text:
For over 16 years this book has been made available in various versions on The Skeptic Tank, and through those years a number of people have stolen this important work, altered and redacted it and sold it as their own. Here at this web site is the original work, complete and uncensored.
This work is copyrighted by Fredric L. Rice (that's me, the owner of The Skeptic Tank web site) and this book represents a considerable effort on my part, first having lived on the fringes of society for many years before "going straight," and secondly for having spent a great many hours perfecting and maintaining this book.
If you find it of value to you in your efforts to disappear, I wish you the best of luck, my efforts to provide this book has accomplished what I had hoped for. If not, do not be surprised since it is difficult to disappear in an country where overwhelming surveillance of an increasingly-invasive Police State is quickly making disappearing without a trace utterly impossible.
What you will find here is information on how to disappear in America, the book does not offer any moral judgment on why you may want to disappear, whether your motives are benign or evil. What this book does condemn is people who attempt to disappear, hide out, acquire new identities and attempting to take their children with them. Life on the street or in hiding from people, I have seen, is often more detrimental to children dragged along by a parent or parents than whatever circumstances motivated the de sire to disappear.
Before you begin, take with you my hope that you improve your circumstance, that you harm no one, that you evolve from whatever your current circumstances are in to a better place. The journey will be difficult yet your attitude, your demeanor, your professional approach to disappearing is what will determine whether are are successful or not at rebuilding your life, and re-emerging back in to society as a new person.
If you go in to hiding and have a Kindle or other hand-held reading device, consider purchasing from the author a copy of this book to take with you, the link for downloading in to your device is provided at the top right side of this page.
Good luck.
Here are the sections you will find:
Section 1: What I'll be discussing in this how-to essay
There are many good reasons to want to disappear from society. There
are many bad reasons to want to. There are many good ways to disappear
from society and there are many bad ways to disappear. While I won't
delve too deeply into the whys of disappearing, I will cover my
opinions on how to disappear successfully.
This essay covers what I consider to be the most salient points on how
to disappear and remain successfully hidden in American society. If you
have further suggestions, please don't hesitate to E-Mail me at the address
provided at the bottom of this text so that I may include your ideas.
If you're thinking of running from an abusive ex-husband or ex-boyfriend
who wishes to do you harm, 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.
Also: The number of the National Domestic Violence Hotline is
The authorities will be highly motivated into tracking you down if you
bring your kids with you as well. Think about what's best
for those you leave behind and, as difficult as it will be leave
them behind!
Women who make allegations of child abuse against their husbands,
ex-husbands, or ex-boyfriends are likely to be considered truthful in
American society in far greater percentages than such claims made by
men against their female counterparts. A man who must take himself and
his children away from an abusive female is likely to be accused of
child abuse and American society is likely to believe the allegations.
Because of this, whether you're a man or a woman,
protect yourself from such allegations by documenting
abuses before you flee to a shelter with your children.
Once at the shelter, make sure that a service worker at the shelter is
given a copy of (or a chance to review) your documentation. It's greatly
unfortunate that you will have to face legal needs when you're trying
to escape from a criminally abusive person but legalities is something
you must be prepared to face before you make your break. The fact that
you took yourself to a children's shelter or a battered-woman's shelter
goes a long way toward establishing your innocence in allegations likely
to surface later.
Women are assigned priority status when it comes to such things. If you
are a man fleeing an abusive woman, understand that whatever you tell
the authorities (or organizations which provide assistance) will be
greeted with undue skepticism. Check the references at the end of this
essay for organizations which specifically assist men.
You should consider the resources of the individual or organization which
you're hiding from as well as their degree of motivation for finding you.
Always over-estimate the resolve of those seeking to find you yet keep
your estimations reasonable. Greatly over-estimating your opposition can
cause you to behave in predictable, patterned ways, however. It is the
predictability of your actions based upon your opposition's controlled
stimulus which can get you caught.
If your opposition are police authorities, rest assured that they have
decades of experience to back them up whereas to them, you're nothing
more than another faceless fugitive on the run. To them you're no one
special; it's not usually personal (unless you've killed a cop in which
case they will get you -- and I hope you'll have an "accident"
on the way to the police station.) To you, however, being hunted down is
quite personal. They know how you will feel and will use that against you.
If you've entered the United States illegally to start a new life, (or
are planning to) you must contend with immigration officials which have
historically been under-staffed, poorly-managed, and staffed by
incompetent (though often voraciously brutal) thugs -- high school dropouts
-- who only want to carry a gun but couldn't make it in the police force.
Unlike police officers, immigration officials didn't get into their line
of work to help people; they got into their line of work to keep you out
of the country and to track you down and throw you out if you do get in.
Their desire is to subject you to their control, feeding their power
trips, making themselves feel manly. Unlike police officers, they
aren't out to help society, they're out to inflict misery upon the
hapless and the down-trodden.
I mention this because you must understand who your opposition is when
you go on the run and try to hide. The objective is for you to disappear
and start a new, normal life somewhere else. Illegal immigrants face
the exact same problems that those who wish to become anonymous in America
face. The house wife who's been beaten into the hospital too many times
faces the same problems which illegal "wet backs" face. The
opposition, however -- those detailed to finding the house wife
-- are quite different than those trying to find a cop killer. Know
who'll be out looking for you when you run and hide.
The resources of your opposition will dictate greatly your behavior
and decisions. If you're running from an abusive ex-husband or ex-wife,
think of what their resources are and determine whether you should stay
in the same State or whether you should leave the country entirely. If
at all possible, plan your escape as much in advance as possible and work
to limit your opposition's resources. This mean that you clean-out
bank accounts if you can and you destroy all vehicles the opposition
has easy access to so that they may not be used to track you down. (And
they can't be sold to finance private investigators to look for you.) You
destroy said vehicles in a safe and non-violent way, by
the way; you don't want to hurt anyone and thus strengthen the resolve
of the authorities.
Total destruction of automobiles can be accomplished easily enough:
The cap can be found easily enough. Look for a cap with a small lever
on it. Some radiator caps don't have levers, I'll add, but they'll be
a standard size and shape. The cap will be mounted either in the center
of the radiator or, usually, to the right. There will often be a notice
on it saying something like "Pressure Test to 13-18 Pounds" --
at least in the United States they do. The cap is removed by lifting
up the small lever on the top of the cap and turning counter-clockwise.
If there's no lever, press down and turn counter-clockwise. It often
only takes about a half turn before you can pull up the cap and remove
NOTE added July, 2005: Sugar in the gasoline tank does not work well
and it's something of an urban legend. The suggestion is covered in a
number of classic books such as Edward Abbey's "The Monkeywrench
Gang" however actual experimentation proves that sugar added to a
gas tank doesn't do enough damage.
It has been suggested that other substances added to a gas tank might
cause serious damage, such as pancake syrup and other sweateners
however there is no good scientific data available anywhere that I'm
aware of that provides any evidence that such substances work.
In the end, perhaps the best way to destroy a vehicle that might be used
to come after you is to drape a blanket over the vehicle, dump a gallon
of gasoline on it, and throw on a burning object from a relatively
safe distance.
Alternatively experimentation with putting clothes soaked in gasoline
in a pile under vehicles and then setting the clothes on fire has met
with success in the United States so that's an option.
But take care: Gasoline doesn't burn; the fumes mixed with
oxygen in the air is what burns. After gasoline soaked cloth is set in
a location, fumes will build and if yo strike a match anywhere within
the volume of asperated fuel, it will go BANG! And you don't
want to be inside that volume when it ignites.
Also take care: Arson should be a last resort because it's considered to
be a violent and dangerous crime. Ask yourself wether your life is in
danger or whether your child's life is in danger and whether burning
the vehicle is what's absolutely required to safeguard your life or the
life of your children. If the answer is No, just don't do it.
Another important aspect of running from a spouse or boy/girlfriend:
If they have firearms, think about getting them. If you
are comfortable handling any firearms your opposition might have which
you feel could be used against you, acquire them and -- if they're
small hand guns -- deposit them in a postal box as soon as you can.
The postal box on the end of any business district street is fine and
it doesn't matter that it's close to your house or apartment that
you're fleeing.
Assuming you're a housewife with little to no experience with guns:
In revolvers, there is a round cylinder which you can see has a number
of tubes inside. You should also be able to see some of the bullets in
the cylinder if it is loaded. On revolvers, one must usually pull a
long metal pin resting under the length of the barrel before the round
cylinder will swing out to the left. In some revolvers, after pulling
the pin out until it stops, one must also pull back the hammer before
the cylinder will swing out. With an eye toward where the barrel is
pointing at all time, clear the weapon by swinging the weapon's barrel
up. The bullets should slide down toward the floor and into your hand.
If not, having the cylinder swung open makes the weapon safe enough
to transport to a postal box.
In semi-automatics, there is ammunition stored in the handle of the
gun inside of a removable clip. There is usually a lever at the base
of the handle which, when pressed, releases the clip. The clip may
not slide out on its own in which case you must press the lever and
pull the clip out using both hands. On some semi-automatics, there is
no lever but there is a screw which one must turn.
Even after removing the clip from a semi-automatic or swinging the
cylinder out a revolver, the weapon should not be considered safe. Check
to see if there is a round chambered in the barrel. In a revolver, with
the cylinder swung out, it will be easy to see if the barrel has a bullet
chambered. In a semi-automatic, the way to check to make sure there's no
round in the chamber is -- after the clip is removed -- to pull back the
cocking mechanism to eject any chambered round. If there is, a bullet
will be ejected to your right and behind you a few feet so don't be
surprised when it does.
After clearing the weapon, you should have a gun that either has the
cylinder swung open or the cocking mechanism locked open. Most
semi-automatics will lock open when the last round is emptied from the
gun yet many will not lock open.
Leaving the firearm in a visibly-safe state will make it easier on the
postal employee who runs into the firearm when he or she empties the
postal box you drop it into. I suggest routing any firearms which might
be used against you to the postal service because postal employees have
standing orders not to touch what may be evidence and to contact the
police. (The letters and boxes taken from the postal box will also be
subjected to several day's -- if not weeks -- delays as they are checked
and the origination and destination addresses checked. Because of that,
you shouldn't deposit any letters you might feel to write in the same
box as they will be delayed.)
The police will keep any firearm you deposit into a postal box for a
long, long time, perhaps even destroying it even though it's not been
used in a crime. The fact that you are missing will mean that the
firearm will not be returned to your abusive spouse or
boy/girlfriend to be used against you. More: In many States the right
to purchase another firearm will be either revoked or denied until the
disposition of your whereabouts is ascertained. Dropping your
opposition's firearms into a postal box will effectively transfer
ownership to the police and de-claw your opposition greatly.
Private detective agencies don't usually operate for free. If your
opposition has no financial resources to draw upon, they are limited
to a great extent. If you're a criminal, they'll still use the police
agencies of the country to track you down, of course, at which point
it's simply a matter of time before they find you. If you're not on
the run for a criminal act, police authorities will have no reason to
try to find you and, lacking private detective services, your
opposition will be working alone.
If you're running from the IRS, know that your opposition has unlimited
resources and, depending upon how much money you owe, a broad spectrum of
motivation for finding you. If you're running from the criminal law,
you should know that you will eventually get caught regardless of
what measures you take to hide yourself. It's only a question of time
before they find you.
In summary, stay motivated and work to reduce both the motivation and the
financial avenues of your opposition. Know who your opposition is and
what they'll likely employ to find you. Work to reduce the effectiveness
of what your opposition is likely to do to find you. If your opposition
has weapons which could be used against you, give them to the police by
using the post office.
Before you go to ground, destroy as much of the old you as possible. You
want to go beyond making yourself disappear: You want to make it seem as
if you never existed. This means that you should do as much of the
following as possible before and after you disappear:
If at all possible, your opposition should be reduced to passing out
artist renditions of you. Even if you have police mug shots on file or
have a drivers license photograph on file, it's still a good idea to limit
the availability of photographs. Make the opposition use old photographs
rather than up-to-date photographs if you can.
Don't even think about hanging onto a credit card or other type of
magnetic card for an emergency. You might think about maxing-out your
cards then converting what you purchase to quick cash... but don't take
cards with you! What you don't have can't tempt you to give your location
away. When you're cold and hungry you will be tempted to
use any cards you keep so destroy them before that happens.
Abandoning your car in a place where you feel confident it will be
stripped and sold by thieves is a good idea yet you're left with having
to walk out of a probably dangerous neighborhood.
Leave the pink slip of the car in the glove box to make it easier for
thieves to chop and sell your abandoned car. Leave a door unlocked so
they don't have to break a window. You want the car to be taken in mass
rather than picked apart on the street where a cop will spot it so it's
best that you leave the key in the ignition while you're at it. Before
you walk away from your car, leave the engine running, in fact, so that
a thief will feel more comfortable stealing it. You could make it look
like you're just running into a store to buy something quickly.
Make sure that the back license plate has a current registration and
that the exhaust doesn't visibly smoke. Make sure the turn indicators
are working and that you have headlights. Make sure the windshield has
no cracks. Broken or missing break lights are often used as an excuse
by police officers to pull over suspicious cars so make sure that the
break lights are working.
Don't do something stupid and buy a stolen car! If there's no pink slip
and no ignition key, don't buy it. Match the VID number on the pink
slip to the VID number on the metal plate usually mounted on the dash
board under the windshield wipers. Match the license plate number. If
one or both don't match, don't buy the car: the license plate could be
stolen or the car could be stolen or both.
Don't borrow a friend's car. Don't even think about borrowing a family
member's car. There are cameras situated along America's highways and,
while I don't know their resolving capabilities, I think it's likely
that the make and model of cars streaming past them can be made. Even
if they can't resolve your car, a borrowed car is a known
avenue of your escape so avoid it.
You might consider a street motorcycle, in fact, since they're as mobile
as one can get without using a horse. Motorcycles, however, draw more
police attention to them if they look chopped and fast. Your personal
appearance on a motorcycle can help deduct from any suspicion that is a
normal part of riding a motorcycle in America. A suit and tie might be a
good idea: "Mr. Business Man" or "Ms. Business Woman"
clothes and appearance might help.
Cops work off of profiles: They are trained to spot the unusual as well
as how to spot individuals fitting a variety of profiles. Someone on the
run fits several profiles. You want to "fall out of the net"
and slip through the typical police profiles.
A cup of coffee on the dashboard in front of a guy or gal wearing work
clothes arouses no suspicions. You're on your way to work, not running
from someone.
Don't studiously avoid catching a cop's eye, by the way. Lean back in
your seat, left arm on the window sill, right hand on the steering wheel
at the 6:00 O'Clock position. Take a sip of your coffee, water, or Diet
Coke every now and then, and try to act like you're a mindless commuter
getting from point A to point B with the rest of the lemmings.
You're not frightened that you'll get stopped. You're not anxious of what
will happen when your wife or boyfriend discovers you've left. You'll
need to adopt a carefree attitude and outward composure. If you're an
illegal alien, you should be thinking about joining the work force and
becoming a productive member of your new society, not thinking about
the friends and family you might have left behind. Cops, immigration,
and everyday people can smell your anxiety and fear so you'll want to
focus on the positive aspects of why you're on the run.
There is the possibility that in the future people may be identifiable
by their purchasing habits. Granted the point-of-sale data collected by
computers would need to be immense yet eventually pattern-recognition
software may some day be able to provide authorities with perhaps
100 of the best possible "hits" on people matching your known
buying habits. When -- if ever -- that becomes a reality, you can be
sure you won't know about it until it's shown on cable television. By
that time the technology will have been in use for years and you may
end up on a list of possible matching a purchase profile.
Every place you go, you inadvertently leave pieces of yourself. Every
article of clothing, every door knob, every carpet, every telephone,
every toilet seat you use will contain pieces of you. Your skin is flaking
off all the time. You need to decide whether there is a risk of the
authorities or private investigators looking for you tracking you through
your blood type or DNA (which can be worked-up by using pieces of your
hair.) After you weigh the risks, take the precautions you deem are
Toss your wiping materials down the toilet. (If you're on an airplane,
don't toss anything down the toilet as it goes to a holding tank
which can be raked for evidence later. Carry-out your wiping papers with
you inside your shirt under an armpit and flush them in a normal toilet
when you can. (Note: Visible bulges under your shirt will be considered
by flight attending employees to be indicating the real possibility that
you're smuggling drugs. If you must hide a lot of wipe materials, you
should distribute them among your body to eliminate bulges, otherwise
you may be escorted to a little white room and made to strip. When they
find you're hiding damp paper towels, you'll have some explaining to do.)
Be sure to wipe everything including things you didn't touch!
Scientifically-controlled testing shows that people touch objects without
realizing it or being able to recall having touched them. The only way
to be absolutely certain you remove finger prints from everything you
touch is to clean everything within reach.
By the way: Rubbing alcohol is pretty good at getting up the natural oils
which comprise the majority of your fingerprints so perhaps before you
run you should acquire a bottle and keep it with you.
Before you leave your hotel room, hang the "please make-up this room
as soon as possible" sign on the door handle, taking care not to
leave your prints on the sign. You want the room vacuumed, cleaned, and
touched by hotel employees as soon as possible.
Don't wear gloves where you can be seen yet do wear gloves when you
won't be seen.
Don't forget that most fast-food places and mini-markets these
days will videotape you. Even the smallest stores usually run continual
videotape of everyone who enters, leaves, and stands in the check-out
Don't look for the cameras; notice where they are not and then focus
on that spot. Turning your head up to look at a camera changes the shadow
and contrast attributes of the video shots of you drastically so, as you
enter a shop, keep you face down and look at spots where you off-handedly
know cameras are not mounted. (In fact, practice becoming aware of
where visible cameras are. Lately cameras are becoming invisible so
eventually you'll never know where they are. You can
learn where cameras are usually located, however. Learning the location
of cameras you can see will tell you a lot about the possible locations
of cameras you won't see.)
Contemporary computer imaging software can take multiple video shots of
you from different camera angles and combine them in extraordinary ways.
Poor quality video shots of differing contrasts, brightness, and angles
can be processed on a computer to yield good quality photographs of you.
Your job is to limit the number and attributes of raw video shots taken
of you. This is a damn difficult thing to do, of course.
Running is the easiest part. Hiding is a bit harder. Staying hidden
is the difficult part. The difficulties are determined by the resolve
and resources of those hunting you. If the government wants to find
you, they will unless you are willing to sacrifice everything.
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! I don't know how much
this process costs yet it was demonstrated for PBS some years ago so it
may not be all that expensive. The quality of the audio is poor but it
can be understood.
Incidentally: Some of the higher technology law enforcement agencies (FBI,
CIA, lately BATF) employ "adaptive mirrors" for some of their
optical law enforcement efforts. A signal is bounced off of an object,
and the signal contains marking information and timing information. The
return bounce tells the computer system a great deal of information about
the atmospheric conditions, temperatures of the air and surfaces, and a
host of other attributes about the environment (such as humidity.)
The computer system evaluates conditions and then adapts mirrored surfaces
to remove distortion, providing amazingly clean audio surveillance from orbit
upon unsuspecting suspects. As you can imagine, it's expensive and law
enforcement doesn't apply the technology to every fugitive. It's used
against law breakers only in extreme cases. The technology is usually
applied in intelligence gathering missions for NATO-aligned countries.
If a satellite must be re-missioned or maneuvered, obviously the cost
goes up -- but then if they do that, they've launched a man hunt against
you which you probably won't escape anyway. Cloud cover won't help.
Smog won't help. Tree coverage will help a little but don't rely on it.
I might add that helicopter pilots are trained to follow the driver of
automobiles when they bail out and leave any other occupants of the car
that bail out to the ground officers. If you're driving a car and bail
out (which is the safe, smart move rather than trying to make a run for
it with the car) with a helicopter watching over you, climb over to the
rear right hand seat and bail out from there, never from the driver's seat.
If they don't know you're alone, they may mistakenly wait for the driver.
It might even help to kick open the driver's door before climbing out the
back door. If you do that, though, you could be identified as the driver
by your clothes so consider the problem.
If you're walking or running through hills or wooded areas, the eyes of
your opposition will track your motion. If you're motionless, picking
you out of the visual clutter will be difficult. Even dogs have trouble
picking up a stationary object.
Running upstream should be avoided. Your scent will be carried downstream
and you wish to go with it otherwise you leave a long tail behind you.
Dogs will go for your feet or hands when you're running then for your hands
when you're down. They're trained not to go for the throat (though I've
heard that some police trained dogs will if given specific instructions to.)
Since they are trained not to bark until they are close to you, you will
probably not hear the dog getting closer.
Dogs usually work with one officer. Putting more than one dog on an
individual's trail is very rarely done. The officer usually holds onto
the dog's leash yet that slows the dog down considerably. Dogs that have
had their voices removed are rarely released for long-distance track downs.
If a police dog confronts you with an officer, give up. If the police
dog has been sent on ahead, kill the dog. You should sacrifice a bit
of flesh to do this effectively: Offer your "dumb" hand to
the dog and let it take it. (First wrap your arm in a shirt if you can.)
Use the knife in your "smart" hand and try to drive it through
the dog's braincase.
This will work provided the dog hasn't seen your knife. They know what
they look like and what they're used for. Anything in your hand, in
fact, even if it's a jacket or a pair of socks will be treated with much
suspicion by the dog and the dog will be trained to go after the hand
with the object in it.
Dogs are trained to expect their targets to scream and yell such amusing
phrases as "Argh! Get him off me! Get him off me!" That makes
the dog immune to the emotional pleas of its victims. They're trained to
ignore all commands except those of its master and in some cases they are
trained to understand commands given in different languages.
Trying to get both hands around the dog's neck is probably a mistake
since doing so will be next to impossible. If you can
get your hands around the neck and you don't have a knife, lift the dog
off the ground and shake it until its neck snaps. You can try to squeeze
the dog's windpipe closed yet that takes strength and time. It's best to
break the neck. You've been on the run and will probably lack the strength
needed to strangle the dog.
There was a discussion several years ago about police dogs' bodies
being used to offer clues as to the general location of the criminal
they had been tracking. If possible, hike the dog's body along with you
and dispose of it later. If you use a knife, leave it in the dog as
the blade can and will be used to identify you if you're caught with it.
It's getting harder and harder to hide in America. There used to be a
loose defacto "underground" of "freedom loving" people
-- hippies, if you will -- who would provide aid, shelter, and comfort
to those on the run from Authority (or The Establishment, The Man, The
Fuzz, The P. I. G.)
These days, however, in our increasingly paranoid and dangerous society,
offering assistance to strangers is a bad idea: It gets people killed.
One must rely upon professional organizations which assist people who need
to hide from abusive people. Professional organizations, however, will
want you to have a virtuous reason for running and hiding and will want
to help you by reporting you to the authorities if they feel they should.
None that I know of assist you if you're running from a law enforcement
agency. (Note: Foreign agents operating in America might be willing to
assist you yet that falls outside the scope of this commentary. Arrive at
the embassy of your choice and make your offers and perhaps they'll grant
you provisional security from police authorities.)
The hippies have given way to another class of citizen. These are the
so-called "skin heads," punk rockers, and New Age nuts. While
many are social misfits, most interact with "regular society"
in their off-hours and rock-out at night or on the week ends.
The anti-establishment and socially disassociated populace has always
existed and has always been an asset to those on the run. Your job is
to find them if you need them. Be honest with such people since they
know the score and will shine you on if you're a lying jerk.
Buy people drinks, talk politics, express your viewpoints, and get to know
the people in motorcycle hangouts.
Honestly make friends with some of the people. Your best bet is not to
lead people on and take advantage of them but to actually befriend people
who can help you hide and then -- hopefully -- start a new life with a new
Motorcycle riders have reputations they must defend and domination games
they must play. If you're on the run or need a place to hide, understand
that you are Beta Male among Alpha Males. Understand that these are
usually good people worthy of your friendship who can and will help you.
Understand that you must fit into their society of Alpha and
Beta males and accept their domination games. Many gangs are only minor
criminals with codes of honor and ethics, existing only to drink, fuck,
and ride with their buddies -- bikers who have regular jobs during the
week and hang out and ride when they can. Not all motorcycle gangs are
druggie murderers and thieves. These days in America, bikers like that
are few in number.
This group of people tend to be younger than the motorcycle crowd. Your
best bet for assistance will be among the younger kids but, being young,
they'll probably be living with their parents and have no resources to
help you with. They probably know where you can sleep safely, however,
and will know who might have jobs available.
With punkers it will be okay to let it be known outright that you're looking
to find a place to hide from the cops for awhile. The punkers with the
proper punk attitude will "know someone who might know someone"
who can help you find a place to cool off for awhile -- or maybe find a
meal or two.
Gay bars are a good place to go if you're needing a meal or a safe place
to spend a couple of nights. Of course it helps if you're good-looking
yet most people at gay and straight bars are looking for companionship
first and hoping for sex second. It doesn't matter if you're gay or
straight: What people want is companionship and interesting people to
talk with first and foremost. If you're interesting or have interesting
stories to tell, finding someone in a gay bar can be mutually beneficial
to the both of you.
When it comes down to it, it doesn't pay to be shy... let someone take
you home with them. Get a bath, a meal, and a place to sleep for awhile.
Don't over stay your welcome, however. Offer to leave from time to time
and when asked to do so, do so. Return to the same bar later and make
yourself known.
The idea is to run and hide only as long as you have to and then start
rebuilding your life under a new identity. Homeless shelters, job
placement services, and day labor can give you hope and help while you're
struggling to make your new life. You're using a computer so I assume
that you have food and shelter now and possibly employment. Save up
your money before you run and you'll give yourself a chance.
If you're in a city or town, you stand a better chance of feeding yourself
and keeping yourself from freezing to death. There are often shelters
run by Christian, Muslim, or Jewish organizations which will feed you and
put you up. It may be dangerous to do so simply because such places are
usually -- nearly always -- in dangerous neighborhoods. If you're wearing
the wrong color face, you have to compare the possibility of violence and
abuse against hunger. If you look like you're on the run, you could be
victimized in the city. Those who would victimize you know you won't go
to the cops. You're on your own in an area where punks band together out
of boredom.
Finding work is your best bet. You're using a computer right now so it
is assumed that you have a job (or are married without a paying job)
and as such have some marketable skills. Even without marketable skills,
you can find employment if you're willing to work hard.
Suppose you're a wife looking to leave an abusive husband. Suppose
you're a teen-ager looking to leave an abusive mother or father. How would
you feed and house yourself when you run and hide? If you're young, you
can expect to be raped (boy or girl) drugged, and horribly abused
when living on American streets so you must consider that fact and go for
a children's shelter instead.
Hopefully you've managed to save aside some cash but that won't last long.
There are jobs that you can do:
Without other expenses, day labor should be enough to feed yourself and
maybe save some cash aside against the day you find a serious job and
rent an apartment with friends.
By the way: Most day labor consists of men who speak Spanish with only a
few words of English (at least this is the case in the United States.)
Most will be Mexican workers with families to support. Nearly all will
be extremely hard working individuals who know that when
the day is over and they get their pay, tomorrow the work bosses will
be out picking up day laborers again and they'll pick faces they recognize
as hard workers. Competition for work is heavy so joining a group of
day laborers could be difficult. No one asks questions, any way, which
you would find embarrassing.
If you attempt to perform day labor by hanging out with other day labor
crew, if you're wearing a white face you stand a better chance of being
looked over carefully by police and private individuals than if you're
wearing a brown face.
It is a crime to defraud your State or Federal government
so you must be clear on this: Your intention is to build yourself a
better life. A Social Security card issued to you under a false identity
MUST be considered by you to be absolutely honest and real.
That Social Security number is issued to someone you have wholly become.
You will pay taxes to that account and you will file income reports with
that account number. That's you now, not a fake. Because
you're paying your taxes and working at an honest living, if your real
identity is found out, people will maybe be reasonable about the fact
that you've been working hard to be a productive, tax-paying member of
society. (Of course if you're a wanted criminal, trying to "fly
right" by paying your fair share of the tax burden won't cut you
much slack in front of a judge.)
NOTE: Food coupons could be issued to you if you qualify though you may
need a valid mailing address. Check with your local social services
office to find out whether this could help you.
This might not be a good job for you since you'll be working with the
public and you may not want your face to be seen so much. (And don't
forget that nearly all fast-food places have cameras these days watching
everything that goes on.)
The sorting and counting of shirts and socks, moving items from bins
to bins according to written orders, starts out being an unskilled job.
As an employee of a distribution center (or a warehouse) has been with
the company for some time, they are given more responsibility which
often require working with computers and using the telephone to correct
problems with customers and suppliers. Eventually warehouse management
skills are acquired and such skills are in demand. Learning to work
with customers to solve problems with filling orders and billing is a
very good skill to cultivate.
No job, little to no money, and you're hungry?
There is often food stored in people's garages in rural areas where the
population density is lower than the major cities and there's few homeless
people on the streets. Freezers containing food are common. Gardens
containing vegetables in the back yard is common. Theft should be
considered a last resort however since the object is to rebuild a
new, normal life, not a criminal one. It should be a last resort because
there are other ways to get food.
If you're out in the desert or the woods, either running or holed up
somewhere, you should face up to the fact that you're going to lose weight.
The idea that with a rifle and a box of ammunition and a book of matches
you can survive for a long period of time is wishful thinking. There are
a lot of "survivalists" in the United States who, like their
self-professed "militia" intellectual colleagues honestly
believe they could survive in the woods if they had to.
That's nonsense. There was a time when it was possible but those days
are long over. Biodiversity in the major Westernized societies has been
decimated, often with pollution and introduced pests. Disease among the
plants and animals you would eat must be taken into consideration. The
deer you eat, the fish you eat, and the rabbits you eat will sustain you
only for so long (if not make you violently ill) and then your body is
going to need other foodstuffs. You can delay the eventuality of
malnutrition with multi-vitamins but eventually you'll need to forage
wider and wider for fruits, nuts, and vegetables -- not to mention fresh
water which is often in very short supply. (Camp grounds, don't forget.)
If it was easy or reasonably possible to survive in the woods, everyone
who hates their jobs would be doing it. Don't kid yourself: If you're
on the run, you must remain in contact with human habitation and either
work for or steal food or get food from a shelter in the city. If you're
holed up some where (in a tent in the hills overlooking a city, perhaps)
stock up on canned goods if you can. Don't rely on what you can pick up
from the land. You run the risk of drawing attention to yourself as
you visit the city (assuming you've got a hide out in the woods or
desert) but you should consider adopting the risk since the alternative
-- malnutrition -- is worse.
I mention this because the idea is to hide until you can rebuild your
life and start living a normal life. If you eat nothing but fish for
three months, malnutrition is going to reduce your chances of getting
a job or having enough energy for working day labor -- or having the
energy to run again if your hiding place is discovered. Keep yourself
as healthy as possible by taking the risks needed to obtain processed
Farms are a good place to find food but they're also a good place to
run into dogs and farmers on horseback with rifles who also have access
to telephones to report you. Orange groves, walnut trees, strawberry
patches et al. often run along highways and they could be raided
successfully and safely every now and then. You could work on a farm
as "stoop labor" picking lettuce, oranges, grapes, and
nuts in many States of the United States.
Road blocks, police check points, sobriety checks, immigration check
points, agricultural check points: You may be stopped and searched,
your identification examined, and possibly compromised in America for
these reasons while traveling on America's highways. Even if
"they" don't have the check point up specifically looking for
you, accidental catches happen frequently. (Ask any Highway Patrol
Officer stopping a vehicle for a broken tail light. The California HP has
the largest felony arrest record of any police agency anywhere in the
If there's a road block up looking specifically for you, you'll probably
not have much of a chance anyway and you probably deserve to get caught.
Usually, however, a road block is up looking for someone else or, as is
common during holidays, sobriety checks can get you examined by the
police. You'll want to avoid that.
You might consider using public transportation since bus and taxi
drivers are not usually pulled over and, for no reason, checked.
They're usually waved past most check points though such vehicles
draw extra focus at police check points. (Note: Some States have made
unconstitutional laws which allows their police officers to stop and
search public transportation without probable cause. This latest
unconstitutional series of laws is part of the government's insane
"war on drugs" nonsense.)
In remote areas such as forests, your opposition will be setting up
a command post some where in your suspected location from which foot
searches for you will radiate. Such command centers usually are
selected for the availability of electricity, radios, telephones, and
sanitation facilities. If you know the area you're in, you can bet
that the command post is a fire station, ranger station, or perhaps
a camp ground or gas station.
The road blocks will be in communication via radio with the command post
and, since they're probably line-of-site radios, expect road blocks
to be within five or ten miles of the command post. That'll be a guess
and there's no guarantee that everyone in the effort is talking to each
other but it's a good bet they'll want to. You have to decide what the
most probable size of the parameter around you is and make a guess as
to where road blocks might be.
Don't forget that radio doesn't have to be line-of-sight if the authorities
are utilizing radio repeaters
You need to abandon your vehicle before you come into eye contact with
your opposition. If they see you and you try to turn around and get
away, there's no point: you're just risking the lives of innocent
people and you should stop your engine and show your hands else you
should bail and run on foot. But if you hear on the radio that there's
police activity in your area and you suspect a road block, taking off
on foot might be your best bet. Your car is a lot easier to spot than
just yourself -- and yo can dig in somewhere and walk over nearly
everything whereas you can't drive a car in most places.
Listen to traffic reports! You may be informed by your local
news traffic reports that there is "police activity" in an
area. That activity could be in your honor.
One idea that seems to have some success is to drive down the road
and abandoning the car thereafter you walk back the way you came for
several miles before taking a tangent. They'll be expecting you to
either continue working your way in the direction you were driving
or they expect you to take off on a tangent from where you left the
car. When they find your car it becomes the center of operations and
a new perimeter will be set up around it.
Another idea someone suggested was if someone must abandon one's car,
to let the air out of one tire before doubling back on foot. This
will make the authorities suspect that you've had a flat and abandoned
your car unintentionally. Unintentionally abandoning the car might
mean that you didn't twigg to the road block and bailed. That would
mean that you left the car and headed for the nearest telephone to
call for help. The nearest residence or town then becomes one of the
center of operations and the road block further down the road becomes
another center of operations. It would be considered that you had a
flat, headed down the road for assistance, and then saw the road block
and either turned around or headed into the hills on a tangent. By
making the opposition think your plans were thwarted by a hardware
failure, you force them to behave in ways you want
them to and kind of gets even for what they're making you do.
This is currently done two different ways.
If such an operation sees the suspect make and model car pass under
a bridge, mobile officers from outlying stations are redirected to
intercept the car. It's rare for cops on bridges to leave their
stations unless the wanted scumbag is confirmed so they'll use a
number of roving police cars on outlying picket to chase down suspect
vehicles, leaving the net in place.
There's really no defense for this operation other than to bail and
run on foot. You've probably bought it, though. On California
freeways you'll not have much of a chance. In places like New Jersey,
you may have a chance if there's no helicopter watching you due to
the high population density along freeways. California freeways tend
to have trees and bush growing along side but the areas are wide open
to visual eye contact from one bridge to the next. If there's no
trees and bushes, the highways in California tend to have high walls
walling in the freeway.
As cars approach the exit, police cars by the dozen will be observing
everyone in line. More police will be watching for several miles down
the freeway for anyone bailing at previous exists (depending upon the
length of freeway traffic backup.) Police will be watching for anyone
pulling to the break-down lane and trying to avoid them.
Like the other method, there's really no defense for this other than
to try to bail and run. It's probably hopeless, though.
There's really nothing you can do about stationary check points except
either avoid them entirely or comply with the check point's attendant and
smile your way through and just hope your face isn't in their book.
Roving check points and random sampling is something you have no
control over. You may try to fall out of the set of profiles that cops
are trained to look for to reduce the chances of getting randomly
stopped and searched. Profiles cops learn to focus on are different
from city to city, town to town, but you can bet that most of the
profiles consists of:
A cruiser will be driving at night in a clean car that's either a fairly
new car, a restored classic, or any kind of car with a bunch of kids
stuffed into it. If you're driving a clean 1972 Ford Pinto with the
windows rolled down at 11:00 p.m. down Sunset Blvd. in Southern
California, cops in the area will register your car the first time they
see it. The second time they see you driving the street will convince
them you're cruising and they may decide to pull you over. Even though
you're minding your own business, you may want to avoid streets where
cruising takes place if you're driving something that matches the
Your goals are to manufacture a new life under a new identity complete with
legal recognition under your new identity. To acquire that goal, you must
be ready and willing to do what it takes -- without compounding any criminal
activities you might be wanted for. As mentioned before, that means
discarding all your friends, your family, and your way of life in favor
for new friends, a new way of life and possibly a new marriage with a
loving wife or husband to create a new family.
The steps you take along the way toward acquiring that new life can be
boiled down to these salient points:
What you want to do is make your new life to the point where if you're
ever caught, your employer, friends, and neighbors will express disbelief
when the cops haul you away. While getting caught shouldn't be part of
your goals, you should consider the possibility and plan accordingly.
This is very important if you build a new family: Your
wife or husband should be told who you really are before you get married.
Since you're working to become a respectable, productive member of society,
your prospective spouse should know your past before you get married!
Finding out your real name isn't Michael Johnson after five years of
marriage won't help your wife maintain support for you when the cops
come to haul you away. Letting her know you're on the run and for why
you're on the run before hand means that you'll have support if they
ever do find you.
You people are faced with extraordinary problems when trying to disappear
in America that aren't experienced by the traditional citizen attempting to
disappear for more traditional reasons.
Much has been written already about your problems and how to deal with them
so this essay doesn't attempt to address them. Additionally I don't presume
to claim to know what's best for you and your loose-nit organizations since
your efforts are totally outside of my experience even as I share some of
your goals. I'm (Fredric Rice speaking here, by the way) a vegetarian and
I find the vivisectionists trade and the animal fur trade to be worth
destroying totally -- however my venue is to employ completely legal avenues
of recource. Still, if I may offer what I feel to be a salient point about
the plight of direct-action liberationists: Your mind set.
This is an important thing to keep in mind when on the run from the law
and working to build for yourself a new identity. You may feel that burning
down some barns after liberating a couple of thousand mink prisoners should
not be a crime since you're correcting a massive wrong, but your opposition
consider you to be economic terrorists predicated upon ideological attributes
which place you firmly into a set of profiles law enforcement use as baseline
into the psychology of what drives you.
As such, your opposition is motivated to find you. Given the fact that the
vivisectionist industry and the animal fur industry financially support
political venues, and you're left needing to discard any mindset you may
have that your crimes are minimal. You must adopt the mindset of your
opposition which considers you -- rightly or wrongly -- to be a considerable
threat to people's security.
Namely: By associating with animal rights and Earth rights activists,
you are aligning yourself to a criminal element and you
do know what you're in for when you join protests against the
bad guys. That's the way the system works, you accepted that when you joined
the resistance, so get comfortable with the consequences. If you don't -- if
you persist in lamenting the woes about how unfair it all is that the cops
are picking on you -- you're in a mindset that doesn't assist the positive
mental state you'll need if you find yourself needing to hide from the law.
My advice is that you get pragmatic and admit to yourself that you're really
a criminal if you engage in direct action. Accept the fact that you're
committing a wrong even as you're correcting a wrong. Since the law is on
the side of the planet killers, vivisectionists, and the animal fur trade,
the law doesn't recognize the wrong of these industries so you may feel
that you've done nothing wrong. In the eyes of the law, you're in the
wrong so be pragmatic about it and believe that you did wrong
so that if you have to run, your mind is where it needs to be to survive.
This point is important. Pretending that arsonists and vandals who smash
fur farms and such -- while undeniably deserving to be smashed -- are some
how "political prisoners" is equal to the fascists in the
goverment claiming such actvists are some how "terrorists."
Neither is true and all sides who engage in such outrageously
false and delusional rhetoric suffer from playing such idiot games.
If you're trying to run and hide and rebuild your life, it's important
to get your head together, divest yourself of your comfortable delusions,
and admit to yourself exactly who and what you are. Pretend you're on
the run to avoid being a "political prisoner" ingrains within
you a fictitious and false view of your real situation -- something that
only helps your opposition.
Where there's water, life is possible. True, it may be very difficult
and very hard to live, depending, but anyone who's driven, hiked, or
camped in the American South West will have noticed that cities and
ranches crop up where there's surface water or where there's been a
well dug.
Within the state of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico,
and Colorado, there are deserts, mesas, mountains, and forests where
normally people never or rarely visit; not-so-secret places where
there's water, access to a road within a day's hike, and where a
fairly rugged individual may hide while remaining basically healthy,
marginally well fed, and reasonably sane.
In this section I'll look at two such environments, neither of which
I would recommend, but one of which I'd suggest is a reasonable way
to live in basic health while either on the run, hiding out from
the law, old girl friends, the draft for an illegal war,
putative wives and such.
The first South Western environment (the one I wouldn't recommend
except for the most hearty individual) is the Mojave Desert among the
volcanic rocks where there's water if you know where to find it,
and where shade from the relentless Sun can be built, if you know
how to build it.
South Western Mojave Desert
Some years ago my brother Desertphile was tracking across the Mojave
Desert in the dead of night, hiking a long distance from one water
hole to another, using a hand-held Global Positioning System device,
topo maps, and a backpack containing mostly water and tarp equipment
for emergency shade.
While crossing the mouth of a small side canyon out in the middle of
absolutely nowhere, he stumbled across squatters -- or more accurately
their dogs -- living in a number of small trailors covered with
camouflage netting over paint-splotched shade tarps. With no roads
of any kind, the people living there had managed to some how drag
small mobile trailors into the high desert and had been living there
hidden from the outside world.
Thinking about this and the people squatting there, there were some
very basic things they had done:
Where exactly?
One possible wide spread area of interest would be the area between
Las Vegas, Nevada, and some 30 miles West of Baker, California,
North of the 15 highway -- perhaps within the hills along North
Cima Road. Much of the lands located there are owned by the Federal
government however ranchers subsidized by tax money run cattle which
can be poached, and there's water which can be found.
South of the 15 highway is more volcanic and has less water unless
you go to Soda Springs off of Zyzzyx Road where there's a ranger
station and the Desert Studies center (filling up canteens there
from the spring could be done without suspicions but filling up
drums of water might cause people at Soda Springs to suspect you're
living out in the desert.)
North of the 15 highway your topo map will show numerous springs,
tanks, and stock ponds, many of which will contain water, and many
of which will be dry -- but will not be listed as dry on the map so
you need to investigate, take notes, take GPS coordinates, and plan
Also North of highway 15 is cattle subsidized by U. S. Forest Service;
cattle that has overgrazed and destroyed much of the plants and
displaced much of the animals that used to eck out a meger existance
in these lands. Poaching is illegal, of course, and could get you
strung up, drained, and jerked like deer meat if you're caught, so
perhaps you could look at cows -- what Edward Abbey called "slow
elk" -- as an emergency food source.
If you plan on poaching, you should do your homework and learn how to
butcher a cow and transport batches of the animal from the place where
you butchered it back to your camp, figuring out how to wrap what
you can't carry to keep flies, vultures, and other animals out of
your meat until you can return for the rest of it.
Still, I'd recommend not poaching in the high desert
out there not only because it's illegal, not only because if you're
caught by a rancher he may decide to dump your carcass into a
volcanic rock crack, but most importantly because you don't want to
draw attention to the fact that you're living in the general area.
A rancher coming up short on his count might very well put down the
shortage to "natural causes" but if you leave remains to
be found and the remains show that the missing cattle was butchered
and carted off, the Feds like nothing better than to mount up a
nice desert posse to come look for you.
How I Would Do It
For setting up a squatters camp in the deserts North of Highway 15
and West of Baker, I might choose somewhere in the Iron Mountain
range, North of the military base, and South West of the bombing
range. Here's what I would do:
Books and a laptop computer would be provided for entertainment
and perhaps the mood to write a book of my own would strike. I would
expect boredom to be as big a problem as food, water, and shade so
more thinking about creative ways to remain occupied would have to
be done.
Very likely after a couple of weeks it would be discovered what was
forgotten and what's needed to make living in the area possible.
Hiking at night into Baker, California, every other month or so to
draw money out of the bank, purchase canned goods, and visit the
local Taco Bell would be possible however if anyone was looking for
someone doing so, that points an arrow straight at them.
South Western Arizona Virgin River Gorge
A better place to hide out and set up a long-term living camp far from
any human being would be within the Virgin River Gorge. During a drive
from Utah to California along the 70 and then the 15 highway, one passes
through the Virgin River Gorge carved by the Virgin River. On a topo
map the rough longitude and lattitude coordinates would be somewhere
Section 2: Understand who or what you're hiding from
Section 4: Keep from depositing traces of yourself
Section 5: Keeping yourself hidden
Section 6: People and Organizations Which Can Assist You
Section 7: Employment: Food, Shelter While on the Run, While Underground
As previously mentioned, however, traffic stops and check points are
going to be the biggest problem. They can happen at random without any
notice. Agricultural check points -- such as one can find on highway
15 between Las Vegas and Southern California and the one on Interstate
5 near Grapevine -- are stationary and usually run 24 hours a day. The
officers don't have authority among themselves to arrest or detain you if
your picture has been circulated among them. The most they can do is
request that you pull over and stop and, failing to do so, they press
a button and the police cruisers on station at the facility will hunt
you down and stop you.
The idea is to travel along America's highways without drawing attention
to yourself and ending up getting pulled out of a check point queue or
getting stopped by a cop. You should think about what kind of car and
what kind of "look and feel" cops are likely to pull over and
work to defeat the expected image. Get a couple of books and put them
on your dash board. Something from Ann Rand and Albert Einstein, maybe,
or something containing intellectual material. Criminals don't read --
they're stupid: That's why they're criminals. You want to look like
you're Mr. or Ms. Citizen going about your lawful business and not a
wanted fugitive or a missing house wife who's husband wants you back to
further abuse you.
Section 9: Summary
In summation, I feel that there is a need within the direct-actionist
community to get more realistic about who they are and what they're doing;
that arson is a crime, that liberating animals is
against the law. Not accepting the facts pragmatically, I feel, adversely
impacts an activist's chances of avoiding capture.
Section 11: South Western Deserts as a Place to Hide / Squatting
Anyone contemplating setting up a camp in the Mojave Desert -- or
in any of the surrounding deserts -- would obtain a topographical
map, note where the indicated springs, stock ponds, and other water
sources are, and then would evaluate where to locate shade for such
a camp. Then the individual would investigate the water sources
to verify that they're wet and drinkable all year around -- or at
least during the months the individual will be surviving in the
area for.
The result would be a camp that has a tarp for a cover, a tarp for
a floor, possibly tarps for walls, all tight and roped up with
rocks and poles, with a 12-volt lamp being driven by a car battery
that's charged by a solar panel through a power inverter.
The gorge itself is long and wide, consisting of a seemingly endless series of canyons, ravines, cliffs, and spires, most of which is impossible to get to on foot. Highway 15 passes right through the gorge and follows the Virgin River for some distance before the hills disappear and the desert opens up to the West toward Valley of Fire and the Moapa Piute Indian Reservation lands.
A great deal of fresh water is available in these canyons all year around though most of the waterways are muddy. Fresh, clear water is found in fairly straight runs of the Virgin River and in standing, deeper plunge pools created when the river's course changed slightly over the years.
Hiking and camping among this gorge is difficult, to understate the case. Sheer cliff walls one or two hundred feet high create box canyons and box ravines and together with sharp shards of rock and soft but lose sandy rock, the gorge's innermost secret areas are very difficult to get in and out of and getting lost is easy.
Five years ago I was visiting the Valley of Fire where far to the South along a dirt road behind the Piute fireworks and casino there's a good water spring that's rarely visited by wheeled vehicle. Being in the general area I drove East into the Virgin River Gorge and parked some distance from the GPS coordinates offered above.
With a backpack containing food, water, matches, bedding, compass, camera, GPS unit, USGS aircraft photographs of the gorge, and other equipment I parked my vehicle along a turn out on the highway and hiked into the gorge.
After walking in for about two hours I set up camp, ate something, got out my book, and read until it got too dark to read, then I set out my sleeping bag and laid down on it (it was about 80 degrees at midnight there.)
Around an hour after dark I heard someone pounding metal on rock and I stood up thinking someone was pounding on the highway some distance away, at first, yet walking a little around my camp I placed the pounding toward the South West. After about 5 minutes of the noise it stopped and all that could be heard was the crickets and frogs some distance in the river and the far-away drone of the big rigs using engine breaking on the highway 15 decline.
In the morning I went looking for the source of the noise and I found a desert hermit living along the Virgin River in among trees, some of which he had relocated himself some years ago. The old guy had a large camp and a motorcycle. I took a GPS reading, returned to my car, and moved it to the West side of the highway, then returned to camp with the guy for the rest of the day, that night, and then left early the next morning.
This month -- just a week ago -- I found that the guy had left, gone to live with his daughter whose husband had died but his story is relevant to this section of this piece. Some of the relevant aspects of his squatters camp:
Some Other Areas
Two other areas spring instantly to mind when it comes to long-term squatting near water. Ceder City, Utah has a muddy river going through it, bounded by a shallow canyon with a bike trail along one side and a busy highway on the other. I've found a person camping there long-term once and it looked fairly comfortable.
The other location is along the San Gabriel River above Azusa, California, along Highway 39. Camping there long term is fairly dangerous due to the large number of illegal Mexicans and the large number of gun nuts that frequent the area, shooting into the hills at night without a care in the world that somebody might be camping or living in the canyons.
In summation of this section, people on the run, in hiding, or otherwise wishing to step out of mainstream society can do so safely, in health, and without risk to one's sanity though it seems to me that to do so some contact -- if not support -- with others still living in society is needed.
There are secret, hidden places in America's South West among the deserts, mesas, mountains, and forests where people can hermit themselves, with or without the aid and support of others. But to do so required planning, creativity, and foresight -- as well as a willingness to pack up and relocate if a site that's selected turns out to be inappropriate after awhile.
Incidentally, the U. S. Forest Service generally allows for campers to remain at a site for 14 days after which their rules dictate that the camper must leave. What constitutes leaving will depend upon the individual Ranger who discovers a camper. Some will allow that moving a mile from one's camp constitutes leaving at which time the 14 day limit begins again. Other Rangers will demand that the camper leave a particular geographical area after 14 days.
So being discovered squatting can cause problems beyond any warrants that may be pending for your arrest. Being able to show a bank account might save you from being arrested and detained as a vagrant yet I believe that how you look -- your appearances -- when you're discovered (if ever) would dictate what happens to you (if anything.)
That goes for what your camp looks like: If your camp looks like you've been there for a long time and looks like you intend to be there a long time, any Ranger discovering you squatting will have a different opinion on what to do with you than if your camp looked like you just got there. If discovered you could claim you've been there for three days and plan to "return back to work after my vacation is over in four days" and perhaps you'll be believed. That could keep you out of the vagrant hatch long enough to relocate.
Then again it's anybody's question on whether you'll be asked to show identification and whether you'll be checked for wants and warrants. My experience when encountering Rangers and other authority types in the South West is that they'll make sure you have enough water, that you know where you are, that you have a hat on, and that you aren't committing suicide in stupid, irresponsible ways, they'll ask you to be careful out here and to on their way. Squatters who look like they've been camping for a long time may get run into the local police station so I'd suggest you keep your camp looking new and have a good story to tell about calling a friend to come pick you up in a few days -- and make sure the name and telephone of your friend is valid even if said friend isn't aware that you're squatting.
Section 12: Fright Hopping -- Riding the Rails
Fright hopping isn't safe and unless you're in fairly good shape I
wouldn't recommend it... And even if you are in fairly
good shape, I wouldn't recommend it unless there's a very real and
pressing need to get out of an area fairly quickly.
If law enforcement is after you and they know you're in an area, of
course, then they'll likely have all fright trains and passenger trains
monitored and scanned however there are lots of places to hide on
fright trains, most of them quite dangerous.
There's a great deal of information available on the Internet about how
to safely hop freight trains and you should check them out with the
URL links offered below in this section. But this section will offer
a fairly brief summation of what you need to do to hop frieght trains
as an emergency means of escape.
Endless Safety Hazards When Freight Hopping
The dangers are considerable and you would have to decide what's
acceptable to you and what's too dangerous. If you can't hitch hike
and need to leave an area without being seen, you may feel that the
dangers of fright hopping are acceptable.
What You Should Bring When Freight Hopping
Since this piece is about disappearing from America's view and -- with
any luck -- reappearing somewhere else to restart a normal life in some
other place, it may be that you'll want to travel with as many worldly
possessions as you can carry. This isn't a good idea and for reasons
that were described at the beginning of this piece.
But to safely and comfortably use freight trains, there's probably a
minimum amount of things you should brig with you:
That would be probably a minimum of the stuff you would need to take
when hopping a freight train. Information about where
trains are going is something you can get from workers in rail yards
since they'll usually assist you -- everyone except the Bulls whose
job it is to keep you out. Rail workers who are paid minimum wage
and may not speak the language are often willing to help inform you
about which direction a train is going.
The Types of Cars To Hop
Some cars are more dangerous than others. There are lists of cars
in the order of preference available all over the Internet yet for
now, here's what's been suggested in a preliminary scan of such
There are many reasons why you should avoid parking inside of grain
or gravel haulers, and avoid parking inside full cargo containers
but the primary danger is that of shifting cargo. You can be burried
by gravel, crushed by crates, crushed by moving cars that weren't
tied down well, and get crushed by damn near everything.
But as mentioned above, open box cars are getting rare. If you're
planning on hopping a freight train, find a place to hide where you
won't be seen and watch a number of trains go by and see what kinds
of cars there are to get a feel for what kind of transport you can
From time to time I get people emailing me asking about religious
organizations, International organizations, or other ways to drop out
of the "Rat Race" and my response has always been that to
drop off the grid successfully, one must have large amounts of money
or be willing to live in abject poverty and hunger.
But there are a few other alternatives to be considered:
The problem with signing on with the Peace Corps is that there are a
number of requirements you must meet in order to volunteer with them
and, of course, they are the Federal government and they will keep
trace of you if they ship you outside of the United States.
This type of work requires that you have your head straight and that
you have your shit together. This type of work is not a vacation; it's
hard and serious work of long hours and effort. It has the added
benefit and attraction that volunteering to assist is a good way to
drop out of the rat race, disappear from the eyes of the U. S.
government, and you're kept very busy and occupied.
Volunteering to assist elderly Navajos requires that you become familiar
with the social behavioral aspects of Navajo tribes and a good place to
find such information
may be found
Volunteers are asked to commit to at minimum two months, and there is
a formal interview process of hopeful volunteers that one is subjected
to to ensure that volunteers have their heads together, can actually
do the work that's needed, and are trustworthy.
Contact these
people through their web site to find out more about working with
assisting in herding sheep, other farming and ranching needs, and
working with the elderly. But remember: only strong-minded,
responsible people are considered for such work. It's a 24 hour
job that few are capable of committing to, and few are able to complete
their committments.
The industrial farms and ranches aren't what you would be looking for
since they have forms, documents, and other tracking of your employment
and are answerable to government agencies. Additionally the large
industrial farms and ranches will usually not allow workers to live on
their property.
There are, however, an increasingly rare number of family farms and
ranches situated around the United States, places where families have
been working the land or running ranches for generations and where
people's children have moved away and the older parents are looking
for live-in help.
But these positions are rare and seldom are they advertised. They are
discovered through word-of-mouth from other ranchers and farmers in
the area, or by postings on bulletin boards in farming or ranching
communities in their civic centers or markets.
This type of work has the benefit that you can drop out of the eyes of
the government and still maintain a healthy, productive, and busy life
while being paid low wages but also being given a place to live. It
has the draw back of not offering medical coverage or insurance of any
kind such that if you're hurt or injured, medical bills will have to
be paid from your chronically empty pocket.
Because family farm or ranch work means working closely with the owners
or operators of the land, you can expect to be subjected to a very
detailed and close examination of your physical and mental makeup,
and trustworthyness is going to be the number 1 priority among any
such a job.
From what I've been reading and from the emails of people who have
dropped off the grid from time to time, there are ways to drop
out of the rat race, and the three suggested methods described above
have been shown to me to be viable.
But there are some primary aspects of one's behavior and attitude
that one must meet before dropping out and disappearing into some work
enclaive like these:
Discarding your old life and working toward rebuilding or renewing
means scraping off some of the old baggage that brought you to the point
where you're looking for a new life, and smoking, drinking alcohol,
and using illegal narcotics is probably going to be part of that old
life you need to toss in the trash.
Any prospective employeer is going to look for any outward signs that
you use illegal narcotics, even though -- as may be with a family
ranch or farm -- the owners or operators may themselves smoke a little
canabis from time to time. A prospective employeer won't like to have
someone working and living on the property who uses narcotics even if
the owner, operators, foreman or what have you smokes pot. That's just
the way it is.
In such places where a foreman of a farm or ranch assigns you tasks for
the day to evaluate whether you're worth giving a serious looking over,
you may be given a place to sleep and something to eat, and in the
morning you may be asked to hit the road or you may be asked to stick
around and talk a bit.
If you're asked to stay and answer questions, you could expect to be
grilled heavily with questions designed to delve into whether you're
trustworthy and capable of performing the work, and whether you'll put
in the required number of hours every day without slacking.
Justice James C. Nelson was asked to rule a case where a suspect's
trash that had been discarded. The contention was whether the evidence
contained within someone's trash can be used against them in a court of
law. While Justice Nelson affirmed, he felt compelled to express the
growing realm of trackability and loss of freedom, issues that are
covered in this document.
This is a fitting Opinion for inclusion in the Vanishing Point document
since the ability to locate wanted individuals by their purchasing habits
is always just around the corner, lacking only the motivation to instigate
such measures. The technology is already there with -- as the Justice
notes -- "discount cards" that are used by so many people to
purchase their foods and other goods.
Justice James C. Nelson concurs.
I have signed our Opinion because we have correctly applied existing
legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence to resolve this case on
its facts.
I feel the pain of conflict, however. I fear that, eventually, we
are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or
terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment. I retain an
abiding concern that our Declaration of Rights not be killed by
friendly fire. And, in this day and age, the courts are the last,
if not only, bulwark to prevent that from happening.
In truth, though, we are a throw-away society. My garbage can
contains the remains of what I eat and drink. It may contain
discarded credit card receipts along with yesterday's newspaper
and junk mail. It might hold some personal letters, bills,
receipts, vouchers, medical records, photographs and stuff that
is imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow
me access to the global economy and vice versa.
My garbage can contains my DNA.
As our Opinion states, what we voluntarily throw away, what we
discard--i.e., what we abandon--is fair game for roving animals,
scavengers, busybodies, crooks and for those seeking evidence of
criminal enterprise.
Yet, as I expect with most people, when I take the day's trash
(neatly packaged in opaque plastic bags) to the garbage can
each night, I give little consideration to what I am throwing
away and less thought, still, to what might become of my refuse.
I don't necessarily envision that someone or something is going
to paw through it looking for a morsel of food, a discarded
treasure, a stealable part of my identity or a piece of evidence.
But, I've seen that happen enough times to understand--though
not graciously accept--that there is nothing sacred in whatever
privacy interest I think I have retained in my trash once it
leaves my control--the Fourth Amendment and Article II, Sections
10 and 11, notwithstanding.
Like it or not, I live in a society that accepts virtual strip
searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount"
cards that record my buying habits; bar codes; "cookies"
and spywear on my computer; on-line access to satellite technology
that can image my back yard; and microchip radio frequency
identification devices already implanted in the family dog and
soon to be integrated into my groceries, my credit cards, my
cash and my new underwear.
I know that the notes from the visit to my doctor's office may
be transcribed in some overseas country under an out-sourcing
contract by a person who couldn't care less about my privacy.
I know that there are all sorts of businesses that have records
of what medications I take and why. I know that information
taken from my blood sample may wind up in databases and be put
to uses that the boilerplate on the sheaf of papers I sign to
get medical treatment doesn't even begin to disclose. I know
that my insurance companies and employer know more about me than
does my mother. I know that many aspects of my life are available
on the Internet. Even a black box in my car--or event data
recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the
beans on my driving habits, if I have an event--and I really
trusted that car, too.
And, I also know that my most unwelcome and paternalistic
relative, Uncle Sam, is with me from womb to tomb. Fueled by the
paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the
capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt
is. But, as Sam says: "It's for my own good."
In short, I know that my personal information is recorded in
databases, servers, hard drives and file cabinets all over the
world. I know that these portals to the most intimate details
of my life are restricted only by the degree of sophistication
and goodwill or malevolence of the person, institution,
corporation or government that wants access to my data.
I also know that much of my life can be reconstructed from the
contents of my garbage can.
I don't like living in Orwell's 1984; but I do. And, absent the
next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the
government (the former being more likely than the latter), the
best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short
As our Opinion states, search and seizure jurisprudence is
centered around privacy expectations and reasonableness
considerations. That is true even under the extended protections
afforded by Montana's Constitution, Article II, Sections 10. and
11. We have ruled within those parameters. And, as is often the
case, we have had to draw a fine line in a gray area. Justice
Cotter and those who have signed the Opinion worked hard at
defining that line; and I am satisfied we've drawn it correctly
on the facts of this case and under the conventional law of
That said, if this Opinion is used to justify a sweep of the
trash cans of a neighborhood or community; or if a trash dive
for Sudafed boxes and matchbooks results in DNA or fingerprints
being added to a forensic database or results in personal or
business records, credit card receipts, personal correspondence
or other property being archived for some future use unrelated
to the case at hand, then, absent a search warrant, I may well
reconsider my legal position and approach to these sorts of
cases--even if I have to think outside the garbage can to get
I concur.
The first video below (which is a YouTube object that will play if you
click on it and wait a while) is a description of how Desertphile spent
22 months in the Mojave Desert -- California and Nevada. Various things
to be aware of when squatting in the desert is offered as is some good
commentary on water and the people one might meet out there. The second
video shows how a solar oven was made and how it's used.
Over the years many emails have come in to The Skeptic Tank commenting upon
things within this document, many people offering suggested additions,
changes, and sections that should be removed. One individual -- CP is his
initials; I didn't get permission to use his name -- offered most of the
suggested comments which are provided in this section.
This is a living document -- the web page has been viewed by millions of
people, according to the web site statistics engine on the web site's
server, and this web page remains the single most read web page on all of
Skeptic Tank since the enactment of the "USA PTRIOT Act" --
and there are over half a million pages on The Skeptic Tank so that says
a bit about this page -- as well as a growing desire to escape the
ever growing fascism in the United States.
Point of correction and commentary. This section will be added as more
and more comments are received through email. Some of the suggestions
have been so good that I have copied them from my inbound email mail box
word for word.
Because of this, sposes who are attempting to vanish might consider
getting themselves ready to do so ahead of time, ducking out and running
as soon as their spouse leaves for work. The 24 hour rule may start with
the time you were last seen, or it may start on the morning of your
disappearance, or your State might not have such a rule.
Some States don't apply the 24 hour rule if there is any indication that
foul play was involved, or if there is any indication that you might be
suicidal or harbor violent intentions of your own.
On the other hand, if you have a history of domestic difficulties and you
suddenly go missing, suspicion may come down on your spouse and if it's
considered that your spouse might have done you in, the authorities may
set aside any 24 hour rule for that reason as well.
Point being: You may or may not be afforded 24 hours before any law
enforcement offer or agency feels the need to look for you. If you're
a minor, of course, the 24 hour rule is probably not going to
apply, even if you have a history of running away from home.
Consider using cameras at transportation facilities to your advantage.
Buy your $500 beater car and park it the day before. Drive your own car
to the airport, bus station, trainstation, etc. Go into restroom and
change your clothes, cutting and destroying as previously mentioned.
If you can't cut your hair, at least shave and acquire a new wig. You
should have also destroyed your bag that you carried in. Go out the door
and get into your beater car and drive away. Dump that car as quickly
as possible and acquire a 3rd. Sell it to a car lot and it, in effect,
Also look for natural disasters. There is a lot of work to be done, and
there is also meals and shelter. I am not saying that you should defraud
the government and take relief funds, but if you were dishonest sort,
you may be able to.
Know that guns and jewelry are quick pawns for quick money. If your
pursuers know that you have a firearm and they have the serial number,
they will track you down. If they don't have that serial number, then
a pawnbroker may not release your stuff for 90-120 days. Pawn and get
out of town. Don't use the same pawn shop, preferably don't use the
same town. If you can get away with it, don't use the same name, address
or phone number, either.
The longer you are off, the harder it is to get back on. The longer you
are off, the less people are going to be willing to side with you.
Once you drop off, realize when you try and get back on, your friends
may be gone. So may your family.
In the Angeles National Forest there are private camps which exist upon
leased property, leased from the United States Forest Service or
"grandfatheredt" in to otherwise National public lands as private
holdings. One such camp was Camp Follows (see
http://www.hikercentral.com/campgrounds/101704.html )
which no longer exists, another such camp is Camp Williams (see
http://www.campwilliams.com/ ) which still exists and which classifies
itself as a resort.
Such camps as one may find in the United States located in somewhat remote
locations (such as Camp Williams is) may offer residential rental plots
where a mobile trailer or even a cabin is located that one may rent, just
as if it were a normal residential rental located within a city (Camp
Williams has a mobile home park with units already on it as well as available
slots for parking your own mobile home.)
Due to their remote locations and small populations, such camps can provide
an environment within which to hide but they also provide an environment
within which to re-establish oneself in society, a less populace place to
live where you get to have some measure of control over who sees you, who
you interact with. Private camps can be populated by people who disdain
the "civilized world" and have what might be considered
"alternative" modes of life somewhat removed from what society
would consider to be "normal."
There are other advantages about taking up residence in a small camp
located otherwise remotely. If you are being sought, strangers who spend
a great deal of time in the region are generally noticed, and anyone who
talks with residents about you or someone close to your description will
be talked about and it's possible that you will learn of the interest being
expressed by said strangers.
The down side to adopting residence in private camps like this is that they
do cost money, the amount of which depends upon whether or not the area is
favorable and accessible to wealthy people who aren't trying to disappear
in America. In addition to either purchasing the mobile home on existing
property, there is also the usual monthly rental fees for parking your
mobile home on the property, and of course there's the utility bill fees
that camps may also require you to pay, either metered individually else
collectively as part of the plot rental.
Private camps may be sold or they may be otherwise closed and returned to
either a State or Federal holding which means that residence in such camps
may not be entirely secure. Camp Follows in the Angeles National Forest
was sold to a foreign company and in the year 2006 the last of the residents
were evicted, putting many people out on the streets (many of whom were then
homeless and living out of their cars, prompting an abandoned cat crisis,
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/147322.php ) for a write-up and
photographs of the cat rescue effort.)
When examining a private camp which provides residential housing, you should
spend as much time as possible looking the place over, doing
feet-on-the-ground research to see whether the camp provides both anonymity
and well as an environment for disappearing and, if it is your goal,
resurfacing under a new identity.
Note: Doing research on line leaves hints about what you were researching
embedded in your web browser disk cache as well as web site log records
which can be used to track you down. Feet-on-the-ground research in to a
possible camp to disappear to eliminates the electronic trail.
Alternatively, deliberately researching hundreds of camps across the
United States and pretending to give a dozen or so such camps more focus
and return web site visits might conceivably help to throw off the trail
to the actual camp you go to.
What about squatting in a State or Federal park or forest?
As mentioned previously, the typical maximum duration stay for visitors
to public lands is either one, two, or three weeks, after which the
individual is expected to relocate a minimum set distance from the previous
camp site, often 50 miles at minimum.
A great many public lands have illegal squatters on them, and law enforcement
periodically performs sweeps and evicts such people, often after running
them for wants and warrants and searching them and their possessions for
contraband. In the Angeles National Forest a hideously filthy pollution
problem developed as illegal gold miners squatted along the East Fork Road
section of the San Gabriel River, many of them living there for years, many
of them under the belief that they could do so after "staking claims" on public land.
There are no legal avenues for people to squat on public property in
a National Forest. There are also no legal avenues for people to stake
mining claims on public lands in a National Forest. There exist lawful
mining of public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management however
one can't carve out a section of public property, proclaim it belongs to them,
and then proceed to live on the public property.
This is important to underscore for two reasons: First off, numerous web
sites will tell you that mining on public lands is legal when in fact it
may or may not be depending upon the region. Even places where a government
agency sells you a mining permit actual mining in that region may be
prohibited. If mining is permitted, suction dredging may be prohibited,
and in any event living on the property in tents longer than the maximum
permissible period of time is always prohibited.
Secondly, living in an illegal mining camp isn't conducive to either
disappearing or to rebuilding a normal or even quasi-normal life. In
addition to the periodic narcotics and illegal alien sweeps, a
narcotics-heavy existence along a crowded river or stream living in
a tent isn't a fun or comfortable life, it's just marking time before
you die, it's not disappearing with the goal of resurfacing fresh with
a new identity elsewhere.
An Additional Review of Internet Research Before You Disappear
Most people are now aware that every time they visit a web site, send or
receive an email, or do anything else online, an electric record of their
activity is made and such information is easily retrieved by law
enforcement agencies, often without a subpoena, court order, or warrant.
When you do research online prior to attempting to disappear, you leave
behind records which can be used to not only track you down but to indict
you if you're doing research prior to or after the commission of a crime.
In the year 2007, a homicide detective in State other than California
contacted The Skeptic Tank by starting from my identity taken from the
public domain skeptictank.org registry records which lead the detective
to the city I live in where-after he contacted the local Police Department
which came to my residence and handed me a business card for the detective
asking me to return his call.
When I received the business card and returned the call, I learned that
this Vanishing Point web page is used by people who either commit murder
else who plan to commit murder, reviewing the web page � at times placing
it to paper � as part of their online homework in to such things as how
to remove people's heads and other identifying body parts and research
in to how deep various lakes are in the prospective murderer's region are.
The detective called to ask whether Vanishing Point had been updated since
a particular date that he gave me, then he informed me that a man and his
lover had murdered the lover's husband, and one of the many web pages he
and the woman had visited was Vanishing Point.
I told the detective that I considered some of the information provided
here to be unworkable and I asked him his opinion about the feasibility of
any of this information being useful.
He told me that the focus of the web page is not about committing crimes
and attempting to avoid prosecution but rather about dropping out and
rebuilding one's life for wholly legitimate reasons, and as such he said
he found the information useful and informative, not an impediment to
legitimate law enforcement efforts. His opinion, like mine, is mixed.
The point about this section is that there should be no expectation that
any of the research that people do on line is private. Even erasing your
hard disk drive's web browser's cache, even running wipe software to fill
erased disk sectors with zeros, even doing your best to eradicate records
that you have control over isn't sufficient to erase all tracks, your
Internet Service Provider, your cable company, your email host, the web
site servers that you visit, every router, bridge, or hub that retains
records may contain traces of your research activities, all of which are
easily obtained by law enforcement � or by private investigators who commit
crimes by colluding with police to illegally seize such records.
Note: Anonymity proxy servers and other online services that seek to
obscure your identity while on line do not provide enough security for
hiding your identity and eliminating traceable electronic records. For
some measure of on line security, you might research the Tor network (see
http://www.torproject.org/ )
One of the more difficult things you can do to establish yourself in a new
identity and make an honest living while remaining invisible to society at
large is to become a miner, either for gold or other metals and minerals
such as silver, gypsum, and talc.
Mining in the American Southwest is very difficult, subject to Bureau of
Land Management or Forest Service rules and regulations, and may result in
slow starvation, heat stroke, and other medical problems given the harsh
conditions one can expect working long hours in an open and exposed
environment where the pay-off yield in precious metals and minerals may be
very low.
Where to mine
Overwhelmingly the number 1, most definitive, most trusted source of
information on where you can expect to find gold and other precious
materials that you can mine is found at the
Free Gold Maps web site. This web
site is the definitive source of information which is currently
maintained by one of the world's most famous desert hermits and adventure
explorers, the living legend named Desertphile. If you consider
disappearing in America and sustaining yourself through mining, checking out
that web site and researching there is absolutely required.
For a brief review of the Desertphile gold maps information, you should
first check the brief video, "Gold Is Where Others Have Found
It." which can be viewed here:
Illegal Mining
If you research areas where others have found gold and where mines have been
abandoned which will still harbor gold that you may find useful, you may come
across mines and regions which still have gold but are illegal to mine, even
if they have been mined previously.
The Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service may ban
mining in regions where there has been considerable ecological damage due to
previous mining and efforts to restore the region's flora and fauna are
underway. Agencies may ban mining in regions where mining was performed
previously for any number of reasons, so you can not count upon locating
abandoned claims and resume working the mines or the tailings left behind.
The goal of disappearing in America and rebuilding a new life includes
refraining from drawing undue law enforcement attention to yourself. This
means that you will want to avoid working claims which are in
"withdrawn" locations where mining has always been illegal and in
locations where mining has become illegal.
San Gabriel Mountains / Angeles National Forest / East Fork
You may see a great many videos on YouTube and may read a great many on-line
articles about gold mining in the San Gabriel Mountains within the Angeles
National Forest along East Fork which follows the San Gabriel River. It is
true that a great deal of mining has taken place there and mining continues
to take place there however it has been illegal to mine East Fork since
the mid 1960s.
Federal and State law enforcement agents periodically raid, arrest, and
remove illegal miners and squatters along East Fork and in other areas of
the Angeles National Forest because it is illegal however the
law enforcement agencies of the region lack enough manpower and other
resources to remove illegal miners constantly. They raid and remove illegal
miners when water quality or violence or other problems result and they have
the resources to remove them.
Day panning using gold pans and hand shovels are permitted since that is
"prospecting" which remains legal, however using dredges, sluice
boxes, shovels, digging deep holes, mechanized equipment and such is
totally illegal in the Angeles National Forest.
How To Mine
Any previous claim that you may try to work will have been picked over and
worked, reworked, and reworked again by people who have come before you, so
extracting what gold may be left behind will probably result in small yields
yet may be enough to sustain you given the prices one can
expect from previous metals today.
If you have the resources to purchase mining equipment, you need to determine
whether there is water in the area or whether you will be dry mining. You
need to determine how best to extract gold or silver or other materials from
as large a volume of raw materials as you can in as short a time frame as
possible, perhaps concentrating the payload dirt in to a small volume so
that you can refine your precious materials extraction.
One company that provides quality equipment is
Keene Engineering which sells
"Dry Washers". These are machines that are either
cranked by hand or have a motor which is run by a car battery. You shovel
your dirt and rock on to a slide plate above the device and a carpeted
washboard is giggled which collects the higher gravity, denser materials
from the raw materials concentrates it in the folds of the washboard.
After putting many hundreds of pounds of material through such Dry Washers,
one then stops shoveling and allows the excess materials to work off of the
wash board, then the carpeting material is carefully lifted off of the
device (usually after unbolting) and the concentrated materials is dumped
in to buckets.
Usually the machine is reassembled and more raw materials are put through
the machine, the process continuing until all buckets are filled with
concentrated fill which hopefully contains much gold.
At the end of the day after digging stops, the contents of the buckets is
either panned next to a water source and the gold is retrieved and placed
in to glass jars, or if water is lacking tweezers is used to sort through
the contents of the buckets piece by piece.
What Gold / Silver / Copper Looks Like
If you are mining for a material and do not know what it looks like in all
of its forms, you are wasting your time and very likely throwing out and
discarding valuable materials.
A great deal of the gold that illegal miners sift through in the San Gabriel
Mountains is not recognized as being gold by the illegal miners, so much so
that the majority of gold that pass through their pans and illegal
sluice boxes is discarded. Being uninformed about what physical appearances
gold takes means that the illegal miners are only keeping the bright, shiny,
golden metal which is only a fraction of the gold that actually passes
through their hands.
So you need to research what things look like in the field, you need to
research everything you can about what you expect to find so that you can
recognize it when you do find it.
Requirements For Mining
There are going to be requirements for filing a claim so that you can legally
work a mine, among them being providing the agency responsible for filing your
claim needing your identification, residence, and other information. This can
be problematic, and even creating a corporate fake front to hide behind will
need to eventually wind down to identifying actual humans.
It is conceivable that you can provide faulty identification in your paperwork
however that is almost certainly illegal, and one of the goals of disappearing
in America is to eliminate any cause or reason for law enforcement or other
entities to look you over closely.
On the other hand you can encorporate, have a third party file the claim on
your behalf such as an attorney or other proxy which is legal
since your attorney may be authorized to provide a layer of administrative
assistance between you and local, State, or Federal entities which removes
from you the burden of dealing directly with incompetent fuckwits.
Exchanging Goods
Of course once you have gold, silver, or copper it will be of differing
percentages of purity, and finding companies who are willing to exchange
paper money for your previous materials will result in a spectrum of dollar
values per ounce of material you bring them. You will not get the Wall
Street dollar value so you should not expect that much. Your material is
only a certain, as-yet-unknown percentage of pure material so until your
material has been assayed and its trade value considered, you may not know
how much your final mine product is worth.
Chances are that there is a "mining community" of people in the
region who may not like you joining in the mining of the area. If other
miners are not hostile you could talk to them about where to market the
precious metals you extract. Chances are that small grocery stores and
mining equipment stores may accept mined gold or silver in exchange for
foods and equipment, you must research how best to utilize whatever precious
materials you extract.
Section 14: Montana Supreme Court Notes Ability to Track Everyone
Section 15: Hanging Out in the Mojave Desert -- How It Was Done
Please do not email me demanding that mining in the Angeles National Forest
is legal. I continue to get email from people who think it is because they see
other people doing it, or because they hear stories that the Forest Service
has told someone that mining is permitted. It is not, and I am tired of hearing
from people who have not done their homework on the issue and have not
contacted the U. S. Forest Service personally to find out.

subset: commoncrawl