Making Threats is designed to make students, scholars, activists and policymakers think critically about how environmental and biological fears are implicated in the construction of threats to local, national and global security. Writing from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, the authors contribute to scholarship on environment and security that engages with some of the more potent and disturbing political and cultural aspects of the contemporary scene.

Stalking and Violence: New Patterns of Obsession and Trauma provides new perspectives on the prevalence, causes, and effects of stalking in intimate and non-intimate relations. Drawing on the results of a large random survey of restraining orders, this book found that stalking is highly prevalent in a variety of relationships and is a pattern of behaviors that is routinely regulated by the demographic and social characteristics of the victims and offenders. This book demonstrates that it is possible to develop reliable stalker profiles to help better detect and respond to the threat of stalking. These findings differ from previous studies that considered stalking limited to severely disturbed persons. Covering a wide range of topics from offender profiling, the dangers of stalking, cyberstalking, traumatic health effects, and the responses of the police and courts to stalking, this book will be relevant to a wide range of professionals and students in the fields of mental health, criminal justice, law, social work, medicine, nursing, public health, security/safety, and internet technology.

"It's a rare author who can combine literary erudition and an easy fluency of style together with expert knowledge of psychology and evolutionary biology. David Barash adds to all this a far-seeing wisdom and a humane decency that shines through on every page. The concluding section on the senseless and dangerous futility of nuclear deterrence theory is an irrefutable tour de force which should be read by every politician and senior military officer. If only!" -- Richard Dawkins From hurricanes and avalanches to diseases and car crashes, threats are everywhere. Beyond objective threats like these, there are also subjective ones: situations in which individuals threaten each other or feel threatened by society. Animals, too, make substantial use of threats. Evolution manipulates threats like these in surprising ways, leading us to question the ethics of honest versus dishonest communication. Rarely acknowledged--and yet crucially important--is the fact that humans, animals, and even plants don't only employ threats, they often respond with counter-threats that ultimately make things worse. By exploring the dynamic of threat and counter-threat, this book expands on many fraught human situations, including the fear of death, of strangers, and of "the other." Each of these leads to unique challenges, such as the specter of eternal damnation, the murderous culture of guns and capital punishment, and the emergence of right-wing nationalist populism. Most worrisome is the illusory security of deterrence, the idea that we can use the threat of nuclear war to prevent nuclear war! Threats are so widespread that we often don't realize how deeply they are ingrained in our minds or how profoundly and counter-productively they operate. Animals, humans, societies, and even countries internalize threats, behind which lie a myriad of intriguing questions: How do we know when to take a threat seriously? When do threats make things worse? Can they make things better? What can we do to use them wisely rather than destructively? In a comprehensive exploration into questions like these, noted scientist David P. Barash explains some of the most important characteristics of life as we know it.

This document takes the findings from the Safe School Initiative study and sets forth a process for identifying, assessing, and managing students who may pose a threat of targeted violence in schools. This process - known as a threat assessment - was first pioneered by the U.S. Secret Service as a mechanism for investigating threats against the President of the United States and other protected officials. This approach was developed based upon findings from an earlier Secret Service study on assassinations and attacks of public officials and public figures.

Emerging Cyber Threats and Cognitive Vulnerabilities identifies the critical role human behavior plays in cybersecurity and provides insights into how human decision-making can help address rising volumes of cyberthreats. The book examines the role of psychology in cybersecurity by addressing each actor involved in the process: hackers, targets, cybersecurity practitioners and the wider social context in which these groups operate. It applies psychological factors such as motivations, group processes and decision-making heuristics that may lead individuals to underestimate risk. The goal of this understanding is to more quickly identify threat and create early education and prevention strategies. This book covers a variety of topics and addresses different challenges in response to changes in the ways in to study various areas of decision-making, behavior, artificial intelligence, and human interaction in relation to cybersecurity. Explains psychological factors inherent in machine learning and artificial intelligence Discusses the social psychology of online radicalism and terrorist recruitment Examines the motivation and decision-making of hackers and "hacktivists" Investigates the use of personality psychology to extract secure information from individuals

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management presents the full text of a handbook entitled "Dealing with Workplace Violence: A Guide for Agency Planners," published in 1998. The handbook discusses how to establish workplace violence initiatives. The handbook covers the basic steps of program development, case studies, threat assessment, considerations of employee relations and the employee assistance program, workplace security, and organizational recovery after an incident.