Europe searches for safety: what 79 million searches say about civil preparedness

People in NATO’s eastern and northern member countries now search far more for how to protect themselves than for whether war is coming. Across 79.5 million Google searches in 17 European countries, civil protection is the largest signal. Searches surge with each incident, then keep rebuilding between them.

This report from Trajaan by Cision reads that demand country by country and region by region, from Vilnius to Finnmark. It shows what people look for, where interest grows fastest, and what it means for governments, civil protection agencies and their communications teams.

Key findings

• Preparedness leads: civil protection is 30% of the 20.3M searches in 12 NATO member countries over the last 12 months, 8 times the searches about escalation or world war

• Incidents drive the peaks: civil-protection searches tripled to 1.86M in September 2025, the month Russian drones entered Polish airspace

• Households keep preparing: searches for go-bags, shelters, bunkers and emergency kits doubled, from 105,944 in October 2025 to 215,026 in September 2026

• Concern shifted rather than faded: member searches are flat year to date (-1%), but missile searches rose 123% and air-raid alert searches 16%

• Growth is broad: 159 of 180 member regions searched more in 2026 than in 2025

• Capitals and border regions lead: Vilnius County (+204%), Riga (+195%) and Budapest (+131%) grew fastest

• Each country has its own threat: missiles in Germany and Latvia, drones in the Nordics and Estonia, alerts in Lithuania and Bulgaria, escalation in Hungary

How to read the data

• Source: Google monthly search volume from Trajaan by Cision search intelligence

• Keywords: 1,499 keywords in each country’s languages, grouped into five signals: civil protection, drone threat, missile threat, air-raid alert and geopolitical escalation

• Countries: 12 NATO members (Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey), plus Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Serbia and Austria

• Regions: 231 regions in 14 countries, from Trajaan Local trends; there is no regional data for Romania, Turkey or Georgia

• Period: January 2025 to September 2026; year-to-date figures compare January to September 2026 with the same months of 2025

Every search counts once, in the country or region where it was made. Words such as drone or bunker are shared across languages, so searches are attributed by location, not by keyword language. Ukraine is reported on its own, because its daily alert searches would hide every trend in member countries.

Civil protection is the largest signal

Across the 12 member countries, people searched more about protecting themselves than about any single threat. Civil protection accounts for 6.17M searches, ahead of drones (5.24M), air-raid alerts (4.57M) and missiles (3.61M). Geopolitical escalation, the signal closest to fear of war, is only 4%.

One incident moved millions of searches

On September 10, 2025, Russian drones entered Polish airspace. Poland shot them down and invoked NATO Article 4. That month produced the largest surge in the data: 2.97M searches in Poland alone, 1.72M of them about civil protection.

• Official channels: searches for Alert RCB, Poland’s official alert system, reached 1M that month

• The incident itself: “drones in Poland” reached 74,000 searches, against a few hundred in a usual month

• Fast decay: household preparedness searches fell from 335,878 in September 2025 to 105,944 in October

• Same pattern elsewhere: local spikes reach up to 133 times a usual month and fade within one or two months

Civil-protection searches then fell to a low in May 2026 and climbed four months in a row, to 954,871 in September 2026. That is the highest month since the incursion.

People prepare while fear fades

In the year after the September 2025 surge, searches about how to prepare doubled while searches about world war fell. Fear arrives in bursts and leaves. Preparedness rebuilds.

• Shelters and kits: bunker, emergency backpack and bug-out bag searches in September 2026 already exceed their September 2025 level

• Official alerts: Alert RCB searches went from 90,500 to 450,000 a month

• Drone interest changed nature: “drone sightings” fell from 8,270 to 70 a month, while “drone attack” rose 44% to 67,470

• Escalation comes in bursts: escalation searches fell 75% between the first and second half of the last 12 months

Concern shifted, it did not fade

Year to date, searches across the 12 members are flat (-1%). Underneath, missile searches rose 123%, from 1.42M to 3.17M, and air-raid alert searches rose 16%, while drone and civil-protection searches fell from their 2025 peak. Nine of the 12 members searched more than last year.

• The Baltic states and Hungary lead: Latvia +165%, Lithuania +124%, Hungary +70%

• Poland’s fall is a base effect: its 2025 total includes 2.97M searches in September 2025 alone

• Outside Poland, civil-protection searches are up 19%

• Alerts spread beyond Ukraine: alert searches rose 307% in Turkey, 103% in Norway and 99% in Sweden

159 of 180 regions searched more

The regional view confirms the country picture and sharpens it. Growth is broad, and strongest in capitals and in several border regions. Poland is the only country where every region fell, after its record September 2025.

• Hungary moves as one: 16 of the 20 fastest-growing regions are Hungarian counties, all led by escalation searches

• Intensity peaks in capitals: Vilnius County has 185 searches per 1,000 residents, Warsaw’s Masovian region 171 and the Oslo area 163

• The far north stands out: Finnmark (127 per 1,000) and Troms (122) in northern Norway rank above most capital regions

In Lithuania and Latvia, the capital region holds more than half of regional searches and roughly tripled. In Vilnius County, alert searches went from 2,230 to 101,680. In Riga, missile searches went from 6,110 to 39,850. Tallinn, Copenhagen and Warsaw fell.

Border regions grew faster in Lithuania, Norway and Estonia

• Lithuania: border counties grew 163% vs 93% in the interior, with twice the searches per resident

• Norway: Finnmark, on the Russian border, grew 71% vs 27% in the rest of the country

• Estonia: the eastern border counties Polva, Voru and Ida-Viru rose 32% to 39%, while Tallinn’s Harju County fell 3%

• Latvia and Hungary: the capitals drove growth, so interior regions grew faster than border regions

Each country searches for one main threat

Within a country, regions almost always share the same top signal. The threat people search for is national, not local, which makes country-level messaging effective.

• Germany: missiles lead in all 13 states; the five eastern states grew 74% vs 44% in the west

• Latvia: missiles lead in 34 of 37 municipalities, with searches up from 11,960 to 62,560

• Nordics and Estonia: drones lead in 18 of 21 Swedish counties and all 15 Estonian counties; alerts lead in all 15 Norwegian regions

• Lithuania and Bulgaria: alerts went from rare to routine; Lithuanian alert searches rose from 5,720 to 144,980, and alerts lead in all 28 Bulgarian provinces

• Hungary: escalation leads in all 20 counties and makes up 68% of regional searches

Ukraine: alerts as a daily utility

Ukraine accounts for 74% of all searches in the project: 44.8M from January to September 2026, 98% of them air-raid alerts. Two national surges came in May 2026 (6.16M) and September 2026 (9.15M), twice the 4.5M monthly baseline.

• West grew, front fell: western oblasts rose 21%, front and border oblasts fell 4%

• Intensity follows the split: 1,647 searches per 1,000 residents in the west vs 509 near the front

• Read with care: lower figures near the front likely reflect displacement and different alert habits, not less danger

What this means for civil preparedness

Citizens’ demand for practical protection is large, lasting and growing. It also sits in an area NATO allies can now fund. At the Hague summit in June 2025, allies agreed to spend 5% of GDP by 2035: at least 3.5% on core defence and up to 1.5% on areas that include civil preparedness and resilience.

If you run civil protection or public communications, the data points to six moves:

1. Lead with preparedness, not fear: civil-protection searches outnumber escalation searches 8 to 1

2. Answer the searches people make: publish official guidance on go-bags, shelter maps and alert systems in every national language

3. Prepare incident messaging in advance: searches triple within the month of an incident and fade within one or two

4. Match the message to the threat: air defence in Germany and Latvia, drones in the Nordics and Estonia, alerts in Lithuania, Bulgaria and Norway, reassurance on escalation in Hungary

5. Target by region: Baltic capitals, northern Norway, eastern Germany and Poland’s border voivodeships show the highest intensity or fastest growth

6. Measure every month: re-run the data after each incident and track what changed

Limits of this report

• Interest, not emotion: monthly Google volume shows what people look for, not how they feel; pair it with polling

• Regional coverage: regional data covers fewer keywords than national data, so compare regions with each other, not with national totals

• Missing regions: there is no regional data for Romania, Turkey or Georgia, and Finland is not in the project yet

• Generic words: “drone” and “missiles” include hobby and general interest, so treat those totals as upper bounds

• Small bases: very large percentages, such as Lithuania’s alert growth, start from a few hundred searches a month

Want this view for your own country, region or topic? Trajaan by Cision tracks search demand by country and region every month. Book a demo.