyly. Looking forward to returning to complete the loop... 2/4 #solviturambulando #OnXII
Screenshot of an OpenSreetMap record of a walk I made in Helsinki which covered the southern half of the Innerstadens strandstråk / Inner city waterfront trail. The distance was 11.57 miles. Photo taken inside Löyly in Helsinki. Taken from the bar, it shows the indoor seating area, the floor-to-ceiling windows and then the outside seating with a view on to the Baltic Sea.
August 16, 2025 at 7:53 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Target achieved: walk 1000 miles between August Bank Holiday 2024 to same weekend in 2025. Some favourites from this year’s journey... 1/4 #solviturambulando #OnXII
Photo of holding a mobile phone and looking at the display which shows a confirmation message that achieving a total of walking 1000 miles in a year has been met successfully.
August 16, 2025 at 7:53 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
UK: highlighting the relationship between hybrid warfare, #civilprotection & #societalresilience...
Screenshot of a comment made in an article titled "Striking back through the fog: A more muscular approach to sub-threshold threats" published by the Council on Geostrategy on 6th August 2025. The extract reads "The 2025 Resilience Action Plan goes some way to addressing these faults, but more should be done. Significant investment should be placed in shoring up the UK’s resilience, perhaps most especially the public understanding of the risk and information sharing on how to act in, and react to, crises."
August 12, 2025 at 6:06 PM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Recent summer reading: I appear, inadvertently & interspersed with #civilprotection forays, to have built an escalation ladder...
Photo of five books stacked on top of each other on a table. The books, in top to bottom order, are 1) Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen 2) Come What May by Lucy Easthope 3) War in the Smartphone Age by Matthew Ford 4) How to Survive a Crisis by David Omand and 5) Norway's War by Robert Ferguson
August 9, 2025 at 8:40 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Azov model: adaptation logic. It was the networked structures comment that caught my eye @warmatters.bsky.social... #WISPA
Screenshot from an article titled "World War III is on our doorstep – Ukraine is already inside" published by Ukrainska Pravda on 14th July 2025. The extract reads "The Azov model is an asymmetric institution that operates within the framework of the regular army while retaining the flexibility unique to network-based structures. This is where its strategic value lies. When it comes to the armies of the future, environments like this will form their core. Not corps built according to the NATO handbook, but units capable of responding rapidly, of adapting, of acting autonomously and without interruption even when completely cut off from the main forces. This is where the example of Azov becomes critically important. Amid the chaos, Azov did not merely survive – it built its own adaptive architecture of warfare."
July 26, 2025 at 7:32 PM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Australia: Whilst noting a recent narrative shift towards 'resilience', this is an interesting alternative 'national safety' framing from @aspi-org.bsky.social, counterposed to national security... #societalresilience www.aspistrategist.org.au/home-affairs...
Screenshot taken from an article titled "Home Affairs is central to Australia’s security, safety and economic prosperity" published by The Australian Strategic Policy Institute on 18th July 2025. The extract text is "National security and national safety are not the same. Security is about shielding sovereignty, institutions and strategic interests from hostile threats. Safety is about keeping people, communities and critical infrastructure functioning and protected, regardless of whether the threat is natural, accidental or deliberate. If national security is about stopping the bomb, national safety is about ensuring the fallout doesn’t cripple our ability to recover."
July 23, 2025 at 7:55 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
UK: new Defence Committee report published, with Chapter 4 concentrating on 'Building homeland resilience', which looks to deepen the initial high-level thinking in Chapter 6 of the SDR (Home Defence and Resilience: A Whole-of-Society Approach)... #nationalpreparedness #civilprotection
Screenshot taken from a UK House of Commons Defence Committee report titled "Defence in the Grey Zone" and published on 9th July 2025. The extract, taken from page 24 reads "Conclusion: As the recent SDR sets out, homeland resilience will become a significant activity for the MOD in the coming years and will require more cross-Government planning and coordination. The MOD is unlikely to lead many of these work streams. However, even with limited resources, it can proactively make an immediate impact by engaging with wider Government, society and industry; by sharing its expertise on grey zone threats; and by applying its planning and leadership skills to help build greater consensus on the challenges and enhance long-term resilience. Further, a dedicated Homeland Security Minister would be more likely to drive through the urgent changes required to improve the UK’s current levels of preparedness and resilience."
July 9, 2025 at 5:31 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
UK: now awaiting the release of the new Security Strategy, the communiqués from the NATO Summit & the evolution of the domestic 'defence adjacency' ± resilience policy narrative... #nationalpreparedness #civilprotection
Screenshot of an extract from a Financial Times article titled "UK defence funding will hit 5% of GDP by 2035, Starmer to tell Nato summit" published on 23rd June 2025. The extract reads "The 1.5 per cent of non-core spending has been billed by the government as “homeland security” and “resilience” investment and is expected to cover things such as civil preparedness, cyber threats, border and energy security and other areas with defence-adjacent purposes, with the details to be agreed at the Nato summit."
June 24, 2025 at 3:17 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Pre-deployed Covert Payloads: effective prospective counter-measures will require #CivMil coordination... #nationalpreparedness #civilprotection cc @selyst2023.bsky.social
Screenshot of an extract from an article published by the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (Brussels) titled "Enemy in the Crates: The Risks of Pre-deployed Covert Payloads for European Defence". The text highlighted in the extract reads "Here, an additional emphasis is needed on civil-security-military protocols and standards, as any lapse in civilian procedures can enable the deployment of Pre-deployed Covert Payloads." The article was published on June 18th 2025.
June 19, 2025 at 6:23 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
NB8: #civilprotection & #nationalpreparedness related sentiments supportively echoed in last week's SDR section #6 'Home Defence and Resilience: A Whole-of-Society Approach' (albeit quite vaguely at this point)... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Screenshot from an article titled "Could an alliance of eight small countries turn out to be Europe’s anchor?" published in The Guardian newspaper on 9th June 2025. The extract reads "Both Nato and the EU are drawing extensively on the “total defence” playbook of Finland and Sweden to engage the public and private sectors and civil society in military readiness, civil preparedness and economic resilience in the face of Russian and Chinese hybrid warfare tactics. There is much to learn from their whole-of-society approach."
June 9, 2025 at 1:08 PM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
UK: Excellent National Preparedness Commission breakfast discussion earlier this week on 'Protecting critical services by building preparedness against satellite data disruptions', with a focus on Positioning, Navigation & Timing systems (PNT)... #nationalpreparedness
Photo of participants seated around a table taking part in the National Preparedness Commission (NPC) breakfast discussion on 'Protecting critical services by building preparedness against satellite data disruptions' which took place at One Great George Street, London on Wednesday 4th June 2025.
June 6, 2025 at 11:38 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Ukraine: Ukrzaliznytsia... #thattrainstation #ironpeople
Screenshot of a BlueSky post discussing the use of the train network in Ukraine to help facilitate the visits of international leaders, diplomats and government representatives and especially the role of Kyiv-Pasazhyrskyi train station.
March 31, 2025 at 11:41 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
The icebreaker fleet in #helsinki at the end of November...
Photo of the Finnish icebreaker fleet taken in Helsinki at the end of November 2024 taken from across the harbour at Pohjoisranta
March 30, 2025 at 7:07 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
Japan: contingency & evacuation planning for a spatially-distant part of the population. It would seem to cover not just the extraction of up to 120k evacuees, but also their onward, distributed support in other areas of the country... www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...
Screenshot of an article published in The Guardian newspaper on Friday 28th March 2025 titled "Japan unveils first plan to evacuate 100,000 civilians from islands near Taiwan in event of conflict". The extract text is "Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said the evacuation plans had been drawn up “on the assumption [Japan will encounter] a situation where armed attacks are predicted”, Kyodo said."
March 29, 2025 at 7:54 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
EU: Preparedness Union Strategy launches... #societalresilience #nationalpreparedness #civilprotection (h/t @aarnegranlund.bsky.social)
Screenshot from the communique announcing the launch of the EU Preparedness Union strategy on 26th March 2025. The extract text is "Concretely, the Strategy includes 30 key actions and a detailed Action Plan to advance the Preparedness Union's objectives, as well as developing a ‘preparedness by design culture' across all EU policies."
March 26, 2025 at 11:56 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
EU: when you starting seeing a sector organising panel sessions framed around #militarymobility... (MFF = forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework)
Screenshot of a promotional flyer for the 13th International Railway Summit in Vienna taking place in Vienna on the 3rd-5th June 2025. The extract text is "The strategic importance of rail has been dramatically underscored by recent geopolitical developments. As defence becomes a more prominent consideration in the upcoming MFF due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, rail's direct and multifaceted contributions to military mobility, logistics, and civilian evacuation have become increasingly significant."
March 26, 2025 at 11:43 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
EU: Preparedness Union Strategy. Given several EU countries already issue (or are in the process of now issuing) national preparedness guidance, if enacted, it will be interesting to see whether they would choose to integrate these singularly & if messaging would change... #nationalpreparedness
Screenshot from a Renew Europe article published on March 25th 2025 titled "Renew Europe MEPS call for EU-wide crisis preparedness guide". The text of the extract is "Renew Europe is calling on the European Commission to incorporate this proposal into its forthcoming communication on the "EU Preparedness Union" and to ensure that all European households receive accessible, practical information on crisis preparedness."
March 26, 2025 at 7:17 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
"But going on what we’ve heard so far Heathrow’s risk management systems may be the most interesting of the various inquiries..." www.theguardian.com/business/nil...
Screenshot from a The Guardian newspaper article titled "Was Heathrow’s response to fire at a substation really the best it could do?" published on Monday 24th March 2025. The excerpt reads "The business accepts that absolute operational, system and infrastructure resilience is impossible,” it starts, adding vaguely that it will work to mitigate impacts “within the risk/return balance set by the company”. In summary: “In the pursuit of its objectives, Heathrow airport is willing to accept, in some circumstances, risks that may result in some financial loss or reputational exposure".
March 25, 2025 at 7:44 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
And also recovery complexity & time-needs...
Screenshot from a Financial Times article titled "Why was Heathrow airport slow to resume operations after substation fire?" published on Tuesday 25th March 2025. The excerpt reads "In some ways, this seems to [have been] a process failure,” said David Wallom, professor of informatics at Oxford university. “It seems like Heathrow had never considered the possibility of this scale of failure.”"
March 25, 2025 at 7:44 AM
guyyeomans.bsky.social
UK: Heathrow power incident. Further post-event commentary is highlighting some key issues that need to be considered within the 'resilience problem' debate: an organisation's contextual risk management & it's levels of particular risk-type appetite / tolerance... www.ft.com/content/4f9f...
Screenshot from a Financial Times article titled "Why was Heathrow airport slow to resume operations after substation fire?" published on Tuesday 25th March 2025. The excerpt reads "Resilience must “strike the right balance between risks and costs”, said Olivier Jankovec, director-general of trade group Airports Council International Europe. “Ensuring minimum disruptions and keeping operations going as much as possible is simply not always possible — especially when faced with rare and extreme events.”"
March 25, 2025 at 7:44 AM