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Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace (2012)
- tired_man 11y agoGood thoughts, where they stayed on the topic. Too much political commentary for me.
- epalm 11y agoReminds me of https://evan.atavist.com/vanish https://evan.atavist.com/vanish
- zero_iq 11y agoThat was a great read. Thanks!
- nickpsecurity 11y agoYeah, that might have been the one I was thinking of. Clicking on this one made me think it was another article. Will be fun to re-read anyway. :)
- Tinyyy 11y agoThat was really interesting. Thanks :)
- boomskats 11y ago'If you plan on going into hiding and want to leave a big hint, consider buying a copy of this book from the author immediately beforehand"
- Cub3 11y agoThe image on the RHS, besides being difficult to read has spelt "Kindle" wrong
- AmrcnEspresso 11y agothis reminds me of a book I once saw at some backyard booksale. Can't remember the title, but there was a great line about bribing your way to a death certificate. "With an understanding of his greed and your need, you're on your way to being deceased!"
- leroy_masochist 11y agoIt's a really interesting topic and I'd say I was disappointed by the article for several reasons: 1. Very outdated in terms of the extent to which people hiding today would leave a digital signature. The article literally suggests leaving no available photographs of you, to the point where acquaintances have to work with a sketch artist to put your picture out. 2. Some very naive suggestions for jobs to take while on the run, including doing data entry, working as a day laborer, and joining the Peace Corps. 3. Made-up tinfoil-hat "facts". For example: "Satellites can bounce LASER light off of your windows and, by measuring the minute distance differences between a vibrating window and the satellite, reconstruct your speech -- from orbit!" Note: this is not true. The pinnacle of laser surveillance (which is actually a real thing) is measured in the hundreds of meters. This is actually a really cool topic, and best practices in escape and evasion are fascinating. I think the outline of a better manual would look like: 1. Figuring out where you're going to hide (best hope is bland suburb of large metro area in a far-away country where you're not ethnically unusual....e.g., Sao Paulo, Lagos, Taipei, or a frontier market that attracts a lot of expats, e.g., Mongolia, Nairobi, Manila). Additional discussion of extradition law and whether you should prioritize non-extradition countries relative to your country of citizenship. Additional discussion of how to learn the language and culture of your new home without attracting attention. 2. Figuring out how you're going to survive in your new life; refinement of potential destinations based on skill set, age, life goals, etc. 3. Prepping your new life (surreptitiously creating bank accounts, documents, contacts in new residence). 4. Making the break; how to disappear so that authorities classify you as missing and presumed dead. 5. Forensic considerations (facial recognition, DNA, voiceprint, fingerprints, digital signature). Would be great to hear others' thoughts on what such a manual would look like, I love to nerd out on this kind of stuff.
- blakeja 11y agoDo you have any good references for your statement about laser surveillance? Generally speaking, although the us government is a wallowing pile of inefficiency, it generally tends to be true that our military technology is a fair bit ahead of where it is thought to be. I didn't even know satellite laser surveillance was a thing, so I am genuinely curious here.
- pp19dd 11y agoRather interesting, though, the scope is limited to USA alone. Supposing you make your way out of USA, a good solution for restarting your life is to join the French Foreign Legion. They'll take recruits from 17.5 - 39.5 years old. No questions asked, for a year. You literally start with a new name, an assumed identity which is a sign-up requirement. Their tagline is "the school of second chance." You get fed, you get training, you get a salary. If in that year you do well, learn the language, learn soldiering, progress, you can get French citizenship. After the first year, you can either continue your career under your assumed identity, or reconcile your issues with your country of origin. http://science.howstuffworks.com/french-foreign-legion.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/french-foreign-legion.htm
- curiousjorge 11y agoyeah and they get 'leaked' and you are screwed. or they just snoop around figure out that you weren't Jason Bourne at all but actually David Webb. cue music...
- clamprecht 11y agoIt's a cool concept. Fingerprint databases kind of throw a monkey wrench at it though (if your fingerprints are in a database).
- leroy_masochist 11y agoEvidently the Legion now asks for ID and runs recruits through Interpol prior to letting them join[0]. [0]: Things Google tells me when I should be working[1] [1]: http://www.overseas-exile.com/p/french-foreign-legion-myths.html http://www.overseas-exile.com/p/french-foreign-legion-myths....
- refurb 11y agoThat's true, but at least in the past I've heard that the FFL will deny your existence to outside parties. One story I read said that a soldier got into a fight in France and then went back to the Barracks. The police came and asked for him and they said "no one here by that name." I have no idea if they still do it. Also, if it's a serious crime, they have no issue with turning you in.
- Simulacra 11y agoActually have you ever been to an Ikea alone? You can get pretty lost..
- morganvachon 11y agoA nitpick (beyond the spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors throughout): The part about "most states in the Union require 24 hours before reporting a missing person" is nothing but a Hollywood trope. The fact is, most agencies require a missing person to be entered into their respective state's database within a few hours of the report. I can say unequivocally that Georgia has a two-hour window, as I've entered many such reports during my stint in law enforcement, and that is our state's requirement. The reason they want to enter the person as soon as possible is so that any checks for that person's info will return a "hit" in time to locate the person. For example, George has dementia, goes for a walk at 8am, and is gone for several hours. He is reported missing at 12pm, and the police report is keyed into the state database by 1pm. At 2pm that same day, George is stopped by an officer and his information ran on the state computer. A hit shows up that states he's a missing-endangered person (endangered due to his mental state), the officer notifies his department so they can notify the family, and all is well. Now, if the bogus 24 hour rule was real, George never would have been reported the day he went missing, and perhaps would have met a grisly demise that night. Timely reporting is a potentially life-saving measure and I really wish television and the movies would stop it with that particularly dangerous bit of misinformation.
- sliverstorm 11y agoThe scope of the operation also grows exponentially (or was it quadratically?) with time. Scent trails and tracks decay quickly, and at a fixed rate of travel the area in which the subject can be grows as time^2 (the area of a circle). At 2mph after 1 hour your subject is within an area of roughly 12 square miles. After 24 hours that area is more than 7000 square miles. So agencies are generally interested in processing them quickly. That must be balanced against some filtering for bogus reports and incidents likely to resolve themselves, of course.
- morganvachon 11y ago> Scent trails and tracks decay quickly This is generally only an issue when it's a case of a missing-endangered subject; most missing persons reports are of a routine[1] nature (spouse is delayed in travel and can't be reached; child has run away for the third time that month). Having a blanket policy that requires timely entry of all reports will cover every scenario, especially since an otherwise routine missing person report can turn into an emergency situation after the initial report is made. > incidents likely to resolve themselves That's true, and the vast majority of missing persons reports I entered over a 14 year span were canceled within hours or at most, days, when the missing person returned of their own volition. But the ones who are found safe only as a result of the timely report stand in defense of the policy. [1] Just as there is no such thing as a "routine" traffic stop and therefore officers should always be alert, there is actually no such thing as a "routine" missing person report either; but for the sake of this discussion, by "routine" in this case I mean "not urgent or endangered".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ryanlol 11y agoCertainly an interesting writing style: >Remove the radiator filler cap if the engine is cold. (Opening the cap with the engine hot can get you badly burned. The fluid can start to boil once the pressure is relieved and spray all over you. The fluid will be quite painful resulting in first and second-degree burns. It's not likely to be disfiguring but if you accidentally burn yourself, you can very well go ahead with your plan to escape however your mind might be focused entirely upon the pain and not upon escape. With the engine cold you don't have to worry about getting burned.) That certainly seems like a rather elaborate way of explaining that touching hot things burns.
- dfox 11y agoProblem is not in that the cap might be hot in itself (it even might not be), but that the action of removing the cap will relieve the pressure inside the coolant plumbing and as boiling point of fluids in dependent on pressure, the super-heated coolant will boil off violently. Few years ago when I was changing thermostat on my car, the thermostat itself was not significantly hot in itself, but other parts of the coolant circuit apparently were, which after unscrewing the thermostat caused minor case of said violent boil-off. I didn't get burned mostly because I was standing to the side (as to reach to the screws that are obviously perpendicular to the flange which they hold).
- ryanlol 11y agoThat's not exactly what I was referring to, although I wasn't being very clear. This is the part I was talking about: > The fluid will be quite painful resulting in first and second-degree burns. It's not likely to be disfiguring but if you accidentally burn yourself, you can very well go ahead with your plan to escape however your mind might be focused entirely upon the pain and not upon escape. Author seems to be overly focused on the results of such a burn.
- morganvachon 11y agoI definitely got what you are saying, and as I read the article I was fighting the urge to proofread it and email the corrections to the author. Given the rambling nature and random paranoia, I get the feeling such corrections wouldn't be warmly received.
- zw123456 11y agoThis reminds me very much of Breaking Bad when Walter went to the "vacuum cleaner" who hid him in a cabin in the woods and had to follow many of the rules outlined in this article.
- Tloewald 11y agoI wish it were organized in terms of utility relative to difficulty. Walking everywhere with a hat and buzz cut to avoid shedding hair is kind of insane and is more likely to attract attention than prevent you from being tracked by your DNA.
- sliverstorm 11y agoThere definitely seem to be a mix of useful information and big brother paranoia. Instructions on how to kill a police dog sent to track you? Yeah, this is blurring from 'escape your shitty life' and into 'escape a dystopian enforcer squad'
- thrownaway2424 11y agoI really enjoyed this article just because it reminds me so much of the early internet: wall-to-wall libertarian derangement. UCC 1-207. Sovereign Citizenship. And it got slashdotted by this link. Really takes me back.
- peckrob 11y agoI was just thinking that while reading this and enjoyed it for much the same reason. Everything about this page - the loose writing style, the borderline paranoia (although, given the subject, perhaps not without reason) and the antiquated - but perfectly readable - layout. It just screams early Internet. You can even pull up the source code and tell that, more than likely, it's hand edited. It's like stepping back into the mid-90s, one of those random pages you might land on one morning at 3am - and you waited for it to slowly load on your 9600 baud modem. Add an "under construction" sign and it would have been complete. :)
- laichzeit0 11y agoOk you had me until 9600. If you said 28800 well.. :)
- peckrob 11y agoWe went straight from 9600 baud to an ISDN line about 1997 or so. Completely missed the 28.8 and 56k era. :)
- jzwinck 11y agoIf you want to disappear, maybe you should do it in a place other than America, so that you will not need to so thoroughly marginalize yourself (panning for gold?!).
- mirimir 11y agoAlthough it's quite dated, I'm willing to accept the author's claim that he originated much of the "how to disappear" stuff. And so I'd love to give him my $5. But perhaps ironically, Smashwords (the bookseller) only accepts PayPal and credit/debit cards. However, if some kind person would gift it to me, I would reimburse the price via Bitcoins :)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- reality_czech 11y ago"I wish you the very best and hope that some of these suggestions and contact references prove helpful though most of it, I'm afraid, is probably unworkable, silly suggestions that won't help you one bit" So the author himself admits that this is a bunch of silly nonsense that won't help you at all. For some inexplicable reason the article continues past this point.
- WillyNourson 11y agoI love this thing because if you remove the first four points, it's just a good how-to about life in general. Actually if you follow these rules you may never have to vanish : #Discard your old life. #Limit the resolve and resources of your opposition. #Run from your opposition (and your old life.) #Hide from your opposition. Make new friends. Acquire a (new) identity. (Legal papers: Birth record, Social Security #) Find gainful employment. Pay your taxes. Get medical, life, and automotive insurance. Get a credit card -- and keep it paid up. Perhaps take college courses to learn a new marketable skill. Acquire and maintain respectability in your community. Find a wife or husband: Make a (new) family. Don't drink heavily, don't use any illegal drugs, don't do any crimes. Die with dignity.
- LesZedCB 11y agoThat's definitely a little idealistic on several levels. First because of this* quote, which describes the reality we live in. Secondly, that assumes that living a life that adheres to the law is totally fair an just. History is full of acts of civil disobedience which in some cases could require people to disappear. * "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience
- MrJagil 11y agoThis linked video is very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxpUc8lj-CY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxpUc8lj-CY
- V-2 11y agoLovely, but my favorite is http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-Living-Through-a-Coup http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-Living-Through-a-Coup reportedly from a person who's survived quite a few back in the day. "Has your country's dictator been overthrown? Did he seem fatherly and protective or just overbearing and threatening? Are you feeling confused as to what to feel? Have you exchanged one bad situation for another? Has the military decided they know better how to run things? If any of these things apply to you, you'll find yourself in a country in turmoil and it's time to think about your immediate survival needs." It contains plenty of seasoned, golden advice, eg. "Don't panic. The worst thing to do in any situation is to panic." As well as some useful guidelines on how to deal with harsh political reality of a revolution: "If there are more than one party up for vote, request time with them to see what they believe in. Pick the one that more closely fits with your values."
- xacaxulu 11y agoI would start from the other side and start learning about how surveillance works, and the numerous forms of SigInt/HumInt that can grab you anywhere. If you want to disappear but you still want to use credit cards, a smart phone, drive around in a car or login to regular websites (social media for sure) from the same computer, I question your dedication :-)
- 811639047892938 11y agoThe interesting thing about the article is that it gives you all these instructions in a completely confident tone, as if they are PROVEN, the guy waves his hands at the start by saying "I lived on the fringes of society for years before going straight" as if he was Walter White, when in reality he was probably just a guy who didn't file his taxes and did acid. You can tell what a charlatan he is when he has the (totally authorative sounding) advice about pouring sugar into someone's gas tank, with an explanation of how and why it works, and instructions on the correct amount of sugar to add, but then he edits the document later to mention that the sugar doesn't work at all (which for some reason he includes as a 6 paragraph addition, instead of just deleting the 1 paragraph about sugar in the gas tank). Also I find it amazingly hilarious that in the edit for the sugar trick, he just goes "Uhh I guess you should just set the car on fire", and then you're supposed to take advice on the safe way to do that from the guy who doesn't even know that the 24-hour missing persons thing was real, and spouted that sugar in the gas tank trick without any backup, and who basically seems to get all his theories from Hollywood or idle bar talk.
- 811639047892938 11y agoThis guy also thinks that if you have enough time to set someone's car on fire (to prevent them chasing you), you should set it on fire and draw their immediate attention, instead of just slipping away and getting a huge headstart in the middle of the night or whatever.
- guizzy 11y agoOn one hand the author says that if you're running from a crime you will get caught. But then after gives tips to escape from someone with the ressources and determination to have skin samples from hotel rooms analysed and access to thermal imaging satellites. Looks to me like the author doesn't know what people would be running from. I doubt the authorities would use LASER SURVEILLANCE SATELLITES for anything they intend to pursue with less zeal than a very serious felony.
- philwelch 11y agoI figure the author doesn't want to overtly advise people to evade law enforcement because he doesn't want to get into trouble.
- akallio9000 11y agoWhen I read his description of "radiator fluid" and dumping gravel into the oil fill of a car, I began to have my doubts, but when he suggested that a revolver with the cylinder swung out might still have a bullet in the chamber, all doubts that he didn't know what he was talking about were erased.
- PhantomGremlin 11y agoI'm surprised that nobody has mentioned a very infamous person who disappeared for many years. Whitey Bulger.[1] All it takes is friends and money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger#Fugitive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger#Fugitive