Hark how the trumpet Thither doth call us, Where either pleasure Or death may befall us. Hail to the tumult ! Life’s in the field ! Damsel and fortress To us must yield. Bold is the venture. Costly the pay ! Gayly the soldier Marches away.
I have now seen 5+ different spy films, In which a CIA or MI6 spy has to breach a chainlink fence. An ordinary chainlink fence.
The Most Common Obstacle in the world.
There’s barb or razor wire up top that prevents our hero from just climbing it…So he or she has to breach it. And on FIVE SEPARATE OCCASIONS…I have seen the goofiest inventions in the world come out. $10,000 super-spy wrist watches with hidden lasers in them, super-secret hairpins with scissors in them made of magic cutting alloys, aerosol sprays that instantly oxidize and rust out a massive section of solid steel fencing (don’t breathe that spray) allowing the spy to just push out a Wile E. Coyote style hole of fencing…
Completely over-designed over-specific insanity that’d cost thousands of dollars, and would basically instantly betray the CIA or MI6 was behind the breach…
Of course no sane human being would ever use those techniques even if they existed. The one semi-plausible breech I’ve seen is in Fight Club Ed Norton and Brad Pitt toss a rug over the razor wire surrounding a medical facility so they can climb the fence… but even this strikes me as profoundly unideal… Would you really want to PLAN on risking nasty lacerations climbing OVER razor wire? That seems more like a desperate break-out trick. Not a Break-in trick.
Of course this is all insane because BREACHING A FENCE is maybe the most SOLVED problem out there, 80% of people reading this already have the tools to do it.
You just use wirecutters or a multitool. Ideally creating a single vertical slit so you can crawl through without the breach being visible unless you look very closely. (be sure to fold the slit back as you crawl so you don’t cut yourself on the jagged edges.
Often the crappiest $15 Chinese Multi-tool is up for the task (although test it out on a random fence on a walk before you gamble on it).
(Note that a “Leatherman” is just a good make of multitool, and outperforms even larger wire-cutters… Your cheepo crappy surplus multi-tool will take more elbow grease (if it works, test it))
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Almost everything on the pop-culture side of the tactical world is like this… There’s an obsession with ultra-expensive James Bond scifi inventions that double as a luxury brand to match your tuxedo… When in reality the cheapest rusty junk from your granddad’s tool shed probably gives you vastly more capability.
And even In the world of prepping, tacticool influences, camping, modern combat, and all matters “survival”, “guerilla”, and “outdoors adventure” there’s an intense focus on expensive kit.
All your favorite influencer are sponsored by various product sellers, and half the reason people watch them is for the vicarious or personal thrill of collecting expensive Gucci kit and showing off their rare or designer rifles and Military Artifacts.
Most will assemble load-outs, rigs, and rifles, far less as a preparation for disaster or war, or an exercise in capability expansion, and more as an artistic expression, fashion statement, or historical exercise… Whether they will admit it or not most of the people who buy Yugoslavian combat webbing, or archaic experimental 80s rifles meant for an upcoming war in the scifi future of 2005 have more in common with historical reenactors than they might care to admit… They just chose wars that didn’t happen towards the end of the cold war, instead of The American Revolution, 1812, or the Civil War.
It’s astrology for boys!
As such one could be forgiven for believing that the great wars of the 21st century to come, and the Urban Battlefield that much of the world is quickly becoming, is a “pay to win” combat-zone. And that unless one has close to 100,000 dollars for body Armour, thermal vision, night vision, precision optics, gucci rifles, and all manner of overpriced gadgets and gizmos that they are simply screwed in any 21st century conflict.
This is not the case. Indeed in some cases it is almost the opposite: given how mass surveillance defines the modern battlefield, there’s a lot of kit I wouldn’t want to use just for risk of dropping it and the Glowies tracking down the only 10-20 people who’ve ordered Czechoslovakian Mag-Pouches via NSA copies of online transaction records, or by just calling the 3 sellers who ever had them.
Put simply Skill, knowledge, resourcefulness, and a more than abundant paranoia are more overpowered than almost anytime since the neolithic period… Basic resourcefulness, daring, courage, B-Grade high-school shop-class craftiness, low level chemistry knowledge, basic boy-scout skills, physical fitness (tall order I know), and a nigh primitivist obsession with the pre-computer way of doing things… Is sufficient to achieve a shocking level of capability and inflict an extraordinary level of damage in any near-future conflict, tyrannical regime, or low intensity resistance.
The most important kit in any future conflict isn’t free. But it is near free.
Available at shockingly low prices from dollar-, convenience-, hardware-, surplus-, grocery-stores, and pawn shops… The necessary equipment and capabilities to fight a high impact Guerilla Campaign are available in almost any town of 20,000 almost anywhere in the western world.
If one Navigates to my Earlier “Warlord’s Reading List” you’ll find many listed works (not least published by the US, Canadian, British, and Swiss Governments) that give detailed guides to the manufacture of explosives, chemical weapons, rocket weapons, improvised firearms, homemade flamethrowers, etc… All from other publishers that I can gesture at without exposing me to legal risk and most of them largely available online in PDF form, or from Amazon, and sometimes from the governments themselves.
(though do check legalities of the works in your area before you store PDFs on your hard-drive, and get 10 years in prison in the UK or elsewhere… Just because the work was originally published by the government, doesn’t mean that same government won’t now arrest you for having it):
Those works will do a much better job than I can, and quite frankly you should not be following the Manufacturing instructions or legal advice of internet CatGirls anyway😽. (The 1960s Department of the Army however…)
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However for writers, preppers, wargamers, worldbuilders, future guerillas, etc. do note that Blackpowder, explosives, homemade firearms (primitive and rather complex), and WW1 grade chemical weapons, are all readily manufactured at extremely low price-points from ingredients widely available in an common grocery stores and hardware stores. Indeed many people every year die accidentally creating mustard gas, TAPT, nitroglycerin, and other chemical weapons and high sensitivity explosives during overzealous cleaning jobs, so trivial is it create.
All of them would rightly belong on this list (both in terms of usefulness, and cheapness of ingredients), if at the start I was not choosing to forgo the technical, legal, and moral questions involved in their inclusion.
Instead this list is going to focus on the mostly legal (not legal advice) and straightforward kit that would give a wide range of capability, offensive and defensive… whilst keeping it largely multi-use and low cost.
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You too can be a Tactical Espionage Dollar-Store Hobo for less than $1000… And I’m going to tell you over the next 116 pages (its that Long, I checked) in exquisite detail how to use all that kit in an tactical espionage environment.
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So pass Some of the savings along to me! Atleast use the free trial subscription!
Unlike your favorite influencers Dollar-Tree and your local Goodwill are not giving me kickbacks. If you think I’m adding value, you’ve got to support it yourself:
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Let me teach you the ways of the broke-ass hoodlum
The Dao of the Tactical Espionage Hobo
Across every society in history, there exist poor unfortunate souls. People who fall through the cracks, people forgotten by their government, their families, their communities, their Gods, people who could, and often do, just disappear.
You can slip into those cracks as well… You can stalk, crawl, and slither along those ditches just as invisibly.
you too can disappear.
If only you’re willing to give up the comforts of middle-class life and become a truly ridiculous sperg.
PART 1: Planning Like a Hobo
The Smartest Device: Exactly as Smart as you… as compared with the internet, which is always the lesser of you or the content creator you’re engaging with 😐🪞
1. Notepad and Pen ($2)
The pen is mightier than the sword. Not least because it is more concealable and less likely to create a bloody evidence trail (We will cover stabbing vs. slashing weapons in greater depth later)
But focusing on the primary functionality, a properly prepared Notebook: With redundant planning, makeshift maps, locations, b and c routes, public transportation timetables, trouble-shooting cheat-sheets, targets of opportunity, lock combinations for caches (you will forget if you’re stressed), checklists, range tables, little ww1 style homemade paper computers, preplanned mom-and-pop shops and stops if you need supplies (Chains are more likely to use facial recognition), phone numbers to call from a burner-phone or payphone if you get into trouble (yes they still exist), and the location of various payphones that still exist… while certainly not all necessary or useful for all operations… Will make or break you on any complex op.
Everything that you do on your device… ALL OF IT. Had been done right up to the 1990s on Paper. With zero risk that the NSA is going to be secretly reading your notes and spying on you.
You don’t need a Gucci device, apps, laser range finder, Kestrel, or any of the expensive breakable devices that are probably pinging out a signal or otherwise compromised… You can just draw a paper map, create range tables, give yourself the relevant cheat notes (what’s the local standard distance between streetlamps? that’s very useful to know for ranging), and copy down the local weather table… Then at the end of the opp you can burn the notepad leaving zero evidence.
And NOTE: always burn it. What you wrote on the top pages can be recovered from the bottom pages, and if you’re followed your enemies will dumpster-dive for a notebook or torn page. Legends tells of a KGB agent who merely crumpled a note and tossed it down a storm drain… His handler recovered it, ratted him out, and he was recalled to Moscow and shot… The last thing he saw was the water-damaged note, still legible.
2. Protractor Set ($3 to $15, Also Calculator $3)
Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and you can’t actually produce visuals of much value on paper without protractors.
Do you need to buy some Back-To-School protractors so you have at-least the same land-nav and note taking capabilities as a pre-1945 6th-Grader? Certainly.
Remember. We are doing things the old ways because your phone is going to instantly rat you out to the feds.
Believe it or not all the archaic things that they didn’t really teach you in school, but was still there as a weird legacy thing your teachers didn’t quite seem to understand? Yeah, all of those were skills put into school curriculum between 1864 and 1939 to try to find and prepare promising Junior officers, right down to matters Vegetable, Animal and Mineral. This is why you know what a Cumulonimbus cloud is… once upon a time that 3rd grade curriculum on weather was supposed to build to the point where a highschool graduate (then only 30% of the population, equivalent of a modern BA) could become a midshipmen, or start a pilot’s program…
Try to grab a-hold of old pre-70s textbooks if you see them at a thrift store. Flip through them with this in mind.
Likewise understanding parabolas and triangulating angles is not really relevant to any modern industry, but are highly relevant to oldschool military navigation and artillery work… likewise grade-school music classes were directly applicable to producing military bands, likewise the weird primacy of Geography as a subject? Very applicable to 19th and early 20th century empires… Now that you know you can lament the lack of discipline and DEI-ification of education.
Once they taught military history instead of holocaust and slavery history… But then it is normal to teach children about the people their teachers want them to emulate… not the people they hope you’ll forget.
3. Local Paper Maps! Road Maps, Tourist Maps, Bicycle Maps, HOARD PAPER MAPS (Free in Most States, $5 in Canada, $20 for a good Road Atlas of your area)… Stock up on paper transit schedules when you see them
Now The Greatest Map is the map you draw yourself.
Napoleon, T. E. Lawrence, the Great Explorers… Cartographers have an outsized place in the history of warfare…. Not least because their personal maps are the only ones that have the action in the center of the map, not on the edge or divided across 3 separate pages (and somehow where you most need to see will always be on the edge or the fold of the map) also just the process of making a map forces you to encode the space in your head correctly… not the weird half map your mind forms if you’ve just taken the same route through an area a dozen times, but the actual density of the space.
And understanding that is vital.
As we’ve seen from the war in Ukraine, modern warfare is defined by stealth on the scale of tens of kilometers. A 30 kilometer insertion on foot taking circuitous non-standard routes is now the norm for even the lowest conscript or grunt in modern warfare on the Ukrainain battlefeild, and as I covered in my piece on Luigi Mangione, you can do everything right on an urban operation, and if you aren’t doing a lengthy insertion and exfiltration you’re just going to be AI tracked backed to your home or hotel via police cameras… The only difference between Rural Warfare and Urban espionage is whether the cameras and drones drop their explosive when they find you, or whether the AI follows you back to your house.
And when you’re taking the most obscure, circuitous, and non-standard route… It’s really easy to get lost or give yourself away because you’re turned around. So you need a purpose dedicated map, and the best one is going to be one you draw yourself…
But to make your own maps, you need source maps… and unless you want Google leaking that you’ve been spending hours staring at the same Defense Minister’s House for hours on end… you’re going to want to source that info from something offline.
Most cities, states, etc. Have extensive PDF maps on their websites that you can stockup on months if not years in advance of needing them for any complex planning, often with very relevant and useful information such as obscure walking trails and bicycle paths for concealed insertions, likewise almost all of them give paper maps away for free at city halls, visitor information centers, and often random public buildings.
The big two to grab are the street indexes and regional bike maps. The Street indexes are very useful for looking obscure sites up in wider context without betraying that you’re looking at them… Just one file you store locally. And Bike maps are the exact perfect scale for any tactical operation since they assume you’re traveling 10-30 kilometers, and they come complete with all the obscure non-road pathways. Though be aware many paths depending on the metro area are common mugging locations at night, and as such are popular spots to locate police surveillance cameras… so when you get the map you should look up some prominent pathway intersections on Google Street-view and see how aggressive the surveillance is.
Now If you’re operating in the backwoods or the mountains you probably want to order yourself some topographic maps of your area, but for most urban, suburban, and rural operations, a good road-atlas and local trails map is going to do vastly more for you and be vastly easier to source… If you ever find a good Topographic atlas of your area or if you live near a prominent trail system like the pacific crest or apalachian trail, try to get their detailed trail guides/maps… But generally topo maps are a complete expensive pain to source… Likely cheaper and easier to just spend the money at a print shop and print off maps you make with various software.
Compas…
“Ok, OK We get it! Cut the crap and get to the weapons and interesting stuff! Besides we’re all just going to use a Burner Phone or GPS anyway”
Oh? And that burner phone? Assuming you do everything right, it never gets within’ 12 miles of your house, and you download all your offline mapping to save it locally… Where are you going to download those offline maps? A Cafe? Aww gee I bet that when you’re at a crime-scene the tyrannical regime you’re resisting TOTALLY isn’t going to just pull the cell-tower records, see that a cellphone pinged right at the crime-scene without a SIM card but with a unique MAC number… And Gee, I bet the NSA and comparable Teir-One Intel Services totally don’t have hidden contracts with ISPs and tech companies to keep records of MAC address pings over wifi… and I bet that totally wouldn’t lead them directly to the cafe where they could pull up your face on camera…
I mean they don’t do that for the ordinary criminals they consider their client class, so the hypothetical tyrannical regime you need to resist totally wouldn’t pull out those tricks for an enemy they perceive to be threatening their very existence… And I bet they totally don’t have backdoors within the factory software of the cellphone making it ping out over bluetooth identifying data.
Your devices can be tracked via wifi handshakes… Not wifi logins, handshakes. When you open up your wifi settings and see all the networks you COULD login to? How does your computer know that network is out there? Those wifi networks are sending identifier signals to query FOR a password, and your laptop? cellphone? tablet? They’re all sending queries and counter queries with THEIR unique identifiers. The NSA doesn’t need you to even login to wifi, it doesn’t even need you to have location service enabled, or even have a gps device… They can just track you down the street triangulating your exact location as you move via the wifi queries that your laptop or 15 year old clam-shell phone is sending out…
Are you really going to gamble everything on the Idea that your “Airplane Mode” is 100% honest? And even if it was, it’s been confirmed that the second you turn your phone OFF airplane mode the first thing it sends out is a packet with all your location info. Just because your phone isn’t sending a signal doesn’t mean it isn’t RECEIVING gps signals from the satellites, calculating it’s position, and that it won’t send that info the second you turn “Airplane Mode” off.
And though I haven’t seen it confirmed, I’m almost certain that the same is the case for Bluetooth devices… That bluetooth devices ping out unique identifier numbers even when the Bluetooth is supposedly “off” and that you can be Geo-tracked by the handshakes of devices recognizing your device’s unique identifier…
Indeed it isn’t beyond comprehension that if you have, for example, a GPS from a prominent manufacturer or other device that just so happens to have bluetooth functionality so you can sync it with your phone, that one of their contracts with the Department of Defense includes a little know carve-out for the NSA, that the second your gps gets in range of another phone, not yours, with the GPS manufacturer’s app… It sends out a little packet including all the data it’s stored of where you’ve been the entire time you’ve used the GPS…
If your GPS can send any signal, even a few feet, you never know if it isn’t storing your GPS data and constantly waiting to send a packet with all the records of your whereabouts.
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Printers are even worse, Your little GPS unit might be compromised via Bluetooth, your printer on the other hand natively has wifi connections, bluetooth, you have to install the print manufacturer’s Drivers on your computer… Printing Is a nightmare, and that’s before we get into the Printer Tracking Dots that let any printed page be traced back to individual printer that produced them.
So what are you going to do?
You’re going to take your little fucking protractor and you’re going to apply it to your little fucking notebook, and you’re going to DRAW!!! your little fucking grid squares with your little fucking ruler, and copy the necessary data over so that…
4. Compasses ($2 to $200)
Compasses come in 3 types.
The First are finely crafted and brilliantly manufactured precision implements that will let you navigate blind dozens if not 100s of miles in complete darkness through the wilderness and then windup at your target, having varied little more an a few percent of a degree off course… A good Compass forces you to do the math and calculate the variance of magnetic north from true north and add or subtract that from your bearing, many even have little notches that let you synch a little hand on your baseplate for this purpose… Good compasses have the option to pay $30-40 extra and order them with tritium radioactive glowing elements for night ops that emit constant radioactive light but fade with a half-life of 12 year, or you can cheap out that $30-40 with mere glow in the dark paint. And they come with lensatic sighting wires so you can sight a bearing off a distant hill, tree, or position at arm’s length with precision and call in and correct accurate artillery.
If you really loved one of your outdoorsy male relatives, a good compass would be an a Christmas present they’d treasure forever, and would be a marker of profound love.
However I’m going to assume you’re a broke loser and consequently no one loves you and as such you aren’t getting a $200 good compass… And instead are going to have to go in Hobo Style with a cheap compass:
The Difference between Precise Compasses, and Cheap Compasses
Now as any gun-owner can tell you, a One Minute of Angle (MOA) difference is equivalent to 1 inch at 100 yards. This means one Degree of angle is 60 minutes (and then this either reverts to base 10 and decimal points of minutes, or continues down to seconds of angle… AT RANDOM depending on the application, and they will yell at you about this) and yes this fucks with calculators, makes any complex math a pain (this is why the army uses the Military Reference Grid system, which is really cool and good for calculating artillery, but you will almost certainly never use as a non-state actor— But anyway, One Degree of Angle is 60 minutes of angle. This means a one degree difference in bearing is a 5 foot difference at 100 yards (yes you should be memorizing this logic, it will come in handy later), that means that it is a 50 ft difference at 1000 yards.
So the difference between a very good Compass which is accurate to 1 degree on a long trip, vs. a cheepo compass which is vaguely accurate to 10-20 degrees, is the difference between being within about 300 ft (100ish yards/meters) of your target on a 6 km insertion across a desert, fields, forests, or water, vs. 3000-6000 ft (1-2 kilometers) off your target with the crappy compass… Now with good land nav skills, and any decent terrain features you wouldn’t have to go anywhere near 6000 yards (roughly 6 kilometers in crappy Canadian math) relying on just a Bering. But if you’re way out there and just might have to travel that far, especially at night (remember: when does tactical action happen?), you might really want a good compass.
Again if you remember (as all shooters do) that one minute of angle is 1 inch at 100 yards, you can re-derive this logic with simple crappy Canadian math, and reason out what your margin of error is going to be if you’re ever stranded or in a pinch, or tocalculate how big a search pattern you might have to employ at the target, given that your compass is crap.
The Second type of compass, the one you’re going to buy, costs 2 to 20 dollars and lets you vaguely know which way is North. If you spend 20-40 bucks, you’ll get down to being within a 10-20 degree margin of error, but their accuracy is always painfully less precise than you’d like (this is where land nav skills, terrain identification, and use of your map comes in, a bad compass with a map and identifiable terrain features is actually fairly decent for nav). However very bad compasses, that vaguely let you know which way is north are actually basically all you need for most urban espionage operations. for the vast majority of Urban, suburban, and even most Rural (but not wilderness) tactical espionage operations you already have lines with a known declination, they’re called roads, if you can see a road and see your map, you have nearly exact compass berrings so long as you don’t get yourself turned around 180 degrees… which is where a compass that vaguely points north comes in.
And note you WILL get turned around. If you’re operating at night, in inclement weather, and taking back streets through subdivisions along winding streets that all look the same you WILL lose track of which way is north, with no way to find it again on an overcast night… Remember the more it looks like Silent Hill the more concealed you are from the Camera-net and random witnesses and the more degraded any information leak is…
Perfect Cloak and Dagger Weather
This is why it is absolutely necessary to get SEVERAL cheap surplus store compasses and have them on you in various pockets, bracelets, etc. Get some string and use the little lanyard hole they come with that you can wear one like dog-tags between your layers… Otherwise immediately after the point of contact, when you’re hyped on adrenaline and just want to get away, you will tear off through obscure winding subdivision and cull-de-sack streets and paths at top speed, not sure where you’re going but just wanting to get away, with no sun, moon, or stars, and not a single road traveling at a normal angle… And then wind-up right back at the scene of the crime 20 minutes later having gone in a very large circle. This happens way more often than you’d think.
You don’t need a 200 dollar tritium lensatic compass for most low level stuff, but you do need to reliably know which way is north to within 25-45 degrees.
Which brings us to the 3rd type of Compasses: Compasses that DO NOT reliably point north. A shocking number of these are sold every year right off the hardware or surplus store shelf… But you want to make sure your compass seeks out north with some force, that its magnetized with some strength… Don’t buy weak compasses, they will only get weaker… And you want to consistently check and compare your compasses with maps and each-other, because you will be amazed at how magnetism can drift, face-plates can shift, and the you can get outside that 25-45 degree window very quickly. you also want to double and triply check any compass you mount to anything else like a vehicle or other piece of equipment, because being placed next to metal will throw compasses, usually this can just be fixed by remounting the compass in a different position, but check and recheck often. Look up the Azimuth (direction) of your street on a map and write it down til you’ve memorized it so you can check and recheck your compasses… This goes for your good compasses too.
4. Cheap Aliexpress/Old Pawnshop GPS ($25-50)
If you go into any pawnshop, onto ebay, or pop onto AliExpress you will find tons of old GPS untis from the 90s, 2000s, and early 2010s, or new cheap chinese knock-off Handheld GPS units… that don’t support Bluetooth or phone synching, and aren’t capable of sending any signal except via a USB cable.
They don’t have much if any in the way of convenience features, however they will give you your position in Longitude and Latitude (and they might even have a setting in UTM), and they might even let you set a target position( by entering the latitude and longitude), or lock-in a return target position by locking in your current position…
Now you’ll almost certainly have to use them with a paper map (and you might have to pre-prepare that paper map with a grid and the longitudes and latitudes since most maps are conspicuously missing what should be standard grid features), and you’ll want compasses for if the GPS fails and for general redundancy.
But these are actually relatively secure in that they’re so low tech they can’t betray you and are really useful for confirming your position, especially if you have to venture into the wilderness or do any precision sighting that requires your precise location (for example, for makeshift artillery)… but remember they almost certainly have some memory function that’s tracking where they’ve been internally. FOR GOD’S SAKE DO NOT DROP THEM AT A CRIME SCENE.
USE YOUR FUCKING LANYARDS AND TIE THEM OFF TO YOUR CLOTHING.
Likewise you’ll almost certainly want to destroy any that you used for anything major after the fact (with high temperature fire, Silicon doesn’t ignites til 450°celcius). That’d be a slam dunk investigation if they found one of these at your house, pulled the data, and had a cute little time stamped trail of you going from your home, to the crime, then back… And even had the exact timestamps to pull security camera footage from random storefronts that maybe were only stored locally.
However, as long as you USE THE FUCKING LANYARDS… These are basically like having a current position marker on your map once you’ve gotten competent with using a text longitude and latitude reading. (Also be sure to check them and your map once you’ve gotten it, and either change their settings to UTM or whatever system the map uses… or copy a grid with your protractor and set of the longitude and latitude onto your paper map)
5. WristWatch ($20 do not spend more, do not get a metal band)
THIS IS IMPORTANT:
Your perception of Time dilates with adrenaline and stress. Minutes seem like hours, hours seem like minutes… Many a bank-robber has stayed 20-30 minutes in a bank that they planned to be in and out in 3 minutes, because they couldn’t perceive how much time had passed. Likewise many soldiers have thought to extract from a position early, thinking hours have passed, when the artillery they called in had still not landed.
The tighter your chest gets, the more your nerves start to get to you, the more often you should be looking at your watch forcing yourself to perceive time objectively, not subjectively.
You want the cheapest wristwatch that will reliably tell time.
Remember your phone isn’t going with you, or if you have it in a faraday bag you certainly aren’t going to pull it out and power it on to check the time… Ideally your watch will have some water resistance and tell you the date, and have a backlight for in darkness. That’s all you need. If it breaks during a mission you just press on without it, then buy another at a pharmacy after the action.
The big thing is you DO NOT want to have a metal wristband, ideally you want rubberized plastic… If you get the watch caught whilst bicycling, motorcycling, rock-climbing, etc. You want the watchband to break. You don’t want it to hold on and de-glove your hand. (don’t google that injury)
The main thing you’re going to be using a watch for is to know the timing of sunup, sundown, local public transit timing, and traffic timing. Look these up and write these down in your little notebook.
You’ll want to know-when you’ll have the run of things with no witnesses, when there’ll be a crowd that’ll make it hard to track you, how many hours you’ll have to wait between the one and the other, that type of thing)… Time is your second biggest weapon, after distance, against AI surveillance via facial recognition and Full Body Bio-metrics… The more time you can spend waiting out of sight during rush hour, the more moving targets the surveillance net has to differentiate you from. Cameras can only differentiate 70k at the best of times… If you do something spicy at 2 am in the rain when the surveillance net can only differentiate 2-10k, travel 10-20km over the next two hours via a non-direct pathway, wait 8 hours under a bridge, and then start extracting back home at Noon when everyone’s moving about on their lunchbreak… There’s no way the Camera-net can tell you from the thousands of false positives it just generated during the course of the day…. However you do have to put yourself in a set of people large enough that the AI can generate those false positives. Your “wanted level” won’t decay by waiting out in a town of 800, or by standing still next to the scene of the crime.
Speaking of while we’re on the topic:
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Part 2: AI Evasion, Basic Hobo Tools
6. Snacks and Drinks ($10-20)
(Edit) BRING WATER.
Map out in your little notebook where water-fountains are available or other water sources. most parks have at-least a hose access you might have to boil. Note: you can’t boil urban water sources from the ground (Rivers, streams, puddles, etc) to make it drinkable they have petrol, pesticides, and other runoff… Though some lakes like the great lakes are generally potable if they aren’t in algae bloom and you boil them… You can generally trust your eyes, nose taste-buds, and common sense for this once you’ve boiled water (But as a general preparedness thing remember that the great lakes and your local lakes won’t be drinkable if the Grid goes down: Fecal Runoff, storm and sewage emergency overflows, trash, and engine byproducts will all become major health risks in any griddown scenario (Typhoid, Dysentry, and Cholera have massacred more cities and armies than artillery)… Also bring sugar-based drink crystals… This is the most weight-efficient way to access calories and salts (but taste the boiled water first! Don’t cover up bad water with Kool-Aid).
Every major Fast-Food and Retail Chain is using AI facial recognition and internal data analytics via their security cameras and then selling that data on. And that facial recognition is radically more accurate that the police surveillance net because it is lower mounted to the ground, has consistent lighting, and you basically HAVE to look directly into the camera because you have to look at the cashier if you want to purchase anything.
The united Healthcare Assassin (Luigi Mangione allegedly) waiting in line at Starbucks.
This can be evaded by only going to mom and pop shops, little independent cafes, diners, and convenience stores… But even with them there’s a moderate chance that they outsource their security to some Surveillance as a Service cloud camera company… In which case that company is AI analyzing that data, running facial recognition tech, and selling that data onwards… For long multiday operations or campaigns you’ll probably HAVE to go to stores, in which case only going to mom and pop shops, independents, and farmers markets will radically minimize that exposure… (though seriously consider just bringing everything you need if you can, or staging food stashes in advance)
But realistically for any short or high exposure work, eating and drinking are choke-points where you can be surveilled… Choke-points you can simply avoid across hours or even days by bringing your own snacks.
$10-20 spent in advance on food you had to eat anyway can RADICALLY lower your exposure, and keep you awake and high energy even in miserable conditions.
Also Note: When you’re doing something high risk or dangerous, Don’t be a body-conscious wilting violet and bring along SUGAR FREE drinks and snacks… Weight is at a premium and so is energy, and if you value your life, limb, and liberty you’ll bring along something energy dense and sweet…. You’re already traveling 10s of kilometers and standing out in the rain and cold, you’re burning off your high-calorie snacks, and you won’t be getting healthy fresh produce in prison.
Also Also Note: Don’t dispose of your trash within Camera sight. Surveillance is relatively inaccurate, but as we saw with Luigi Mangione, once he bought a Starbucks coffee it was easy for them to find the coffee cup then presto, they had a really good shot at getting his DNA, possibly finger-pints, and probably even his first name if he assumed the girl behind the counter would forget and just told her his real first name.
Remember you want to pack out your garbage, burn it, or dispose of it somewhere where you’re doubly and triply sure there’s no security cameras… Littering is evil, but if there was ever a time it might be worth it, it’d be when you need to make evidence disappear (but if you’re already doing that, burn it anyway).
7. Entertainment (MP3 Player $40, Thriftstore Paperback $2.50, Cigarettes $8-15, Gameboy? Newspaper?)
While we’re on the subject of AI evasion, you need some way to kill time outdoors for cumulative hours with zero digital footprint, Ideally this will also double as a “Look Away from Me” tool to avoid having to speak to or interact with anyone.
On a long enough op you might be able to sleep… But realistically you’re going to be sitting, standing, or pacing about in the cold and rain (remember you want cold and rain… It radically degrades camera feeds, and gives you an easy excuse to layer up and hide your face) for really awkward stretches of hours, 4-6 hours from 2am to commuter hours, certainly isn’t enough that you’re going to bring a sleeping bag and tarp and try to catch some ZZZ’s in a downpour, and you probably aren’t going to bring a sleeping pad that you can sleep on the concrete under a bridge, but it is also long enough that just staring at a wall is going to be painful and unpleasant…
An old-school MP3 Player with zero other functionality and no Bluetooth reciever is by far the best for this since you can synch up your music, audio-book, etc. Is goof for hours of entertainment without getting painfully ancy, you can keep yourself alert and have your eyes scanning, or Lie down and feign sleeping (no one will bother you) whilst not actually having to be set up for actually getting sleep… this will also avoid cramps that come with just standing or sitting for hours on end, though note you’ll want some sort of pad if its cold enough to not just have the heat sucked out of you, otherwise you can just rough it wit a backpack as a pillow (don’t kink your neck).
By contrast a Paperback or signal free gaming device (oldschool gameboy, etc.) advertise that you are awake and alert, but are more useful for daylight and warm weather operations where just pretending to sleep might attract a “move along”. Newspapers still work in daylight urban environments and are very good for concealing your face, though I strongly recommend if you use them buying an international paper like the Jerusalem Post or London Times… The exact newspaper won’t be visible from Cameras, but socially it’ll get you some deference to be reading an international paper and throw a investigator if they actually do manage to ask someone what you were reading…
The right operation combined with the right paper might actually get a “Back-off” if an investigator becomes convinced you’re associated with X or Y government. However in smaller communities someone under 70 reading a local paper or sitting around in a park with a paper WILL attract attention both friendly and unfriendly depending on how suspicious you are.
Likewise Paperbacks and Newspapers are light and make good kindling (don’t bring a book you’re attached to, and certainly don’t bring anything heavy)
Don’t take up smoking if you don’t already, but Cigarettes or vapes are good for 10-20 minute delays where you need an excuse to simply stand on a street corner. Nowhere on earth is just standing outside with a cigarette odd, even at shockingly late hours now that norms around indoor smoking, property values, and rent agreements are so aggressive. You can stand outside at 4am on a school-night smoking a cigarette in a Quiet residential neighborhood, and you won’t stand out… Hell you probably won’t even be the only one.
The “Anti-Smoking” crowd are in the running with the Pro-Masking crowd for busy-bodies who’ve contributed the most to espionage and OPSEC.
Though NOTE: Just as with the garbage from your snack you want to pack out your cigarette butts and garbage… the brand of cigarette you smoke as well as the DNA remnants on the butts has been used to track people down… Hell simply a distinctive brand on a butt identifying the killer is a plot point in several different Noir and Detective stories, it’s such a tale old as time.
8. Faraday Bags ($30 for 5 pack)
A Faraday bag is a bag sewn with a metal cover within it that (if its working) blocks Electronic signals and creates an artificial deadzone in which not signal can go in or out. It’s basically the equivalent of wrapping your devices in Tinfoil (yes that actually works, the “Tinfoil Hat” might actually be something that’d work against some hypothetical electromagnetic weapon if it actually existed). It also protects your devices from an EMP.
If you’re doing anything private your phone should just stay at home, indeed you should allow it to drain down regularly… neglect to charge it, and build a pattern of just having your phone drained and powered off in you home for hours and days at a time. Indeed you should build a pattern of putting your devices in Faraday Bags when you’re not using them… This \ will make you more suspicious on the aggregate, but then you’re reading this you’re already on a list, however it will make it vastly less suspicious when during a major crime your phone was powered off, battery drained, and the glowies at the NSA can’t tell where you were. Information theory is based around variances from a baseline, and if your default is to have a phone powered off battery dead in a Faraday bag at home, then it being powered-off battery-dead isn’t differentiating information.
And NO Burner Phones won’t Protect you if you don’t use a Faraday bag. The Burner will still ping the cell-towers wherever you go and the cops will know who you are from the metadata.
Now Faraday bags can also be used when traveling or even during operations… And on the face of it they’re excellent. Blocking SIM, Bluetooth, Wifi, and GPS signals… So your phone physically cannot ping cell towers, can’t handshake wifi routers, and can’t even Bluetooth handshake other Bluetooth devices… AND it’s not triangulating your position from the GPS satellites and recording it that it can just ping out where you’ve been back to Google or Apple the second it reconnects because even the phone itself didn’t know where it was, however there are some catches:
You really want to TEST your Faraday bags to make sure they do work and you didn’t buy duds.. Start a phone-call with your friend on speaker phone. Put the phone in the Faraday bag and see if the call drops, synch it playing some music to your bluetooth speakers and see if the music stops when it goes in the bag. Hook up your phone to WiFi and start playing a YouTube video on speaker, then put the phone in the bag and see if the video stops… Start recording a path on your GPS app, put your phone in the Faraday bag, then go for a walk, check to see if you recorded the path when you get back from the walk or if your GPS generated an error. You want to test each type of signal: Cell Tower, Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS… On each Faraday bag you get to be confident. And if you’re doing anything of Real Concern you might want to double wrap it.
Your phone is recording other signals and metrics! Your little internal Compass is probably confused by the metal in the Bag, however the Accelerometers that detect when your phone is tilting and how many steps you’ve walked for your pedometer? That’s still working! Your microphone? That’s still picking up the ambient sound. Your Cameras? Well they can’t see outside the bag, but they might be detecting little changes in ambient light. How much you want to bet one of the nerds at the NSA is able to run a little AI program that, even if they don’t know WHERE you’ve been, are able to draw out just how much you’ve traveled, whether or not you took the highway from the ambient sound, and cross reference that with your internal clock that they could then try to use AI to match that information to various camera feeds either put up by the police or being sold on by major chain retailers?
Faraday bags are a very useful tool, and provide a lot of capability and security at the operational and strategic level… If you’re doing anything multi-day or even a months long trip, or are “going underground” you need phones, burner and otherwise…. And so Faraday bags are quickly becoming standard pepper kit on a par with Guns, Beans, Ammo, and ugly surplus green clothing… But they aren’t magic. Even though they’re vastly better than any software solution or “burner phone” in that you can SEE whether or not the physical bag is physically blocking the signal, and know there’s not some NSA or hacker backdoor that leaking all the info anyway, your phone is still a surveillance device leaking everything about you.
For this reason at the operational and Strategic level you want to make sure your phone is DRAINED before you put it in a Faraday bag, like run a YouTube video over a bluetooth sound system til its at zero DEAD… And then you want to try turning it back on again a few times… Even this however might not be truly drained, because phones are black boxes, there might be a little system keeping 10-20% of the battery in reserve to run the sensors and keep tracking you… (ever notice sometimes your phone seems to start up way faster and sometimes way slower? If its faster its because it was never truly OFF) For this reason at the strategic and operational level you probably want to drain and bag your phone DAYS before you truly need to be private.
And at the Tactical Level, you almost certainly want to leave your phone where it can’t compromise you. That might be in a vehicle, or at home, or in a stash site…. but don’t let it get within miles or hours of you doing anything truly risky. Your phone belongs Nowhere on an Infiltration or Exfiltration. Use your little fucking notebook instead! Write down the numbers you might need to call from a payphone (and the locations of payphones in your metro)
And Any smart device you’ve totally actually secured and you’re telling yourself you simply HAVE to use on an op because of some app or other… Draw up a list of every sensor on the thing and then seriously ask yourself if you couldn’t just do it old school with pen and paper, and a few hours tutorial… remember, every single thing that needs to be done in modern warfare was done in ww2 with little slide computers. The only exceptions are drones and you should have dedicated non-cellphone hardware for those.
You pull out your little fucking notebook and your little fucking protractor set and you start drawing yourself a little fucking slide ruler and cheat-sheet and visual aids…
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There’s actually a shocking number of ways to obscure your face in a manner that really destroys the recognition potential of Cameras, but are almost entirely socially acceptable or seasonally appropriate.
Remember that AI surveillance systems are not using multi-thousand dollar 12+ megapixel super-cameras, indeed they couldn’t store the video footage if they did (those produce MASSIVE files). They aren’t getting Airport biometric style closeup images of your face, and they certainly aren’t getting retinal scans. Under normal conditions police surveillance peaks out at about 70,000 it can differentiate moment to moment, however facial recognition can rise to 2-10 mil Under good lighting, close up shots, faces which are already in a mugshot database, and white faces especially (which both are highly variable AND reflect a lot of light).
Adding even a baseball cap or hood to obscure your face outdoors radically reduces the amount of information that is leaking frame to frame, however more aggresive obscuring methods, neck gaitors which can cover you lower face, Cloth Covid masks (many of these were developed and are still sold which don’t prevent easy breathing), sunglasses or other fake glasses… All of these damage the information leaking from your face.
You “Could” travel hundreds of miles and cross state/country-lines to increase the set of potential people AI would need to check you against into the 10s or 100s of millions… But the same effects as hours of travel and complication, can be achieved with simple clothing. If under perfect conditions an AI could hypothetically differentiate 10,000,000…. You can start shaving off those zeros with simply clothing choices.
Make sure the case comes with the Mirror! You need that!
10. FacePaint ($10-15)
A staple of Scout and Cadet “Night Games”, military action everywhere, and not a few Airsoft weekends. These are highly useful for rural ops where you don’t want your glowing pale face giving you away in a treeline… It’s also useful for AI evasion.
The two groups that are hardest for AI to differentiate are Black women and Asian women. In the case of Asian women there’s the non-PC explanation behind this "They really do objectively all look alike", but the larger reason is almost certainly a much smaller training Dataset (women are arrested at 10% the rate of men, and Asian women even less so)… Even as the total set of “all Asian women” is a set of BILLIONS (meanwhile there are only 750 million whites total on the high end (375 million white women)…
But the reason Black women are so hard to differentiate, whereas white women are relatively simple, has nothing to do with that… black women get arrested very often, and there are relatively few total of the African American mix/shade especially (maybe only 20-100 million women GLOBALLY have the uniquely African American “Chocolate” color and features resulting from the average 20% white admixture)…
Rather the reason blacks are hard to differentiate is their skin just reflects less light.
Remember the information that is leaking is physical light photons hitting your physical features and then reflecting and implanting that into a physical camera lens.
Reducing the amount of light that is reflecting in and of itself is making it harder for the AI to identify you…
And also going about in brown/black-face might very well make it misclassify you or generate as wrong description, if not a complete dropping of the case when they think it’s just more low-priority ethnic crime. Just be sure to also bring a disposable wetnap so you can quickly remove the face-paint using the same mirror with which you first applied.
Remember even if you don’t feel you can get away with a full White Chicks race-swap, a few lines or highlights with face-paint that you subsequently remove is destroying information, and causing the AI to produce hallucinations.
11. Colored Tape (mostly Black, Also Orange, $5)
First of all, All your tools you’re going to use at night, or that come in black or whatever… You want to go over with a Stripe of Bright Orange tape, or another bright florescent color. You have no idea how trivial it is to drop a Black wrench or screwdriver in the woods or mud at night… And it’s gone. Any tool or device that is going to be store in a bag or carrying case you want to make as visible as possible for yourself when you do take it out…
By contrast anything that’s naturally visible on your person you want to use black tape to make it INVISIBLE.
Take a look at Tyler Robinson’s alleged sneaking outfit?
What is wrong with it? Why is this a mistake?
The Graphic on his shirt is immediately identifying from camera to camera.
Imagine him in a crowd of 300-1000, There’s going to be a lot of people who are dressed very similarly… Maybe less so in Utah, but blue jeans? A black shirt? Black Baseball cap? It’s perfectly generic, in even a small crowd there are dozens that look just like him, and unless you have a constant camera angle on him, it’s very easy to get him confused with another that’s dressed just the same. This is true of a person looking at the footage, and this is true of AI.
Black and darks are great colors for sneaking, depending on the environment even the human eye… Let alone crappy econo-cameras, will really struggle to tell the difference between Black, navy, and dark green… In a way that you’d never struggle to differentiate bright white, baby blue, and pink. Almost ANY dark shirt might plausibly be Robinson’s Shirt… Except for the MASSIVE BRIGHT GRAPHIC on the front of it.
Any graphic, logo, pattern, racing stripe, etc. Can differentiate you in a way that a plain back shirt cannot. Imagine you see the back of a black t-shirt clearly… You have no idea whether that black shirt has a pattern on the front or not, functionally it could be any plain black shirt, or any patterned black shirt, and if you see it only partially at a distance or from an angle, you probably can’t even tell if it has a pattern. You may not even be able to tell what type of shirt it is: Hoodie? Turtle-neck? Plain Long Sleeve? The dark color even makes kinda hard to draw out the shape… Enough light might not be reflecting to draw out a good impression of the folds and shape.
However the second you can see a pattern? A Logo? A racing stripe? YOU can immediately differentiate that shirt from every other shirt, maybe ONE other guy in the entire metro-area is wearing a “Iron Maiden: The Trooper” Hoodie that day.
Likewise if you have bright zippers or colorful buttons you want to tape those over.
You can outright lose immediately from wearing the wrong item of clothing if it has a logo or pattern that uniquely identifies you. If you’re wearing a Bob’s Auto-Repair of Scottsdale Tshirt, and your dad is Bob… You gave the game away. But likewise if you have the logo of a former employer, or there’s a unique pattern on an article of clothing you ordered special… IF those black boots or that jacket is actually some elite designer gear you had to order online, or that T-shirt is a craft-made Etsy design… They could track down the manufacturer and go into the credit card records of who purchased from them. That probably won’t work if you bought it 10 years ago, but if you got the Jacket for Christmas this year or last then your mom’s credit card is going to be in shortlist of purchasers, which they can then cross-reference with who lives in the metro-area, who’s of X-Ethnicity, etc. And presto! You’re in a shortlist of maybe 1-2 dozen…
So what you want to do is use dark, or otherwise matching tape on any identifying pattern on your clothing, and don’t use reflective or glossy tape (the point is to consume light, not reflect it) if your shirt has a logo, or your boots have a reflective elements or your jeans have a design… Or you have bright buttons or a bright zipper, a little bit of black non-reflective tape is going to be shaving a lot of AI’s ability to differentiate and track that item of clothing.
Also do NOT wear bright shirts, you might think on a bright day this could have an advantage especially in the South and southwest where people wear brighter colors, however if you are doing exciting tactical things and get mud, engine oil, blood, etc. on your bright white or baby blue hoody that suddenly becomes an obvious and identifying pattern. Thus the lightest you generally want to go is grey or brown.
Likewise you should be looking at your shoes and the pattern of bright elements there, and covering them up with tape, or maybe even spray-paint (also try to buy black or dark running shoes instead of white, as basically all lighter running shoes are going to have some identifiable pattern, or reflective element).
Tape can also be used to hide Identifying markings on various vehicles in creative ways that are left as an exercise to the reader
But seriously… Double and tripply check your outfit, go over it with a flashlight. It is amazing how many random reflective elements get incorporated into outdoor gear, and these can simply glow if a camera has an IR illuminator, and suddenly instead of looking for a guy in a “black hoodie” the AI in the cameras are looking for a “Guy in a black hoodie with a glowing triangle on his shoulder”
Speaking of…
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12. Baking Soda and Vinegar detergent ($5 total)
Now Ideally for an Op you want to wear non-descript clothing, that you bought with cash, years ago… And Ideally, if you’re really paranoid, you want to run it through the washing machine machine a few times with no detergent to try and strip all the fabric brighteners that makes clothing glow under infrared (try to never wash tactical clothing with anything but water, or at most plain soap, no detergents).
But you aren’t wearing NIR compliant tactical camouflage clothing for an urban op, or at-least you certainly aren’t if you value your freedom, you want to remain inconspicuous and blend in, and non-standard elite tacticool guici camo-kit won’t do that for you.
So instead to minimize the Ir glow of your favorite Tactical-Espionage Thrift-Store clothing, you’re going to wash it with Baking Soda and Vinegar.
Remember you want to do the one step, then the other… put your load in the laundry, add the baking soda, wash 10-20 minutes till the baking soda has soaked through, then add the vinegar for the last half of the wash. This will also cause the reaction to be slower and to go out the plumbing if you accidentally add to much, not suds out the lids of your washer.
If it smells like a fish and chips shop afterwards, wash it again with just water.
“Manhattan Henge”, like Stone Henge. A reoccuring photography opportunity the internet always goes gaga for.
BTW, I’ve mentioned this before in this piece but just to highlight it:
Sunrise and Sunset absolutely MESS with Cameras.
To the point where infantry units in the Ukraine War try to time their insertions and extractions to coincide with the specific setting hour and the immediate twilight after (which will actually be very photogenic in the subsequent movies)…
FPV Drones, Surveillance Cameras, even thermals and night vision to some extent, all face extreme difficulty and odd artifact-ing at sunset particularly… Even more so than your own eye if you’re forced to drive into the sun, and even more so than at night.
This is why it’s important to write local sunrise and sunset down in your little notebook, even if your primary plan doesn’t involve exploiting the sun… because that’s a factor you’ll want to exploit if something goes wrong and you have to expose yourself more than you’d like. Likewise if you are in a grid metro area you want to figure out the dates that the sun will “Henge” and set or rise at the degree directly coinciding with the streets… The Effects of sunrise and sunset, which already mess with surveillance cameras Uniquely SHRED the surveillance net during henging events on grid roadways when the roads are uniquely unshaded and recieving full glare.
In Manhattan the sun “Henges” when it sets roughly between May 19th and May 27th.
NOTE: If you have several different Grids in your area you’re in tons of luck! calculate them all, sunrise and sunset… That way You’ll know which boroughs and counties you can route through to incorporate Henge stealth into your Infiltrations and Exfiltrations.
(However this can be a relatively dangerous double edged sword… If you are driving during sunset or especially a henging event your odds of crashing rises radically because you and every other driver are partially blinded, likewise be aware these are the exact hours you are most likely to be a cyclist or pedestrian casualty to a road accident)
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Part 3: Vehicular Stealth
13. Aux Cable / FM Transmitter ($10-20)
Modern Cars are Giant cellphones and just as leaky in terms of Data… Depending on your vehicle, you are just being tracked no matter what, and even if you’ve gone out of your way to select a vehicle with ZERO signal generation, no GPS, no Bluetooth, no built in SIM capability for OnStar or your car company’s equivalent… If you bought a perfect 1980 original Toyota Hilux with no computer in it whatsoever… You’re still screwed because any glowie in the world could just attach a gps tracker the size of an Air-Tag to your vehicle, and your perfect analog-only, still-carborated, Apocalypse truck is just as compromised and surveilled as any modern vehicle.
This is why the Anarchonomicon School of Urban Infiltration and Exfiltration assumes you are going to be switching to smaller more compact less trackable vehicles, or foot, and inserting/extracting across 10s of kilometers and several hours for any Tactical Espionage Action.
However that doesn’t mean you just give up or give into the data leak, remember that all the data generally silos separately and your ability to knock out one or two methods of exposure radically reduces the ability to correlate separate data leaks. So the longer you can travel in your car with no cellphone signal, the less data there is to correlate, even if it is trying to Bluetooth-handshake everything on earth.
Using an Aux Cable or FM Transmitter to listen to a plain non-bluetooth MP3 Player or disc-man on your way to an op across hours or days radically reduces the footprint that would otherwise be coming directly from your phone.
14. Gas Canisters ($20-30)
These are great prepper kit. In any real crisis if the gas stops flowing, having a few dozen Jerry cans and several hundred extra liters of gas in your garage might be worth 10-100x the initial 1000 dollar investment… and could even net you that fortune if you play your cards right with all the people who’ll desperately need to get here or there or need someone to drive them on an escape…
However this isn’t a guide to spending your prepper money. This about becoming a Tactical Espionage Dollar Store Hobo… So I’m not going to tell you what you can do with dozens of Jerry cans, I’m going to tell you what you can do with 1.
With ONE large Jerry can you can stretch your vehicle’s range about 200-400km further (100-200km til you’re bingo on fuel and have to turn back)…
That is exactly enough that you wouldn’t have to stop at a gas station, you wouldn’t have to drive up and have your license plate scanned, you wouldn’t have to use your credit card, you wouldn’t have to try use cash then walk in, get your face on camera, and a good shot of everything you’re wearing… hell with ONE Jerry Can, if you did run out and have to stop for gas, you could park on a backstreet out of view of the gas station, and then walk to it not exposing the make model, color, or plates of the vehicle you’re driving.
And then with multiple Jerry Cans you could double or triple your range, or stage fueling points hidden a strategic spots.
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The Necessity of having plenty of untraceable cash on you during an operation is obvious… You don’t want to use your credit card, or ANY CARD… In an emergency, or if you need to acquire something you forgot, or if you’re just dying of thirst, you need cash… And only cash.
With one exception.
Gift-cards have a unique place in the criminal underworld since they act like cash, and aren’t directly tied to an individual bank account but can be converted easily between mediums, there are a million money laundering, credit card fencing, and Indian phone caller scams that run through Gift Cards… However they do generate transaction records… They’re a weird world of their own various criminals and investigators have dedicated their lives to.
However as far as the Tactical Espionage Hobo is concerned there’s exactly one gift-card that has any advantage over cash:
Gasoline Gift-cards.
Unlike cash, you can use them at the pump, you don’t have to go in and have your lit-up face shown on a well lit low angle camera, and unlike Credit Cards, they don’t generate a transaction immediately attached to your name.
As a matter of prepping a prepaid Gasoline Gift-card, purchased with cash (ideally several months before they’re needed to let the camera records at Walmart overwrite), is maybe the most anonymous way to purchase gas… If I were America’s most wanted, like Bin Laden or El Chapo, prepaid gasoline gift-cards (or ideally a series of such gift-cards) might be the most secure way you could purchase gas without immediately having the police descend on your position.
.
Of course the most anonymous way to get gas is to siphon it but that’s an entire skillset, and it’s a skill that decays. Old cars are easy to siphon, and then you get into subsequent generations of anti-siphoning devices which can be cracked and by-passed, siphoning gas is fast becoming its own specialized subset of Lock-picking. Indeed I’m predicting now it will become its own subset of Lock-sport.
It is certainly Worth learning though, at the least you should try to figure out how to siphon from your own vehicle so you can use your own gas, and then that becomes a base of knowledge you can apply or modify as we go into the Cyperpunk/Mad-Max 21st century.
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Part 4: Unconventional Hobo Vehicles
For reasons that should by now be abundantly obvious, you don’t want your car to get within 10 or even 20 miles of any actual target or criminal operation if you can avoid it. Hell in sparsely populated rural areas, you might not want your car getting within 100 miles if you’re doing something really high profile…
You simply don’t want your license plate pinging off a police Automatic License Plate Reader (ALRP), you don’t want your Onboard Onstar or GPS tracking you, you don’t want you Bluetooth pinging off and giving your position to the NSA, and even if you think you have the perfect stealth vehicle with a wicked cool James Bond automatic license plate changer and fake racing stripes you made from electrical tape, and you actually painted over the original color with some water/soap based paint you can wash off in 5 minutes at any car-wash at any moment like Bruce Willis in the 90s remake of “Day of the Jackal”… You still don't want to risk that some Glowie or your local cop, or a Jealous Ex slipped a GPS device somewhere you’ll never find it, and now your position is pinging out to their cellphone app.
Even under perfect conditions you still want to park hours away do a full Infiltration and exfiltration…
Ok, so how do you do that?
Well unless you really like walking, you use a secondary vehicle.
16. Bicycle ($80-150)
There are a lot of potential miniature vehicles you could use to get the last 10-50 miles… of these the Bicycle is the most versatile.
Depending on the setting a Canoe, Kayak, Inflatable boat, Cross-Country skis, E-Bike, E-Scooter, “Hoverboard”, Dirt-bike, ATV, Snowmobile, or what have you might be the secondary vehicle you want to use (be sure to cover up the identifying markings, brand-name, number, etc.) and you might even want to use a final third vehicle…
Pickup Truck and Trailer (500 miles) → Snowmobile (100 miles) → Cross Country Ski/Snowshoe (the last 3 miles)… would not be a ridiculous or over-designed operation.
However the most versatile and all-around best secondary vehicle is the Bicycle.
You almost certainly already have one, but you want to get it (and yourself, fitness matters) to the point where you can comfortably ride it 50+ miles… If you don’t have an appropriate bike, you can get a cheap used or refurbished bike off Craigslist for like $80-150.
Unlike Ebikes you can just ride a bicycle endlessly, I’m by no means an avid cyclist, and I’ve done 100 miles in a day, and That was with a late start.
The big thing though is you want to be sure you can keep your bike running. Spare tire tubes, hand pump, pressure gauge, basic wrenches to maintain the bike disassemble it to go in your car, and then reassemble it… You want to make sure you have these ready and on hand and in your car.
However the most applicable of these “extreme sport” modes of transit (aside from bicycles and motorcycles which were already used in ww1 and so don’t count)… Is the skateboard.
Sure some Mad Bombers, White Nationalists, and the Taliban might insist roller blades are superior… But the real value of a skateboard is how inconspicuous it is, and the fact that you get to keep your shoes on your feet.
Depending on the make, a skateboard can disappear into a large backpack, or be strapped to luggage on a motorcycle or bicycle very easily in ways a scooter can’t and roller-blades are generally too bulky for… Skilled skaters can even ride remarkably undersized boards.
Pennyboards have a mixed reputation in the skateboard community, they’re vastly harder to handle and not really better at anything, annd if you ride one people will think you’re a Penny-board person (skaters all belong to mutually hostile tribes, the anthropology is quite fascinating)… But for their concealability and light-weight in a backpack or luggage they’re almost a perfect tactical tool… That is if one has the skill to ride one. (this might honestly be why the Taliban prefers rollerblades) Likewise there’s a balancing act in the coloring… Ideally you’d spray-paint one black to blend into the night, but between the already reduced gripiness of a plastic pennyboard, and the small size, having the visual feedback of SEEING the board on what might be very dark night might be necessary based on skill.
And yet the increase in speed and distance you gain, going from a walking pace of 3 mph (4.5 km/h) to about 9 mph (13.5) is a remarkable improvement, significantly better than even a distance jogging speed of 6 mph, and vastly easier to maintain.
For operations where you might be inserting via train, plane, bus, motorcycle, or some other method that doesn’t lend itself to bringing a Bicycle… You probably can bring a skateboard, or procure one relatively cheaply in the metro area your in for a very simple amount of cash… And much like a bicycle, if you ditch a skateboard with a little “Free” sign on it at an intersection or on a path, you can generally rely on it to disappear within the hour and not become evidence. That’s not generally true of other kit (no one wants your old smelly roller-blades or your grandma’s cross-country ski’s)
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Of course in true life or death emergencies a knowledgeable Hobo-Operator knows how to pick a bicycle off one of the trees, (this has surpassed hot-wiring cars in many ways for real James Bond skills, now that cars have automatic shutoffs and trackers) but generally we try not to be dicks unnecessarily.
18. Bicycle Motorcycle Kit ($200-300)
Cheap gas operated basic motorcycles can be assembled from a $200 kit off ali-express and a spare bicycle. Sure you could use an E-Bike, but those are thousands of dollars and have a limited range, whereas you can quickly re-gas a Motor-bicycle from either extra gas you bring, or pre-arranged caches.
these also generally retain their pedal backup so you’re never going to just get stranded when a crappy build or a crappier chinese manufacture craps out.
These have a really special place in the history of Guerilla Warfare as Che Guevera’s Famous "Motorcycle Diaries" expedition across South America as a young medical student was done, initially on a full-sized bike, but for long stretches on a tiny motorized bicycle…
This extreme augmentation of range (well extreme if you don’t already have amazing cyclist thighs) while being able to take little non-descript bike paths adds up extraordinarily in terms of not just capability.. but carry-ability… You might be able to cycle 100 miles in a day… But you’re probably going to be wrecked if you try to cycle 100 miles, while carrying 30-50lbs of kit and equipment… which you well might need depending on the job you’re planning.
And as a bonus you’re learning an incredible amount about engines and motorcycle/motorized vehicle maintenance and fundamentals, which is a truly incredible skillset to develop and is relevant to basically every adventure/operational activity you might participate in.
Watch Fortnine’s video on building one of these to get a feel for the subject:
Seriously. Many an Iranian scientist and Italian dissident has been assassinated by unidentified assailants on Vespas.
As long as you have space to store them, you should be keeping an eye on all the odds and ends small vehicles that show up at your local pawn or thrift store, on Craigslist, or with just a “For Sale” sign on the side of the road or on a “garage sale day”, that often you can snatch these up at incredibly low prices and gain a shocking amount of operational capability.
And for god’s sake be sure to go over whatever you get with tape or spray-paint to coverup any identifying markings! You don’t want to do all the AI evasion long range insertion, only for a some pattern or number on your skateboard or E-Scooter to show up on camera and for them to either trace that through the manufacturer, or for them to get a warrant against you for some other mistake and be able to instantly match the single frame to vehicle because they both have “Bart Simpson” decals.
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However all these additional odds and ends vehicles, despite being fun and granting a lot of capability are by no means necessary, and this is kinda venturing outside the “Hobo” setup of this piece.
A simple bicycle or skateboard will give you an insane amount of capability in most metro-areas.
20. Single Ride Public Transit Passes / Cash For Transit / Cash for a Taxi ($20-40)
Public Transit and Taxis are both surveillance traps.
Both of them have lower mounted closer cameras in vastly better lit environments than anything you’re going to encounter running around outside at night… And both of them are highly networked and easy for cops and others to follow.
As we saw with the murder of Iryna Zarutska your average subway car or bus has a half dozen perfectly lit cameras rolling at any second, and as we saw with the Luigi Mangione case Taxis have at-least one going at all times.
But it’s worse than that, both sets of vehicles have identifying numbers on the outside making it trivial for the police to see you enter a bus or taxi, then call up the GPS coordinates and camera feeds of that particular Bus or Taxi… Often without even getting up from their chair depending on the jurisdiction, then see exactly where you got off.
Put simply even entering public transit or a taxi vastly increases your exposure on a getaway, and it does absolutely nothing to decay your exposure. If you bicycle 5 miles, there’s a very good chance (over 90% depending on what various LLMs tell me) that the AI system simply loses you on that trip… You go down a road or pathway it doesn’t suspect, then it starts following another cyclist at 30% probability it’s you, then gets that bicyclist confused with another…. The half-life of camera tracking outdoors where another Camera has to “catch” a cyclist or pedestrian very quickly enters a garden of forking paths… Every mile traveled and every minute that passes without a match on a subsequent camera is decaying the chance of them ever finding the trail again ( likewise every mile and minute BEFORE the action, remember they can track you backwards and forwards just as easily, its a bit of a psychological trick to internalize that. “infiltration AND exfiltration”)…
With Public transit or a taxi none of that happens. You spend an hour in the subway, or 30 minutes in a cab across town, you’re just as hot as when you entered. It does nothing for your infiltration or exfiltration….
HOWEVER! Public transit and Taxis also aren’t exhausting the way a lot of infiltration and exfiltration are.
Sure perfect 100% untraceable OPSEC would say you should WALK the 200-300 miles from NYC to Washington, DC taking unknown little paths, camping rough under bridges, lying in wait hours, then finding hidden caches you left months ago or stealing or procuring on site… sleeping in ditches under the merciless rain… Becoming The True Tactical Espionage Hobo… an Avatar of Odin himself…
I remember once reading a Warhammer 40,000 Novel where one of the Custodes took on the role of an Assassin and did this… It was so fucking cool and sick.
But unless you’re assassinating the President, it is almost certainly way too exhausting, miserable, and expensive in terms of time and effort to do this.
So this is where Public transit and Taxis come in… Either as a quick emergency get away, a energy saving repositioning, or a pre- or post- operation staging tool…
In terms of Getting to or from an infiltration or exfiltration point public transit actually has a lot to recommend it compared to a car (which is likewise leaking lots of information)… There’s the cameras, but there’s no financial registries tying you to the Train or Bus assuming you pay with cash.
Likewise Public transit is very good for getting you OUT of metro cores quickly. It might take an hour+ for an authority to realize you’ve done something, and start tracking you, at which point you can be in the suburbs, a rural area or an urban park complex on the edge of town where you’re outside the densest part of the Camera net…
Also unlike stores or restaurants where you’d feel social pressure, its not weird at all to keep your face hidden, keep your hat or hood up, and not make eye-contact on public transit… Indeed it’s effectively encouraged.
However do be aware those Cameras will get an AMAZING perfectly lit look at your outfit. from every angle.
This is the Quality and clarity of image you’re giving them if they get you on public transit.
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So while I certainly wouldn’t want to hop public transit or a Taxi while “hot” (in terms of time or proximity to a crime)… It is a contingency plan you want to have in your back pocket, and a potential tool you can use at the strategic and operational level before or after the core of an infiltration or exfiltration.
If you fell, bruised your knee and sprained your ankle during an exfiltration, there are certainly worse things you could do than just sit tight, wait 6-12 hours and grab a bus or taxi near sunrise or sunset when the cameras a bugging out and struggling with the light.
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Part 5: Tactical Hobo Attire
The subject of tactical clothing is a bottomless topic that has consumed thousands of hours of YouTube videos and millions of hours of real world military instruction. You could spend $10,000 on a full set of tactical clothing and kit if you actually want to be able to operate from the extreme Arctic to the Jungle to the Desert, and stay concealed in all environments, and camp out for months on end… and avoid thermals…
You could spend 10+ hours studying how to fashion and cycle the grasses and shrubs from your own gillie suit, or fashion (heaven help you) an “urban gillie suit” that looks and smells just like garbage.
But that’s not what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about “bad” clothing and equipment. We’re going to talk about Capital-H Captial-G Hobo Garbage, that’s actually still giving you an insane amount of capability.
21. Tactical Flip-Flops, “not just for Hamas” ($20)
A good pair of combat boots is going to run you $100-200, a good pair of running shoes maybe $50-100 again…
And if you’re like me you’re going to accumulate a lot of them… Arctic Boots for beneath -20, Jungle boots for when you have to track through water in the high summer or Jungle/Swamps, Steel-toed boots for hard working environments, motorcycle boots for not crushing your ankle while biking… Then every type of shoe as well….
But here’s the thing… You can’t bring them with you.
You really only get 1 pair of shoes for urban ops. Unless you want to be going about with a full sized rucksack, you probably just don’t have the space to pack additional running shoes, and certainly not boots, if you are packing any tools or weapons for the operation that will be needed to actually achieve the objective… you basically have what you have on your feet when you leave your house or car… With one exception.
Flip flops are so thin and small you actually can include them in as secondary footwear in almost any lightweight load-out.
On Gait Analysis
AI Surveillance can track your strides and the manner of your step the same as it tracks your face… And just like your face its far less than the magic it’s hyped as… Basically all the tricks to increase the dataset, destroy the tracking via distance, and timeout the AI with an influx of false positive by killing time for a few hours all works on Gait Analysis too… But there are more tricks.
If you wear baggy clothing it devours information that would otherwise leak (skinny jeans and Leggings by contrast give it vastly more information, letting it see the exact length and thickness of your legs as well as every micro-detail of your stride)… Likewise by slipping a pebble in your shoes or affecting a limp you can change your gait for short distances (1-2km) before you cramp up your feet…
However flip flops radically change you gait, because they have no heel you have to stride vastly differently and naturally put on a different strife to lift the scandal with just your two most prominent toes or just the toebox if it is a wrap around style…
For years I swore by hiking sandals for urban tourist trips and lazy hiking on groomed paths, I would buy $150 hiking sandals that I could walk 50kms in in a day and then walk another 50 the next… Then when they broke deep in the south at the height of summer… I Had to buy $15 flip flops to walk back 20 miles…
And it was fine! I walked on those flip flops walking 20-30 miles a day the rest of the month around the US south.
Aside from the lack of ankle support (you can run in them but not quickly) they actually have a major advantage in that they contact the foot so little… for primary footwear this sucks, but if you’re already 10-20 miles out and have developed blisters or other sores, this actually can let you keep walking where otherwise you’d have to stop… Likewise if there’s a chance you’re going to be escorting someone who’s more willing or unwilling who could lose their shoes, or be dragged out of bed without them, then having flip flops on hand might actually be the thing that lets you extract them without shredding their feet, since you don’t have to be precise with sizing..
Flip-flops are also very useful for costume changes… Some flip-flops, shorts, a T-Shirt, and sunglasses is all you need to suddenly be dressed as a swimmer, park atendee, or general “Dude”. Toss your tactical clothes and boots in some cloth grocery bags, then spend a few hours reading a book or listening to your MP3 player in a park or on the shoreline, and you’ll be pretty-much indistinguishable from any hundred or thousand of normal summer groovy guys and gals by the time you finish the extraction.
Finally for longer maneuvers where you might be living out of a car or backpack, having flip flops on hand is incredibly useful since you’ll be using public showers at pools or beaches instead of getting a hotel room and generating a credit card record.
Do Not Underestimate flip flops!
I’ve seen people do shit in flipflops that should never be done… that looks like an instant death trap.
Going for a hike in -10 in flip flops, climbing a mountain in flipflops, stunting on motorcycles in flipflops, riding a skateboard in flipflops, welding in their metal shop in flipflops, chainsawing and splitting wood in flipflops…
And its dumb and they’re risking breaking or losing their feet if anything goes wrong… but you look at them and clearly they’ve been doing it for months if not years without incident…. So for a sane person who’d never be so glib or do those things normally without proper footwear… clearly flip flops will just fill the gap in an emergency.
Hamas fighters do just run up to Israeli tanks across broken jagged concrete in their scandals…
Though your first instinct isn’t wrong, the greatest warrior of all time was ultimately killed by the inadequacy of his foot protection.
Achilles always insisted that proper boots just took to long to take on and off…
22. Suspenders ($10-30)
The value of suspenders as a tactical garment is incalculable.
Now if you are a plumber or you have an ass like Hank Hill or Taylor Swift you might already know this… but keeping your pants from falling down in any rigorous multitask setting can be quite the challenge… Especially if like a Real Hobo you buy your jeans and slacks for their price and not their tailoring.
what normally is just a slight looseness needing an occasional sly adjustment that doesn’t really bother anyone on a normal day is magnified and multiplied when doing anything tactical. Most of you probably change to shorts or sweatpants if you go jogging… so you might not have noticed your ordinary clothes are simply NOT designed for physical exertion the way they were when you were a kid and did most of your running about.
Indeed even military clothing really isn’t designed for it. The number of scouts, cadets, recruits, air-softers, motorcyclists, hikers, etc. I’ve seen wind up with their green boxer-brief asses hanging out in the air after some wardrobe malfunction is actually quite remarkable.
You can keep adding cargo pockets to those camo pants and keep adding pounds of tools, notebooks, kneepads, what have you… It doesn’t mean that those scrawny Hank Hill hips are going to hold them up no matter how many organs you shred trying to cinch that belt tighter.
There is a reason every plainclothes detective in those cop movies wore suspenders. All those cop tools are too much for almost any belt.
The Amazing thing is however once you incorporate suspender WITH a belt you’ve basically given yourself a concealable TAC-VEST.
But formal vests are something of a fashion niche, and 6x 30 round mags is more than a lot of special forces units take with them when they ARE expecting armed contact, unless you’re robbing a bank in LA in the 90s, you’d almost never have to react to contact with over 300 rounds on an urban espionage operation.
By contrast suspenders with a belt are vastly more concealable and go with basically any set of fashion (a simple over-shirt or jacket covers them, and you can swap shirt for jacket for sweater, etc. As you want to costume change) yet you’re given almost as many mounting points as a traditional Tac-Vest for multi-tools, magazines, pouches, knives, first aid kits, underarm pistols, taser, you name it… Also because the kit and their carriers are mounted, not sew in… You can dispose of bits and pieces as they’re no longer needed (ideally burn them, they’re evidence) mid-mission if you need to increase concealability.
23. Nerd Strap (“59 cents” )
You are going to be the belle of the ball… A real fashion Icon by the time I’m through with you.
But seriously… the 1986 Miami Dade shootout has a lot of lessons that really defined law enforcement and gun-fighting… Paul Harrell has an amazing video on it:
Skip to 26:00 if you just want the lesson.
This Represents a lack of preparation. With all the guns, and the training, and the extra magazine. He had failed to invest in a 59 cent nerd strap. -Paul Harrell
But the biggest most immediate lesson is, If you use glasses, fake fashion glasses as a decoy, sun-glasses, safety glasses etc. Invest in a nerd strap, you don’t want to suddenly be Velma searching for her glasses in the dark, or be leaving your glasses and hair its pulled at the scene (hair follicle analysis/DNA is actually really suspect, but don’t risk it). If its worth putting on your face it’s worth keeping on your face.
LIKEWISE if you use goggles: Ski Goggles, swim goggles, motorcycle goggles, welding goggles, snow goggles, etc. check the straps before you leave on an op.
A lot of basic preparation and dumb stuff adds up very quickly.
Stealth, survival and combat are unforgiving, little inconveniences or awkwardness in ordinary life add up damned fast the second thing have to go right.
This goes for everything… Use your lanyards for kit you can’t afford to leave at the scene of a crime or sensitive action, use the little holes for lanyards, look at your holster for guns and knives and tighten them if they’re loose or rattle noisily or they risk falling out…
Reversing to the Robbers side of the Cops and Robbers game… Bob Matthews and “The Order”, a White Nationalist bank-robbery/”rebellion against the US Government” group from the 80s, were caught because someone dropped a firearm during an armored car heist… I don’t know the full forensic story, but in the film version the man who dropped it didn’t even have a holster it fell out of his pants when he was shot at and bent over during a getaway (This could be accurate) and was traced to their straw buyer who ratted on them.
For want of a simple bit of string and a knot, a holster you could make yourself out of duct-tape, or a $60 dremel tool to remove the serial numbers,(any of the three would have done it) Bob Matthew burnt alive in a standoff with the FBI and half of the rest died in prison.
For all the training drills, and react to contact, and tactical-shooter cool-guy maneuvers, training debates for split second decisions, and discussion of the “True Grit” and “rising to the occasion”, or “falling to the level of training”, and the true nature of how YOU yourself will respond in the decisive moment (its actually kinda random in my experience, the same people will be heroes or cowards, unstoppable or wimps, on the slightest of personal priming and nichest of quirks of their personality… this is the reason “Leadership” and dramatic speeches appealing to brotherhood and commissars standing behind a squad pistol in hand can have such an effect, people react to priming and the slightest physiological stimuli. (Also why if you don’t want to leave the house on a cold day you should just walk around the house til the blood-flow has warmed you up) I’ve personally surprised myself both ways on many occasions (to great ego trips, humiliation, awe, or eye-rolls from my exes). People who’ve gotten up at 4am to march nonstop 20 hours in the cold and rain, on other days have slept through their alarms and whimpered at a slight breeze).
We are all Frieren
But the REAL decisions? the ones that really make a difference? 9 out of 10 of the do or die decisions are not, or do not need to be, dramatic split second choices under fire that weight your individual character and whether you inner fire, at that precise second, is sufficient to save you and your friends and family from damnation… Most of those decisions tracked back have obvious simple answers that can be decided at leisure in your living room or local shopping district over the course of minutes or hours with no stress or adrenaline involved, with the most ordinary bit of foresight double checking, and one time conscientiousness… you can sidestep around a good number of the catastrophic choices that will leave you wondering about the meaning of your life and self-worth til the end of time…
Buy the 59 cent nerd straps! Use the Lanyard holes in your kit. Get or make holsters if you want the kit on your person, and tighten it up with tape if you think it isn’t working or your weapon might slip out.
“I’ll do it later” is for the dishes, not things where “later” might shoot back at you.
24. Skateboard Helmet ($20-40)
As if I wasn’t already dressing you like a special ed kid….
The advancement of helmets across the 20th century is a fascinating story. The rollout of the old ww1 steel helmets radically reduced death from brain injury due to bumps and falling debris… but it wasn’t til the 80s that an actual bulletproof ballistic helmet was rolled out.
Yet Special Forces didn’t wear them due to the ergonomics and difficulty of mounting devices… They wore 1980s Skateboard helmets instead.
The Modern Skateboard helmet is a true marvel of engineering and flexibility and yet gives you amazing protection from non-ballistic threats, almost entirely better than the old world war steel helmets (which transferred force far more readily).
After a few controversial deaths from bullets and shrapnel, US Special Forces adopted modern Ballistic Bump Helmets, basically skateboard helmets made with ballistic material… which still protect less of the head than a full military helmet, but will stop bullets and shrapnel in the parts they cover.
Now You can buy a Level IIIa to Level IV ballistic bump helmet for about $200-4k (be discerning with your purchase) and that’d probably be great prepper kit…
But for an individual or two man urban espionage operation? A Hobo Job? The main thing you are using a helmet for is to protect your head from BUMPS. If you go down on a skateboard or bicycle or ebike etc. You could brain yourself badly without a helmet and even if you’re someone who would never wear a helmet while biking or skating, you don’t want to risk being there concussed and getting dragged to the hospital in blackface with a backpack full dirty tricks.
You probably don’t have much if anything you need to mount to it, (maybe night vision for some rural ops? Which you can do pretty trivially) and most things you might be doing have little to no chance you’ll take any fire at all.
Also: if you are doing stuff where you expect you might take fire on an offensive hobo op, that’s probably going to be a handgun round, or a knife/melee weapon… So don’t feel your choice is between a nothing and a $4k helmet that’ll stop a .308 round.
But, if you’re not expecting a gunfight, consider the advantages of the Cheaper helmet that will just protect you from Bumps… In the military losing a helmet will get a fairly major disciplinary action. A standard issue ballistic helmet is money, and they’ll come after you for losing it… Unlike generals for losing a war, that doesn’t cost anything at all.
However a $20-30 Skateboard helmet? You can just toss that mid-op as part of a costume change.
If You haven’t seen another skateboarder or cyclist in hours, think you standout like a sore thumb, and NEED to costume change? You can just toss that helmet in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant and no one will care or notice (burn it a little first to eliminate any hair you left on it).
You might be someone who’d do that to a $300 Level III helmet (ouch) but you certainly aren’t doing that to your $1000+ Level IVs…
However if you do go for an expensive bump helmet, for god sake get it in black and not camo… You desperately want it to LOOK like its just a Skater helmet. Even if your opsec is perfect and they can’t track you, the second any police or security force sees what looks like a Special Operator carrying out ops in their metro area they’re going to start pulling every intel agency asset they can on it. You’re going to get that one fucking autistic weirdo from Interpol on your case. You know the one.
You want to look like a safety conscious nerdy cyclist dad who needs to be at the office tomorrow, or barring that, a slightly overgrown retard child, not a special operator.
Awww… You’re MY special forces Anon 🫶.
Likewise mid-op you can just buy a skateboard helmet with cash from any Mom and pop hardware store if you don’t want to drag it with you or you’ve decide to…ugh… “procure” a bicycle.
But that’s how trivially you can get to the 1980s cutting edge of warfare.
A Brief Digression on Safety Equipment
A lot of tactical types loath the topic of safety equipment, or have very strident opinions on certain types of safety kit well beyond the actual efficacy of the kit… And this is quite understandable.
Almost all tactical units outside of a few really elite or really off the books ones (this is often mutually exclusive, off the books units are usually Juarez Crackheads… Just like you!) have a “Teacher is Watching” mentality… and from what I hear, Green Berets and SEALS aren’t elite enough to escape it (Ask about the last time they had motorcycle training and motorcycle exercises).
The second a piece of safety equipment is made available to them, suddenly their superiors start getting really insistent that they use it no matter what. Even in instances where it’d make no sense or actively inhibit them. You see if a piece of safety equipment is NOT made available and someone gets hurt, well maybe its the case the bureaucracy should “review” getting that equipment… So someone gets promoted to review it. And if it is made available, and is worn, and does fuck all and someone gets hurt anyway… aww well we tried, it was just an unavoidable thing.
HOWEVER, if a piece of safety equipment is available, and is not used, and someone gets hurt? Suddenly the bureaucracy can all point to the immediate team leader, commander, or superior present and say “Why did you let them do this without wearing the safety equipment?”
So the natural inclination of every bureaucracy is to have lots of “reviews” to buy more safety equipment, and then have lots of “investigations” where the people who bought the safety equipment punish actual fighters for not using it.
Now in every instance there’s a good fucking answer to “Why did you let them do this without wearing the safety equipment?” and its "I made a judgement call and I trusted my men’s judgement.” There are a million and one reasons you might choose not to use a piece of safety equipment depending on the environment, the job, the personnel, the urgency of the task, the individual situation, or just the poor thought that went into getting the safety kit in the first place… Indeed The person on the ground is the only person qualified to make those judgement calls. But bureaucratic review boards don’t like to be told that they should not exist, their very existence undermines the unity of command, and any competent 19th or early 20th century military would fire the lot of them and reassign them to the eastern front. They don’t respond well to that.
So what actually happens is commanders who are supposed to be willing to lead by example and charge machine-gun nests themselves if the situation is desperate, and probably would…. Suddenly they all turn into wilting pussy-whipped ducking dads yelling at you not to run on the grass and to wear a helmet lest your mother see you and he gets in trouble.
You would not believe the cowardice of men who have taken enemy fire, the second they get out of the sand and into an office, and the subject under discussion becomes a potential review or negligence investigation.
So as a rule tactical units are just like grade-schools…In that you do not want any piece of safety equipment within 10 miles of you lest the teacher make you wear it at recess.
FOR THIS REASON, you really want to take anything tactical guys say about safety equipment with a grain of salt… their goal is almost always to keep it from being assigned to them and having to lug around leg-Kevlar for the rest of a deployment making every step exhausting for no reason.
You by contrast, As an independent espionage hobo working in 1-2 man teams for the glorious cause of fighting the [redacted] or the Red Dawn (2012) North Koreans… You can just DECIDE what you want to use.
I’m not going to nag you at a review board or threaten your pension…. Indeed if you ever wear all of this AT ONCE, take a photo so I can laugh at you, you will look like a clown, because you will be one.
However selected WITH JUDGEMENT and DISCERNMENT, for the individual operations and scenarios you are envisioning, good and appropriate safety kit gives you a lot of optionality you might not otherwise have.
You might have NEVER have worn a bicycle helmet since you got your training wheels off at 8. I certainly never did… But likewise you probably have never bicycled at night in November, in the rain, near freezing… People usually try to avoid that, that sounds miserable and dangerous. What if it drops below zero and starts freezing?
And yet you absolutely CAN bicycle when there is ice on the road, visit New York, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal… You’ll see people (students, delivery drivers, Asians) bicycle in -20. But those people you see bicycling in January in Montreal… They’re almost all wearing helmets. A lot of them are even wearing knee-pads and wrist sliders. It’s very dangerous to bicycle when you could hydroplane or hit an ice-patch on the road… So they mitigate the danger down to a tolerable level.
This is heavily relevant for Hobo Operations because that same bad weather that would make it intolerably dangerous, also makes the stealth and surprise more achievable.
I don’t care how impossible you think a job would be from a surveillance perspective… If you do it during a white out blizzard when the power’s already out across the state, suddenly it becomes very achievable… But you have to avoid injuring yourself on the way there.
25. Elbow Pads / kneepads/ Wrist Guards ($20-40)
As someone who has been thrown from a motorcycle going 90km/h (60mph)… I cannot express to you just how overpowered modern sports safety equipment is.
Generally true bone shattering forces you have to shop around and be really discerning about, even most “AA” “Level 2” motorcycle kit does not actually stop crush injuries or bone breaking impacts… but 95+% of injuries you get are not going to be true bone breakers, you’re going to get bone-bruising impacts, scrapes, swelling injuries, cartilage shredders, dislocators… There is so much fucking shit that can happen that will put you on your ass for weeks, or give you a limp for life… and more importantly stop you dead in your tracks with all those dirty tricks in your backpack as some security guard or MP bares down on you.
Kneepads are lifesavers, in that if you can’t walk out of a lot of places, there’s a good chance you’ll die there or die in prison… But arm-pads and wrist Guards are really under appreciated if you want to keep going and not just have to start limping home because your arms are disabled.
Now elbow pads especially are poo-pooed by military and SWAT, they’re awkward and bulky overkill for normal tactical missions on foot, and indeed you more often see shoulder kevlar straps to stop bullets than elbow pads to stop boo-boos…
But for a hobo op, you probably aren’t clearing a house with a suspected criminal, but you are inserting tens of miles across a metro-area. Boo-boos are your main concern.
Likewise for rural ops you probably wouldn’t wear them for much foot activity… but if you’re cycling through the woods, or you have to crawl through a ditch to insert, suddenly not having to baby your arms and knees can let you crawl vastly further vastly faster.
Remember you can just take them off and put them in your pack or ditch them entirely if need be.
Finally all this safety kit you also want to merely own as a matter of prepping in case you need to do “Urban Exploration”, this could be going through abandoned buildings with lots of jagged and worn garbage, but this could also be going through your metro area if it gets bombed out like Gaza and suddenly half the city is a ruin you have to dig through. Minor injuries add up fast, and you aren’t going to exploit all your opportunities if you have to risk them.
Finally wrist guards you really want to have for any sporting mode of travel at any increased danger, you don’t think of it because almost no one wears them normally, but sliding on your hand as opposed to scraping, spraining or breaking it is the difference between a successful op, and demoralizing failure if not capture… Likewise for urban Exploration, as mentioned or for destructive entry into a building.
Also all this safety kit you want to own just-in-case for emergency or contingency reasons you can’t use proper motorcycle, atv, or snowmobile gear…
None of it is certified for power-sport but if you need to pick someone up in an emergency or disaster, or do a multistep-contingency evacuation then you or they would much rather have skateboard armor than be riding a motorcycle hydroplaning through a hurricane in nothing but a tanktop (remember most “crashes” and falls happen at low speeds where a small amount of armor is the difference between just getting up and riding on, or getting a nasty injury).
26. High Vis-Vest ($15)
Urban stealth is full of Paradoxes… Not the least of which is that often the greatest camouflage is a high visibility vest.
You see outside of the “Yellow Vest” protests in France, the High-Visibility vest is actually a marker of profound compliance, if not authority.
Cops simply do not harass dorky cyclists, morning joggers, and people collecting litter… you’d be amazed how many people you see on back country roads long after dark, or going down nature trails near the dead of night in high vis-vests… And no one asks a thing of them because they don’t want to get sucked into a conversation with a fucking nerd. You can unlock that power.
I swear to god, you are fighting right now not to make eye contact with these nerds, and it’s just a still image.
But beyond this, you know one of the fastest ways to fuck up an op is? Getting hit by a car.
Remember the worse the weather, the better the stealth. You see how in the photo below the light is reflecting off the wet concrete as if the grey stone has turned into a mirror? Do you think that fucks with AI camera tracking? I think that fucks with AI camera tracking. Hell It fucks with normal human eyes.
However the worse the weather the more likely you are to get hit by a car.
Remember you’re going to take off the high vis-vest before you get to the target and before you disappear out of the insertion entirely, in terms of stealth from AI the high vis-vest is another costume change that’s messing with the computer’s ability to track you, however what that vest is doing is letting you cycle on roadways and in weather at times of night you’d never be able to do so safely otherwise. A final 1-2 mile insert on foot to a target in a hurricane or blizzard you wouldn’t wear a vest… But the 10-30 miles there? Don’t get hit by a car.
Beyond this you should just have a high vis-vest in your car at all times anyway, if you have a breakdown or get in a crash, or need to change a tire, you really don’t want to get hit by a car doing so… Especially if you have anything illegal in your car.
Likewise High Vis Cones and Road Flares are major car-prepper kit. It’s very possible to crash or breakdown in a low vis scenario, and then be stranded in the middle of the road invisible with more blinded traffic incoming.
And then if you really want to cause chaos… Pair the high-vis vest with a yellow, white or orange Contruction Helmet.
Pair it with a clipboard and tie. They love the fucking clipboard and tie.
27. Construction Helmet ($15)
You can do fucking anything if you have a construction helmet and attire that ever so vaguely matches it.
Forget grappling hooks and ropes for your Mission Impossible Acrobatics… You wear a Contruction Helmet with a clipboard and tie, and you can just ask “hey where’s the roof access”, and the bored cashier behind the counter will say “I don’t know… Over there… Why? Did management send you?” Then you just give them a thumbs up and they’ll go back to being bored.
This is the one thing that works in real life just like a Hitman video-game.
You can just show up to public places dressed like a workman and start accessing their no-access-areas, shoving ladders up against their buildings, and lock-picking your way into their supply closets.
Sure construction helmets kinda suck compared to skateboard helmets, but nothing will match the authority that comes with looking like your being paid union wages to work as slowly as possible. (this is actually the real challenge, you’ve gotta look bored and slow whilst moving with a purpose)
Little orange earplugs are actually quite incredible for cutting down the decibels of work, power-tools, gunshots, explosives… and you should stock up and keep several sets on you for this purpose alone. But you should also consider the effects of regular ambient sound on you.
Whether you’re in your car, a sleeping bag under a bridge, a broom closet waiting for a building to shutdown for the day, a tent in a snowstorm, a sidewalk… A pair of earplugs are necessary if you want to sleep. Likewise you’ll want a sleeping mask so you can sleep at odd hours irrespective of ambient light or Streetlamps blaring through your windshield… and an egg timer or other kind of timer that shakes or gives a VERY loud beep when the time is up… Even if your watch has an alarm you’ll sleep through it if you’re sleeping right.
I cannot tell you the number of otherwise cozy sleeps I’ve had ruined by a Streetlamp blaring through my windscreen, or a tarp slapping loudly in a rainstorm.
29. Raincoats
Raincoats can be gotten from $5 to $500… And the generally have value up to the $200 mark (Goretex is generally over-hyped except for some really niche applications like power-sport gloves). As always most of the value is at the low end in the garbage tier… Not because it’s good (a $5 Surplus store raincoat is generally miserable to wear, especially if its at all warm) but because of the disposability, and the redundancy. Keep a set of raincoats in your car for 3-4 people or one in your go bag is endlessly useful… and basically guarantees that half the time you’ll be using the garbage raincoat (always be ready to use the trash version of kit).
I’ve found the 20-30 dollar bright yellow reflective raincoats and the olive green raincoats of the same make are uniquely durable for their money (but do not breath at all so you also want to buy a $3-5 rain poncho to store with them, lest you have to cook yourself in the summer)…
The big thing with raincoats however is in any moderately cold weather (late fall, early spring) you NEED to have rain-kit unless you’re 100% sure of clear skies because its really trivial to FUCKING DIE of hypothermia even well above freezing at like 33-60 degrees (0-15 Celsius) if you’re caught out even in otherwise warm clothing… which really sucks because as soon as you have to go inside somewhere for rain because your sweaters or kit are soaked… A) you’re creating tons of exposure with regard to surveillance… which is still recoverable if you’re willing to just burn some time, but more importantly B) you are never getting that kit dry in a million years out in the field while it’s still raining…
29. Rain pants ($5-30)
You can spend $70-100 on these if you use them professionally or want really comfortable ones, but basically you only need them for near freezing temperatures and you can put up with some awkwardness or cheep kit the 1-2 times you’ll need them.
Unlike a rain coat where if you get soaked through in your chest, you will get hypothermia… you can tolerate wet legs down to far lower temperatures… I’ve personally stood outside for hours in pouring rain on various adventuresome nights with just the coat, not the pants, and it was fine… but those were just cold nights. Not Near freezing nights, if it had been only 1-5 degrees above freezing that might have been far more perilous.
Again you generally don’t need these just for the wet… You aren’t storing mission critical kit that low, and you aren’t going to be out long enough to get trenchfoot… but when you need rainpants on a frigid storming November day you’ll be damn glad you have them.
30. Collared shirts
Really simple: You want some form of collar on your shirt so that between the suspenders, sweaters, jackets, backpacks, vests, and whatever else that you’re putting on and layering over eachother, you aren’t going to have them chewing into your neck.
As always you kinda want darker colors, but that doesn’t have the biggest effect, you might wear and undershirt under this and be doing costume changes. Button-up? Polo-Shirt? Really doesn’t matter, you just want a soft material that’s not going to chaffe across 10s of miles.
Not a deal breaker if you don’t but there’s a very good chance you’ll be very miserable.
Gloves are really relevant for not just the tactical world but espionage and crime especially because of the risk of leaving fingerprints… Now prints are overstated, you generally can’t recover them outdoors for instance, they aren’t actually unique special snowflakes, in many respects they’re more an avenue for parellel construction or lying to juries than true forensic suspect finding… but if you’ve been arrested or are just newly arrested and have your prints taken that’s not much comfort.
Mechanic gloves are now the tactical standard for combat… some brands are kind-of like lighter motorcycle gloves with impact and abrasion resistance, some have cold weather ratings, its a whole thing… but highly relevant to you is they’re made for operating tools (wrench, powertools, guns, Knives) while protecting you from pinches, cuts, and burns… And they offer a good protection from your environment… Nothing will take you out of the fight faster or leave more evidence that a sudden hand laceration and severed nerves or tendons… These injuries happen all the fucking time in all kinds of shops and jobs. The shear number of people I’ve met who’d tell me about various numb spots they still have on their fingers is remarkable.
You don’t want that happening to you while you have an angle grinder in one hand, and your dick in another, right as you trip an alarm.
Likewise these will offer semi-good protection while operating a skateboard or bicycle (but they largely don’t have the sliders of wrist-guards to stop breaks)
That being said if you are not doing anything really hazardous… they can be uncomfortable or cumbersome… By contrast really light winter gloves, the kind you can get an 8 pack of for $5… They’re generally great for just not leaving fingerprints and offering ultra-light protection from scrapes and very simple cuts.
However if you’re planning to do anything really finnicky where you can’t leave fingerprints… just Bring latex surgical gloves: This is what Surgeons use, and this is what Mechanics actually use when they have to do anything delicate but don’t want to get covered in automotive fluids.
Part 5: Unconventional Hobo Weapons
Historically, U.S. forces have tried to minimize their casualties by using overwhelming firepower. Unfortunately, against a well-prepared adversary (in all but level desert terrain) no quantity of bombs or shells can limit friendly casualties. Minimizing one’s cost takes surprising that adversary; and, for surprising enemy soldiers, there is no substitute for having properly trained individuals and small units of one’s own. -”The Last Hundred Yards: The NCO’s Contribution to Warfare” By H. J. Poole
This is by far the LEAST important segment of this list, as far as Hobo ops are concerned.
Michael Collins and the Early IRA liberated Ireland from the British empire with shockingly few arms to the point where a scarcity of bullets was a real concern… Contrasted with intelligence gathering and operational stealth/tempo, the actual armaments you use are a relatively fleeting concern… In truth a well disciplined, operationally competent, Informationally secure, and aggressive guerilla movement could probably cripple a first world nuclear armed government using nothing but improvised shivs. (hell a successful “boxer rebellion” would be totally possible if groups of 2-3 ambushed people unawares)
Weapons quality is really rather irrelevant compared to the operational challenge of identifying targets and getting to them undetected.
Yet they’re still very relevant, and the skillful employment of weapons will save you miles of headaches (marksmanship is eternally important).
However the actual weapons people recommend I find tends to put people on a rather off footing, if not outright demoralizing and emotionally crippling people in the wrong jurisdiction.
Or even sending people down training death-spirals of a defensive mindset.
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Talk to preppers about what weapons you should get, and they’ll invariably bee-line to talking about AR-15 platform rifles or other modern semi-automatic sporting rifles, and a narrow set of very common 9mm and .45 caliber handguns.
And a few who’ve read books on infantry platoon tactics will complain that you can’t buy a box or belt-fed squad automatic weapon, that they really want to be able to employ react to contact drills and pill-box assaults.
The reason these are “the right answers” is that these are all apex DEFENSIVE weapons. The thing Squad Automatic Weapons, “Assault-style” medium cartridge rifles, and 9mm semi-automatic handguns all have in common is they are perfect REACTIVE weapons.
If your platoon takes contact, or your 2-4 man fire-team is surprised with effective fire, or you’re going to your car and a robber tries to ambush you… These weapons are MAXIMALLY flexible and firepower intensive for their platform size to return fire immediately and “potentially” win against a variety of possible threats when you’re surprised…
This is why they’re all shockingly similar and are effectively just sized up versions of each-other in terms of philosophy (many Squad automatic weapons will even accept AR-15 Magazines), and the prepper space can often devolve into the most esoteric debates about ammo maker or how best to mount a flashlight to an AR pattern rifle… The “Best way” to do it is actually really limited because you’re optimizing for the same reactive scenario, and trying to optimize for a “General” threat, since you aren’t choosing the engagement.
By contrast in this piece we will be discussing OFFENSIVE, opportunistic, and improvised weapons… Weapons not for reacting to surprise contact, but initiating it.
Human beings you see are fleshy squishy interlocking sacks of goo, and not even especially fit ones. The median person, in any organization, is simply just barely able to defend themselves when they register a threat, hopeless when they’re surprised, and basically defenseless at 3am on a Monday.
For this reason the aggression with how weapons are used at the individual level is paradoxically the inverse of their firepower.
Heavy firepower weapons are used for defense to try and overcome the overwhelming lethal power of surprise, whereas small, finicky, goofy shit is used for offense to try and achieve that surprise.
Thus Squad automatic weapons are almost always used effectively defensively, whereas .22 caliber pistols are used offensively… The machine-gun is too heavy and is horrifying overkill if you’re trying to surprise an unarmed man from behind a corner, and a .22 has no “stopping power” to reliably counter even an aggressive junkie with a box-cutter (it’ll kill them, maybe, with time, but shots to the torso won’t “stop” them before they have the chance to slash you a dozen times). Thus Machine guns are used Defensively to hold positions, whereas .22 Caliber pistols where-ever they are used are used offensively by assassins (or by cheap gangsters who got the least expensive handgun they could).
The Bond films actually get this right, sorta. A secret agent’s pistol would be tiny… since he’d be executing and assassinating people unawares… The Walther PPK would actually be good at this, aside from the absolute pain of sourcing the relatively uncommon ammo for it. But Bond is never shown doing this! Instead he is always defensively gun-fighting against multiple opponents with an under-powered gun that only has a 7-8 round magazine… and somehow none of his foes get hit with the 1-2 under-powered rounds, and then just keep shooting their sub-machine guns, which is what you’d expect since a .32 has little stopping power)
Keep this in mind… And also keep in mind, this is the hobo list, we’re keeping things cheap, achievable, and disposable.
I’m certain your $10,000 half MOA custom battle rifle is an amazing killing implement of divine craftsmanship as worthy of Homeric Verse as the shield of Achilles himself… A weapon to make Apollo and Euclid weep at is parabolic perfection.
But would you actually use it in a homicide?
Would you fire that one perfectly precise glorious 1/2 MOA shot knowing that you’d have to bury that rifle in the woods afterwards or chop it up with a Hacksaw to dispose of it in dumpsters around the metro area lest some investigator match the ballistic forensics?
Or would you want to try to find something cheaper and more expendable?
32. Icepick
($10, or just use a spare screwdriver)
This is actually an underappreciated general prepper tool, beyond simply maintaining a good bar (a necessary part of every stylish apocalypse). If you live in a northern climate keeping containers/buckets/rubber-maids that you can store and freeze water outside in cold months is how you can keep your fridge/freezer/newly designated cold-room semi-functional without electricity in an extended grid down scenario, while also keeping lots of fresh water in a semi-storable state. Then you stab and pick chucks of ice out to heat and cook or drink with.
However that’s not what you imagined when you saw the image of the ice-pick: You imagined countless mobster movies where a Hitman had plunged an ice-pick into a waiting victim’s neck or spine.
But why an Icepick?
An icepick would seem an inferior weapon to any comparably sized Knife or Bladed weapon, having no blade with which to cut the veins, arteries, nerves, and tendons of the wielder’s opponents…
However this weakness of the Icepick is indeed its greatest strength.
While in terms of sheer damage it is weaker than any comparably sized blade, by NOT cutting the veins and arteries of its opponents it prevents blood from spurting all over the assailant and the crime scene. Thus it has been a staple of mobsters, gangsters, assassins, spies, and others who need to escape the scene of their killing without dripping blood everywhere they go, and it allows the body to be disposed of in controlled environments without a massive bloody mess to be dealt with.
Beyond this the circular reinforced pick is uniquely hardened for not just penetrating ice, but the backs of skulls, providing the cleanest, quietest kill that requires ZERO fitness or fine motor skill… A trait it shares with the common screwdriver.
33. Gas Station Garbage Knives and Small Kitchen Knives
($10-30)
There are a million reason you SHOULD NOT buy gas station knives… They don’t hold a blade, their ergonomics are hit or miss, they decay massively such that the plastic and tightness of the blade play will maybe last a month, if you figit with them at all you’re going to probably break them and injure yourself, and because they don’t hold an edge if you start doing any survival work with them you’re probably going to wind up putting in way more force than you should have to into them, and wind up stabbing yourself…. And they can be outright dangerous to the user if the lock is poorly constructed, or they have too much blade-play.
AND YET… they’re still better than 99% of the weapons your favorite heroes of legend used to slit the throats of their enemies. The crappiest Chinese stainless steel knife is still more durable than any bronze or early Iron weapon. Indeed basically every historical analogy to every named sword you know was almost certainly a worse weapon than any crappy gas station knife, this is why they named swords like “Excalibur”, “Zulfiqar”, and “Tyrfing”… Middle Iron age swords were finicky to make and blacksmithing still not perfected, and a sword would be the stuff of legend if they lasted a lifetime without breaking. By contrast Napoleon’s Marshalls (even the ones who used them often) did not feel any compunction to name their swords or sing their praises… Because they safely assumed they’d work and didn’t find this remarkable.
While as survival tools Gas station knives, hardware store knives, etc. are often lacking or hazardous to their user when used extensively as tools… As weapons they’re more than serviceable, assuming you check that their locking mechanism is sturdy and won’t guillotine your fingers if you stab something solid (test them by trying to make the lock fail while wearing your motorcycle gloves), and assuming they have a good grip or cross-guard that you can retain them without your hand slipping.
Likewise for fixed blade knives, basic kitchen knives have killed hundreds of thousands around the world, not least Black-Belt Martial Artists and Tier One Special Forces when their sexy/psycho girlfriends learnt they were cheating… these knives can be sourced at most dollar-stores and Walmarts for 5-10 dollars. You too can defeat tier-1 operators in “Domestic” Warfare.
REMEMBER: Human beings are fleshy squishy interlocking sacks of goo. Prisoners regularly kill eachother with sharpened chunks of plastic, wood, glass, and fiberglass they’ve fashioned into shivs, any solid chunk of steel is a deadly weapon.
By contrast… That PERFECT KNIFE? The one you selected off the internet from a reputable knife maker? The one you chose from hundreds of different models for it’s exact dimensions, use case and character? The one you spent $200 on with your little credit card?
That knife is IMMEDIATELY tied to you if you drop it at a crime scene. They will call the manufacturer and they will have a very short list of 100-200 people around the world who bought a “Fairburn Sykes Tribute Replica Tactical Black 6-inch Mid Sized RoseWood Handle, Folder/Bloodgrove Edition by ColdSteel” And you will be one of two people in your entire metro area who bought one… The other will have spent that weekend with his Grand-kids.
Or you can buy some crappy gas station knife with cash that the Gas-Station owner got in a box of 80 off Ali-Express from some Filipino reseller, who got it from a Chinese maker who doesn’t speak English.
Drop a dozen at a crime scene. No one’s tracing them. Get the one that says “police department” on it to mess with them.
Again double and triple check that locking mechanism works and will hold up to hitting something solid… don’t guillotine your fingers. but I don’t really care if the plastic is falling apart or the paint came screwed up from the factory, or it can’t be resharpened reliably or the blade turns to butter after the first 1-2 cuts… the anonymity those ugly monstrosities give you is worth having to toss them after the first use (which you were going to do anyway).
For God’s sake don’t take them camping, and don’t try to do any real job with them… but as a disposable weapon? Well The greatest living knife fighters with the most confirmed kills are all members of prison gangs who’ve spent the better part of their lives stabbing each-other with sharpened toothbrushes and hunks of safety plastic… The shittiest knife china can make is still more than you need.
“But what if we just spent extra-money at the hardware store and got reasonably safe respectable but equally anonymous $30-50 Knives we were 100% sure would work, yet aren’t dollar-store fixed blade steak knives?”
I mean sure… a reasonable person might do that… but that’s completely unnecessary and the extra $10-30 is hobo crack you’re missing out on.
Offensive Vs. Defensive Knifes
A Folding Knife is an Offensive knife, a Fixed Blade Knife is a Defensive Knife. Little boot knifes and hidden holdout knifes in case you get tackled and need to defend yourself should always be FIXED BLADE… because in a grapple you will struggle to unfold a knife no matter how “easy” the mechanism is, whereas even a short fixed blade knife as soon as you’ve grabbed it one motion to unsheathe it is immediately weildable.… You can unsheathe and stab with a fixed blade in the same motion, no new thought or muscle impulses required.
AND REMEMBER!
The correct number of Knives to have on you for a fight is 3! One for each hand and a backup small fixed blade hidden on your person in-case you lose one and lockup in a tussle. Always be stabbing. And always have more blades coming for more angles.
Now these are… kinda… applicable to an offensive Hobo-op. in that if you ever needed to charge into a room and defeat multiple opponents in a melee, these would work and let you overcome a press of people, and you CAN conceal them in a backpack on taped under the layers of your clothes…. But that’s incredibly niche. Rather this is more a general defensive preparedness thing.
“Zombie Machetes” can be bought at almost any surplus store outside the UK (in the UK you have to buy them in rustic brown colors. gross)… and they live up to their name… Both in that the Zombies your governments have imported wield them and in that they’re good at fighting the Zombies.
Machete attacks are actually becoming shockingly common across the west, either because guns have been banned in a jurisdiction, or are controlled enough that low level thugs and mad-men… Zombies… Won’t jump through the hoops to get guns.
In many jurisdictions around the world acquiring a self-defense handgun, or carrying it is basically only achievable if you’re willing to violate several laws, actively track down a black-market firearms seller, pay through the nose, and look tough enough he doesn’t just rob you of your money instead.
However you can very easily just have a Machete that’s the equivalent of a Short Sword in your car, under your bed, and duct-taped under your kitchen table at all times as a general tool… It’s for dealing with brush in a pinch, honest!
For this reason every illegal invader and zombie also has them.
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And this is where you REALLY want something with a POINT on it.
Machetes are really hit and miss in terms of sharpness and how deep any cut or hack will be. Sure you might sharpen it up extraordinarily, but how well the edge holds is simply going to be dependent on the manufacturing and how often it’s used for other tasks. Sure even with a relatively dull machete, A good hit will hack a hand off in midair… but evenly slight worse hits will deal only superficial cuts. Depending on sharpness, speed, angle, friction, something as thin as a t-shit can prevent a cut, which is really fucking concerning if the other guy is attacking you with his own weapon.
Stabs however do not have the momentum divided across an infinite series of points on a line segment, they focus all that momentum onto one point that punctures flesh really trivially. Quick whipping or punch-stabbing a pointed machete like a rapier to the torso will deal a stopping 2-3 inch deep wound that will probably puncture a lung, whereas even if you hack like crazy and do nick a vein in the neck or shoulder, a hyped up assailant probably wouldn’t notice for 10s of seconds.
Also if you’re buying a machete get one with a cutlass style guard, since that will protect your hand, both from an opponents weapon (sorta) but more importantly from Jams and solid surfaces in the environment (like your dresser, or trees in your campsite, or a car-door) which you are shockingly likely to jam you hand against the second you start swinging wildly because a fucker with a blade is coming right for you.
This is why they had cutlass grips on swords designed for fighting on 18th century ships, and it will work just as well in your crappy apartment since it is just as narrow, poorly lit, and smells just as bad.
35. Bracers
($30)
I’m really dressing you like a nerd, dude… gonna be belle of the renaissance faire.
Bracers effectively extend the reach of any bladed weapon by 8ish inches, and the average opponent doesn’t even notice you have this advantage.
You’ll notice that this is in the “weapons” category instead of the clothing section? Its that effective.
The thing that determines distancing for any mutual blade combat is the risk that your opponent will cut your hands and arms… This should be intuitive if you and your friends ever swatted sticks at each-other as kids.
Bracers, by adding hard protection to the wrists and forearms and all the vulnerable veins, nerves, and tendons contained there gives you a massive advantage over any opponent who doesn’t have them… and unlike a blade that is 8-inches longer, you can actually basically conceal bracers on your person beneath a sweater or coat without having the cops called on you.
These are useful to have, not least to have a cheap addition to Halloween costumes… But the BIG Thing is you want to understand the core concept behind bracers so that if you get into trouble without them and are in immediate but not imminent danger of a melee fight, you can fashion bracers for yourself with duct-tape combined with magazines, cardboard, sweaters, pages torn from books, etc. Stacked together and then taped to your arms. Or just tape layered over the coat/sweater you’re already wearing. The slightest hardened surface will do amazing things to prevent mere contact and lights cuts from inflicting damage through to your flesh, whereas really good bracers will stop all but the most powerful hacks.
There also exist modern variants made of synthetic materials meant for industrial and farm work. These are the same price (about $30) and don’t look as cool with your Halloween costume.
That said if you think you’re likely to get in bladed confrontation, that you live in a riot prone area where guns aren’t accessible and knife/machete attacks are common… Buying yourself “proper” leather bracers you can quickly throw on might be the biggest force multiplier you can cheaply give yourself both for home defense and offensive ops.
NOTE: if you REALLY think you’re likely to be cut or stabbed... or are going to have to go into a hot melee, and live somewhere you can’t buy a gun... For God’s sake buy cut/stab resistant clothing. It’s outside the scope of this essay and I don’t have personal experience with them, but for 100 dollars you can get a cut/stab resistant vest or sweater.
You thought it was real… didn’t you.
36. Pellet and Airsoft Guns
($80-100)
These are interesting little things. Pellet and airsoft guns are actually significantly useful for target practice, training, LARPing with the Boys and building that teamwork… I’ve heard special forces say a good chunk of their pistol training on their own time is actually done in a hallway of their house drawing on and plinking a little trap target since they can put 10s of thousands of bb’s through an airgun, but would break the bank doing that at a range with real ammo.
They’re also a believable bluff. Many a person in history has been for real kidnapped, held-up, detained, robbed, taken to a third location and interrogated, tortured, or even killed… With fake guns (well i mean presumably they killed them with a melee weapon, although those pellets will break skin and welt something fierce).
If you’re in a jurisdiction where guns are tricky to source, a pellet or airsoft gun that LOOKS like a real gun actually gives you a surprising amount of capability.
However be aware the laws have fully adjusted to this… And in most jurisdictions if the judge doesn’t like the fact you’re white (they NEVER do this to minority criminals), they can convict you of REAL armed robbery or assault with a “firearm”, for having the fake air-gun on you that doesn’t even employ combustion in its functioning… Likewise be very aware of this if you intend to use one for home defense, research your local laws so you can war-game not just how you’ll use them but the legal risk.
The other thing Pellet Guns specifically are really useful for is in an Anti-Material role. They’re nearly perfectly silent, yet will break windows and other delicate or sensitive equipment at a distance such as Cameras and the like… that makes them Ideal for sabotage in urban or dense areas where you might have multiple houses and people sleeping within 10-20 meters of you as you work, whilst being remarkably compact.
37. Slingshots
($30)
There do exist “Slingshot Rifles” which are fairly accurate and can get up to 300ft/second, which will penetrate a skull and kill. But they’re like 300-400 dollars, large, single shot, and vastly worse than the next option on this list… However they might be an interesting prepper or anti-material option if you’re in a really miserable country.
But I want you to focus in on the simple, concealable cheap slingshots that you can get at any neighborhood hardware store. They in and of themselves are theoretically killing by inflicting potentially penetrating head-trauma (The Deadliest Warrior proved that back on the Discovery Channel)… But the big thing is they’re cheap, disposable, concealable and fairly reliably wounding from a distance…
Riot Control is just ancient warfare, but fought to wound, exhaust, hospitalize, and drive to early retirement the various sides instead of killing.
I’m genuinely shocked we don’t see these crop up at Protests and riots vastly more often since they give a decent range, will inflict serious injuries, are trivially ditch-able and disposable (i don’t think anyone’s wallet will really be hurt if they have to ditch a slingshot), and produce a speed and force EXACTLY comparable to ancient slingers of Rhodes and other islands… the same shepherds’ sling tech that killed Goliath. But whereas they had to train consistently for weeks or months and the really good ones would train for life, and were prized to recruit by ancient armies… you can unlock the same striking power for the price of like 2 cocktails invested into the cheap plastic wonders of modern materials science.
And yet they’re deniable and non-lethal enough that no commander would be able to justify switching from rubber or plastic bullets to more serious loads.
Sure a Sling killed Goliath but police and Soldiers have helmets and none are going to get brained between the eyes except in a very freak occurrence…. Thus i suspect as riots and the logic of riots refines and street-fighting becomes a mature form of warfare, that slingshots will become fairly standard “peaceful protest” kit, and pallets of them will just magically appear at construction sites around Minneapolis and Portland with some regularity.
Meanwhile against weaker opponents, who you don’t need to worry about turning and fighting you to the death… Slingshots are lethal weapons reliably enough…
Likewise the Anti-material capability of Slingshots is not to be underestimated. Slingshots are stronger than mere pellets, and if they crack skulls they’ll crack more than a few cameras, car windows, etc… While obviously mere cracks aren’t immediately debilitating, to any of those, once cracked sufficiently if they don’t receive maintenance the rain, dew and mold will kill and destroy them.
There also exist $25 “pocket shots” that have the strength of a relatively normal slingshot… but are even more readily concealable.
38. Bow/Crossbow
($30-100 for a cheap used one)
Like many things (knives for example) this is one of those things you can spend vastly too much on for the most marginal increase in capability over cheaper options… But those cheap options give you a lot of Capability.
Bow-type weapons are nearly silent, basically unregulated, buy-able with cash at any number of hardware and sports stores in almost any country… And Truly extraordinarily damaging both on people and material targets (VASTLY more than Slingshots)
That being said there’s no exploitable ambiguity with Bows (they have no riot/protest application like with slingshots), they are vastly less concealable, and their ammunition is uniquely massive and expensive (even more-so than most bullets), and unlike say balls through a slingshot they are actually kinda traceable if you don’t recover them (many Fletcher companies do label their arrows… For this reason if you buy a bow or crossbow you should buy a LOT of additional arrows/bolts with it (and not all matching. 3 or so of one type, then 3 of another type), since you’ll want to wait months before you employ them offensively to let your purchase age and records/camera recordings turn over.
All this makes them vastly more awkward and less versatile… However they do deliver the most possible damage you can deliver, at range, with neither a gunshot sound or flash nor the need to actually acquire a firearm (which might be truly prohibitive in some jurisdictions)
A solid steel arrow/bolt out of a good bow/crossbow will penetrate traffic-cameras, transformers, car windows… All kinds of targets that “Bladerunner” style vandal-resistance movements might want to hit on a weekend if ever your country gets occupied by the Red Dawn (Remake) North Koreans in Minecraft.
And without actually risking a firearms charge, or risking the actual firearm if you’re in the UK (where a handgun or rifle is effectively a $10-20k asset and treated like a divine and irreplaceable gift from the war gods, the way other movements might treat a Javelin Anti-Tank missile or Mortar system)
By contrast you can send an energetic recruit or you and a fresh buddy can go out with a simple bow, going after a static material target… And actually get something done and built capability, without truly risking much heat, or a major criminal charge.
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I basically see 4 reasonably cheap options that give a fair bit of capability.
modern Recurve take-down bows are probably the pinnacle of this category of urban prepping in terms of full capability. the Arms of the bow come off and are swapable on a central riser for different draw weights, meaning that as long as you’re competent enough to assemble it and string it (and not look like one of Penelope’s incompetent suitors) it will fairly trivially fit in a bag or backpack, and could actually just be brought along as an auxiliary tool on other ops as secondary tool. Likewise these are easily configurable in a variety of strengths for different amounts of power… Meaning that you can get real anti-material power out of them.
The tradeoff is this is maybe the most skill intensive on the list (you can buy extra kit that’s supposed to make it more accurate, but archery is a serious hobby with a serious time/skill investment) and if you’re going after say a small camera sized target, at night, with limited ammo, and you’re nervous not to be seen… You’ll want that skill to avoid just sending 5 arrows wide , breaking or losing them, and achieving nothing that night. (Again this is for fiction writers and after the Red Dawn North Koreans have invaded… we’re all loyal patriotic citizens, honest.)
Children’s Compound Bows by contrast are significantly weaker, but still highly deadly and much stronger than slingshots. And unlike a full-sized Compound bow, you’ll actually manage to fit one in a large backpack since they’re sized down for little arms. And the ability to hold them indefinitely at full draw for extended periods of time makes them far more accurate for the unskilled archer.
Pistol Crossbows are quite compact yet can kill dear (and people) and do an impressive amount of material damage. and can often have MORE strength to them than bows since they aren’t limited to a person’s pull strength, but whatever a levered draw device can do. Like anything you can spend thousands of dollars on these or you can pick them up insanely cheap when they crop up at a goodwill or pawnshop. A big consideration is that while pistol crossbows take up as much if not more space than a bow… The bolts are vastly more compact than arrows. Giving you either more shots to get it right, or giving your more opportunities to hit more targets across an operation… This would actually make them very useful for anti-material operations such as Blade-runner style campaigns against traffic and surveillance cameras… Or targeting static vehicles or windows, or employing more specialized “Firebolts”.
However unlike Bows, unless you invest in a “crossbow magazine” no amount of skill will allow you to get follow-on shots out faster, which really limits any crossbow as an antipersonnel weapon.
Modern Full sized crossbows can easily cost more than rifles, but you can also find them clogging up pawnshops and online auctions around the world at remarkable discounts. These are by far the largest and most cumbersome of maybe anything on this list, but they’re also amongst the most capable. There are people who hunt MOOSE with crossbows, and as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare more or less accurately predicted. The full sized crossbow actually has something of a specialized place in warfare for sniping at close ranges when near perfect silence is required, or more often, when treaties or local restrictions prevent you from sourcing rifles. These are really interesting in the anti-material role for how bloody heavy the actual force they exert can be whilst still being incredibly quiet (or atleast more quiet than suppressed firearms, most people are actually kinda surprised at how loud they can be), and shockingly precise within 100-200 meters. Unlike a rifle you are simply not going to set off an urban shot-spotter system with them, and in many areas you can source them far more easily… And you can actually do stuff with them you can’t with firearms… launching strings and ropes, starting fires (more on fire arrows later), creating an interesting symbolic message (gunshot holes in dramatic spots don’t really show up in photos for the web)… The only real challenge is they’re so painfully massive you’d need to design an entire op around somehow infiltrating and exfiltrating with one.
39. Blackpowder/Archaic Pistols and Firearms (???????)
It’s a curio that’s slipped between our current laws, as read Priceless as an artifact but leaves you just as dead Craftsmanship like this is not displayed much anymore And there ain’t too many gangsters shooting Russian .44 -Corb Lund
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Depending on the jurisdiction Blackpowder and Archaic Firearms fall into any number of special cases, exceptions, “Non-Firearm” re-enactor status “Props” and any number of odd and weird statuses depending on their function, ammunition, and in at least some countries… Manufacture date.
In Canada “Red 9” Mauser HandGuns are completely unrestricted, classified as “Not Firearms”, and don’t even require the basic firearms license… depending on if you can PROVE your individual “Red 9” was made prior to 1898 (Not legal advice I think I remember that right), in France Hoodlums and Gangsters fire Replica Cap-and-Ball Blackpowder revolvers… And Flintlocks, wheel-locks, and even burning chord matchlocks… And now home-brew battery operated electric lock muskets, pistols, and other oddities crop up surprisingly more often than you’d think.
Rusty old cap and ball revolver
Unregulated Re-Enactor guns have found themselves in odder positions than you’d think… Because depending on the jurisdiction that is what you can source!
Likewise an entire world of crude and shockingly well crafted single-shot or multi-shot Zip-guns and now “Ghost-Guns” crop up in all kinds of odd places and jurisdictions.
Access to firearms can never truly be denied to a people… And this is highly relevant to the Hobo Op… Both because when the Talented Hobo Operator is forced to fly into a country economy class, or cross a border on a coach-bus, or crawl up to a border checkpoint on foot like the worm you are… He/She probably isn’t going to be able to take their glorious Mark 23 SOCOM and suppressor with them, much as we’d like to.
They’re going to have to procure or fashion their weapon on site in the country or region in which they have found themselves… largely without any reliable contacts to get anything resembling a real gun and without the social skills to make those contacts (I know you Dear Autists). But for offensive ops? A single shot black-power device you crudely fashion from some piping, a borrowed or improvised trigger mechanism, that you suppress and conceal within an Insulated Water-bottle? That might be all that a tactical espionage operator needs for most jobs. (Bring something melee as a backup).
Likewise the antimaterial capability of black powder weapons should be obvious, so long as you have the accuracy to employ them against whatever target you take on.
Chiappa Little Badger Single-Shot Rifle - .22 LR… $250 new. But you can get equivalent old rusty wood single shot plinkers for $80 off any classified site.
40. Plinkers in .22 LR ($80-400)
The humble .22 Long Rifle is a profoundly underrated cartridge. What it lacks in firepower it more than makes up for in versatility.
You can buy 500 Rounds of .22lr for $50. 10 cents a round or less. And a single round can very easily be lethal with good shot placement to the heart or head.
It is profoundly easy and cheap to guarantee that you can never truly be unarmed… but there’s more to 22 lr than just cost.
The lightness of the round counts against it in a gun-fight… its stopping power is profoundly weak unless you land that lucky hit… But for a lot of applications that very lightness counts for you. In terms of weight 500 rounds of NATO standard .556 (12 grams per round) is 13-14 lbs, it displaces about 6.9 cubic centimeters per round or 3.45 liters of raw space displaced for 500, not counting all the air between the rounds (so like double or triple that). Meanwhile 22 lr weighs 2 grams (1/6th as much), or about 2lbs for 500 rounds, and displaces about 1.2 cubic centimeters per round… or about 0.6 liters of space for 500. (again not counting air between rounds).
If one wanted they could take THOUSANDS of rounds of .22lr with them on an operation on their person, without even really feeling much of the weight in their backpack. And you could fit TENS of THOUSANDS of rounds in a car without even really inhibiting your ability to fit other stuff in your trunk.
Now you’d NEVER have magazines for all those rounds and would have to spend half the night manually reloading individual rounds into your magazines or single shot plinker… But used in an anti-material fashion… targeting cameras or other enemy objects, 1 or 2 guys resisting a totalitarian regime could take down half a metro area’s surveillance net in a night in the style of the British Bladerunners (assuming they also improvised some suppression so as not to be bringing down infinite police assets from every shot-spotter system and alert grandmother).
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Beyond this your average 22 lr rifle has MUCH simpler mechanisms than rifles with larger rounds. This means you get all kinds of interesting and concealable take-down mechanisms and folding action that let them go in backpacks in relatively cheap 22s that you rarely find in larger firearms without spending an arm and a leg.
This simplicity also makes them very simple to illegally mod.
Now again this is “SHTF” only, solely for fighting the Red Dawn North Koreans (And those who’d collaborate with them)… Ask Randy Weaver about how viciously the US government goes after the families of white guys who try to modify their own property.
But, assuming its rebellion time to take the country back from commie scum, If you sawed off the barrel and stock of an AR-15 to make it concealable? You’ve just destroyed your AR-15, both of those contain vital functioning part of the rifle… Your gas tubes and buffer springs are gone.
Whereas in the vast majority of 22's? That just works.
Getting to something concealable is vastly simpler starting from a 22lr rifle than basically anything else… And when you’re trying to turn a garbage extra rifle in to something concealable and disposable for a covert action? That makes that grandfather’s 22 vastly more versatile and useful for many offensive applications than a lot of classically more effective rifles. In countries and jurisdictions where Pistols and concealable rifles are simply not available, having an old 22 and a hacksaw is what would make a lot of guerilla operations possible.
A KGB “Kiss of Death” Zipgun in a lipstick tube.
Likewise because the round itself and the mechanisms to fire it are so small, disguised and concealed it’s immediately useful to make spy weapons… Hiding a single shot firearm in a pen, or water-bottle, or lipstick tube all of a sudden becomes very doable (as long as your remember the round is Rim-fire… not center fire). Sure you can use a larger round, the KGB used .45, But the round you use is necessarily already going to be a weaker pistol round (all pistol rounds are weak) and depend almost entirely on shot placement anyway, but by using a very light round like .22 you minimize the risk of over-pressuring you shop-class construction and injuring the wielder, I’m sure the KGB knew that their lipstick wouldn’t blow up in their honeypots’ hands… but you’ll want all the margin of error you can get.
Also consider holding onto your extra barrels… or barrel trimmings (again not legal advice) As these high pressure parts are the hardest to source.
A Brief Digression on Shell Casings
Unlike the bullets, which generally rip themselves apart on impact (especially if they use hollow-points), Shell Casings are some of the biggest pieces of evidence left at crime scenes. A casing immediately betrays the caliber of the round being fired, the casing itself can be tied to the manufacturer of the ammo which means it can be matched to the rest of your ammo if you’re searched, but also depending on the age of the ammo it can be traced to the place of purchase if the records are that good.
And finally finger prints can be recovered from shell casings. A skilled operator should wipe down and load rounds while wearing gloves if doing anything clandestine… Likewise you can arrange the purchasing of ammo or disposal of excess ammo to minimize exposure. Buying common standard ammo on secondary markets or from guys trying to recover some of their funds lets you limit the purchase exposure… but the biggest way to avoid all of this is to RETAIN THE CASINGS.
Modern Semi-automatic weapons automatically eject casings with force and speed such that they can easily be lost or fall into odd places where you’ll never find them… However more archaic mechanisms: Revolvers, Single shot breech-loaders, Double barrels, bolt actions, lever actions… These all retain the casings until extracted either manually or via some predictably mechanism. Some of them violently eject casings, just at a time and place of your choosing, others you can slowly baby and hand extract the round once familiar with the firearm. Thus these non-standard mechanisms are often MORE relevant to clandestine activity than more standard semi-automatic firearms that most preppers will tell you are the “correct” choice.
Likewise there are cases of people using burlap bags and others duct-taped to their ejection ports to retain casings from semi-automatic weapons.
However it must always be remembered that recovering or holding onto casings is not worth losing a gun fight over. Every operator has to be ready and willing to scatter their casing when their life depends on it, and their preparation and earlier opsec has to be sufficient that that’s not a crisis.
Liam Neeson in Cold Pursuit
41. Shotgun / Bolt Action
The simplest, fastest, and by and large cheapest semi-concealable handgun to acquire in basically any country is an old Shotgun or Bolt action rifle you saw-off yourself… This is generally also the safest way to procure a handgun in a foreign country: that crotchety old farmer who doesn’t give a shit anymore and just wants some gambling or alcohol money is the black market arms-trafficker who’s least likely to shoot you in the back and rob you of everything you’ve got.
This is generally highly illegal except for a few countries that don’t care, but it’s also the most trivial job in the world… This is why Randy Weaver should have realized he was being set up (never do trivial crimes for other people, if they can’t figure it out themselves they’re Feds or retarded, and you shouldn’t be doing crimes with them either way).
But these have been staples of the criminal underworld for over 100 years for a reason And have been staples of civil wars, communist infighting and all kinds of state and sub-state actions basically ever since anyone ever had a surplus of rifles and shortage of pistols. Many of these were used in wars in the 1990s and are still being used in various war-zones around the world.
Indeed Many a complete and successful guerilla assassination/sniper campaign have been complete with only hunting shotguns and bolt actions.
42. Bubba-Bullpup Rifle
(???, Gunbroker is a strange place)
You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
The Bubba rifle, and especially the Bubba-Bullpup is maybe the most despised firearms monstrosity on any gun-classified section… Beautiful historical pieces with sometimes a century+ of character are mangled by some backwoods “Bubba” into a bizarre parody of a modern bullpup… which the modern American gun-owner already despises.
Sadly however… Bubba is correct.
While this is far less relevant in the US and other jurisdictions where AR-15’s and other firearms that can be divided into upper and lower receivers without losing their zero are readily available…
Outside the US bullpups and other rifles which have their overall length radically reduced (ideally below 24 inches) so that they can fit in backpacks are at an incredible premium in any urban espionage action.
You may not like it, but all those bizarre 80s bullpups and Bubba’s homebrew monstrosities are actually going to be relevant in any future guerilla conflict or insurgent sniper campaign. Something with the range and lethality of a full sized round, out of a shortened bull-pup platform, with something like a bolt action mechanism that retains its rounds and then can disappear into a backpack, all without having to disassemble or reassemble, or without the wandering Zero that comes with take-down rifles… That’s going to be one of the apex weapons of the modern urban clandestine op… Even if the trigger is going to be soggy and crappy as can be.
Bubba may be a blasphemer against descent tastes, firearms history, and basic gunsmithing sensibilities… but he’s also something else: He’s a spiritual hobo.
42. Caltrops ($25 on Amazon, comparable to make your own)
Sterling Archer was right… You really can just order area-denial weapons off Amazon.
This is one of the few things on this list that does 1 to 1 overlap with what James Bond himself uses in the movies. Rig up some boxes with batteries and some wireless automatic lock releases, and your car or motorcycle too can have a way to turn what would have been a speeding ticket into a 100 mile an hour chase, attempted murder charges, and Helicopter pursuit. (/sarc)
However, despite being right there on Amazon just waiting for ordinary hoodlums to rig their cars into James Bond style homicide/suicide machines… That’s not the actual application you see in modern ultra-low-intensity warfare.
The Caltrops you get off Amazon are actually Kinda thin and don’t actually make tires explode and rip themselves apart at 100 miles an hour the second they’re rolled over… all the Amazon Caltrops that I know of just cause slow leaks in tires, or seriously injure a foot if stepped on.
Caltrops that make tires explode need to be thick and hollow… Fortunately Mythbusters taught their audience how to make these in case you’re dead set on getting into deadly car chases.
However those lighter slow leak caltrops you can order direct from Black Market arms dealer Jeff Bezos are actually much cheaper and more useful for what Caltrops are usually actually used for: Creating mysterious 4 tire leaks that the driver doesn’t notice til they’ve already driven 10-20 minutes and the thin little caltrops have already fallen out of the tires leaving no evidence, but maximizing the expense and time loss to the owner of having to have their car emergency recovered from the middle of a busy roadway or the middle of the wilderness, precisely at the moment they needed their car to be functional.
Antifa has been doing this around Portland for years now.
Also for scattering in darkened areas to mess up people’s feet just like Kevin in Home Alone.
Part 6: Hobo Bags and Camping Kit
If there’s one video game that really captures the essence of modern warfare, its the ASCII Roguelike Zombie game “Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead”…
Just like the post apocalyptic survivors in that really extraordinary game, you’re going to be spending the majority of your time dealing with bags and inventory micro-management, and dealing with all the awkward painful ins and out of dressing and undressing.
Many simply don’t have the will, morale, and wrist fortitude to survive the zombie apocalypse or nightmare of modern warfare
If you’ve ever gone on a winter camping or done a good multi-day hike in the rain, you already know just how much QUITE LITERAL wrestling of kit you have to do. You will be a better ground grappler and more tantalizingly forceful lover once you’ve struggle-snuggled enough dozens of sleeping bags and multi-layer winter coats back into the waterproof valises and rucksacks they desperately do not want to go back into and can’t possibly have been manufactured for.
Yes dear reader, the secret of any successful modern warfighter is that the greatest pressures, compressions, and durances are found not in her firearm breach… But her poor sore overstuffed and prematurely stretched-out rucksack and sleeping compression bag. And you’ve gotta be the one to stuff it in there.
Again this is the Hobo Kit List, so this is far from comprehensive in terms of extended camping trips and campaigns you can research all of that more extensively… but these are the tricks and cheat codes I know.
43. Garbage Bags
($10 for 40)
Every piece of kit you get… Tents, Sleeping bags, hammocks, you name it, are all going to come with little valises and carry cases, many even built into the item… And to a one all those carry cases are going to be about as waterproof as a white cotton t-shirt.
If you want to camp-out, or do anything in the rain at all, Garbage bags are your greatest friends. The big thing is you want the garbage back INSIDE your valises and kit, generally even the crappy valise that comes with a surplus store sleeping bag is actually fairly decent for mounting and packing down… or would be if it could stop a single drop of water.
(I swear every valise that comes with a sleeping bag are all made of this bizarre, ultra-soft, synthetic perfectly permeable wonder-material more suited to swimsuits and lingerie)
So what you do is you line all your containers, bags, etc with garbage bags, and then the garbage bag acts as a vacuum seal allowing you to compress your clothes, sleeping bags, etc and store them far more compactly and easily. Remember everything puffy or insulating is mostly air, we’re talking 10s of Liters worth of space you get back while waterproofing all your kit.
Depending on how much camouflage you need you can even use white Garbage bags and then write the contents on the outside with a little marker to have a little sorting system so you don’t have to unpack everything when you want to track down individual items of kit.
Hell with some scissors and ducttape, or industrial garbage bags you can even fashion a makeshift backpack cover, bike or motorcycle cover, “camouflaged” waterproof stash-site (no one’s digging through random trash-bags in a ditch), or bivy bag to waterproof yourself as a makeshift shelter… I’ve even used garbage bags as makeshift Raincoats in dire straits (I’m quite fashionable).
These are truly INCREDIBLE kit. Depending on specific durability of the bag you buy (industrial garbage bags are indestructible) You can inflate air-mattresses with them, disguise indestructible evidence you’re trying to dispose of, vacuum seal a prisoner or captive in an industrial garbage bag for transport… Disguise yourself….
Here you can see my summer cottage and urban penthouse.
A black garbage bag is the closest you’re going to find to an actual Metal Gear Solid style Box hide, and unlike the Cardboard Box you can actually keep one in your pocket. (just be sure to poke holes in it so you don’t wind up like those poor unfortunate toddlers who play with grocery bags… (I know you adorable retards too well).
44. Garbage Sleeping Bags ($30-40)
The classic full 6 piece Canadian Forces Sleep System with flannel liner, Inner sleeping bag, Outer Sleeping bag, Arctic Hood, Waterproof valise, Bivy Bag, and Air Mattress… with an official “Unlimited” rating that’s ALLEGEDLY supposed to be good down to -40 (C and F, that’s where they meet) assuming you’re able to find a solid enough snow drift to dig out a hole-shelter for your biv-bag to go in… That costs $500-600 last I saw on the reseller sites.
Did you notice the operative words? “6 Piece”.
Any good sleep system is comprised of multiple elements:
Liners are really useful to get you a few more degrees, save laundry, and giving you something to rub to create friction heat.
Hoods trap the majority of heat that’s just pouring out of your head.
Bivy bags or tents stop you from getting soaked and dying of hypothermia… (Most soldiers only ever sleep in a hot tent with these taking watches over a gas or wood stove and a built in chimney, which is the better way to camp in the arctic, assuming you don’t burn yourself)…
Ground insulation like air-mattresses, foam mats, hammocks, or elevated cots so that the cold hard ground doesn’t just suck the heat out of you (air by contrast is a much poorer conductor… Also note hammocks need an under-quilt so you don’t just compress the insulation under you)
Also note, I always assumed that if you tried to camp out with no shelter but a bivy in extreme cold you’d get condensation on the inside even if it did work… So getting dug in within a igloo or snow shelter, or within a wider dug in pocket of snow that your body heat can raise to 0/32 degrees is almost certainly necessary.
And then multiple layered sleeping bags (the Canadian system uses two equally MASSIVE Down Sleeping bags you stuff inside eachother) create the raw bulk of insulation. (during the summer they usually leave the inner sleeping bag at home to get 6lbs off their back)
From this multilayer model of a truly timeless almost perfect sleep system (which they then fucked up in the procurement process for the new one)… You can use this model to assemble your own disposable garbage sleeping/shelter system from random hardware and surplus store trash. So that across multiday urban operations you don’t have to book a hotel and deal with the risk that comes with credit card records… And you know, you can stay alive while normal camping in the woods, like a dignified person.
You can become this invisible and untraceable. Remember an empty cup and little cardboard sign.
The key ingredients to any sleep system/portable shelter are like the Canadian system, combining multiple elements to protect you from multiple different threats to your heat and comfort… A cheap or old sleeping bag only rated for 5c/40f, a crappy thin yoga mat, and a few industrial garbage bags cut and taped together to form a makeshift bivy bag, then a small mylar emergency bag as a backup might be very poor in terms of long term durability or versatility… but all that’s also very compact, all disposable, disguises you perfectly, will keep you comfortable enough if you have the 5 day weather forecast written in your little notebook… And is all DITCHABLE the second you want a costume change.
Because the Massive 13lb Canadian forces sleep system that’s larger than the rucksack you mount it to? That shows up on camera really well, and you aren’t going to abandon a $500 asset in the field in the name of OPSEC and a costume change…
Whereas the crappy $30-40 Walmart sleeping bag you “borrowed” from your mom’s house that’s stained from sleepovers when you were a kid? That you can toss in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant without a second thought. Likewise just like the Canadian army you can stuff 2 sleeping bags inside one another to try and reach down lower into the temperature range.
This is also where the one thing I’ll actually recommend splurging on as far as sleeping bags is concerned… the liner.
A thick, non-cotton, flannel liner that’s warm in its own right is never going to be all that expensive, but the difference between it giving you 1-2 extra degrees of protection vs. 5-6 extra degrees will pay for itself very quickly… This is also the one part of a sleep system you can easily wash, and being the most compact is the one you can most easily compress in a plastic bag and disappear into a backpack or shopping bag.
But beyond this do not mistake the value of the sleeping bag as a disguise. Homelessness is at crisis levels across wide swathes of the west, and you can easily just wrap yourself up in a crappy surplus sleeping bag, get some fitful sleep under a bridge with the help of a sleeping mask… And no-one will bother you for hours on end allowing you to time-out the AI tracking software in surveillance cameras which will generate false positives in the meantime and lose track of you.
Just don’t get in the black vans if they show up offering food or drugs, they’re after your kidneys.
45. Cloth shopping bags ($2)
Reusable Cloth shopping bags are amazing kit… For what they aren’t.
They aren’t backpacks.
The backpack is a highly identifying piece of kit, especially if it has any pattern/brand on it… which AI is going to get relatively good at tracking… Again AI isn’t God, or omniscient, and there’s a million ways to trip it up, but this is annoying. (Although do cover or remove the identifying labels from your backpacks)
So you’d think the easy way to get around this would be to stack them… A backpack in a backpack. Except this almost never works.
Stacking backpacks for costume changes is actually something of a bloody nightmare. with frames, and hard bits, and reinforced corners… They’re actually really awkward to stuff into each-other, especially when you have lots of other kit. You know… THE REASON YOU HAVE A BACKPACK….
By contrast Cloth shopping bags get absolutely MASSIVE and between one or two can easily carry a full sized backpack/rucksack + its contents if you want it to compress down and not be poking out (for a truly massive job you might have to remove a large rucksack’s frame)… And YET those cloth shopping bags compress down to nothing and can easily be stored in a backpack.
Don’t use the see through plastic bags, but otherwise it is trivial to quickly and imperceptibly convert the one to the other, complete with change of clothing… combine it with an hour or so wait out of the way… AI would never know.
Likewise… Remember those garbage bags? Longer items you can’t break down, or bulky items its too awkward to compress can be stashed in a garbage bag, cleverly disguised next to other garbage bags (look up the garbage schedule and record it in your little notebook) and then recovered later at your leisure.
46. Walmart Backpacks and bags ($20-30)
Cheep backpacks, dufflebags, luggage, etc. Can be gotten insanely cheap on clearance or even down to $5-10 from some thrift stores.
Sure none of them really have all the features you like, or they’re awkward in some way… But at that price point they’re… Say it with me… Disposable.
You ability to transform the visual foot-print of your kit or carry more without being stuck hauling it about if you should exhaust or injure yourself is invaluable.
You can hide basically anything in a large duffle bag, and unlike what you might naively believe from watching The Matrix, you will not look conspicuous at all carrying one anywhere tourists or travelers are on foot.
Here you can see my kitchen, furnace room, and fireplace.
47. Ghillie Stove / Hobo Rocket Stove ($40, or make your own)
But of course what you probably actually want is a pre-made commercial rocket stove that you aren’t going to cut yourself on and doesn’t have jagged edges to slice you open mid camp. Alternatively if you’re really poor you can just make one and sand down the metal to something useable.
Now any avid camper is going to go through multiple gas stoves over a career… I’ve lost little ones, shredded others that were strapped to the back of my truck with my fuel and kerosene… Gas stoves you’re going to go through…
But these little stoves you can fuel with nothing but pinecones, dry grass, or twigs are A) shockingly durable, even the ones you make from tin-cans (never underestimate simplicity)… But B) shockingly dependable. I’ve gotten out on a winter camping trip in some relatively small mountains… When it got down vastly colder than I expected. I was fine, but then I woke up the next day and my gas stove would not work… The fuel had frozen solid… I had no other way to make water, I had planned on melting snow. I had to hike out, 6 miles, climbing over icy rock cliffs, without water. (It was fun)
Whereas a Hobo Rocket Stove, you’re always going be able to fuel, will always work, and you can store all your fire kit in the built in negative space.
Part 7: Hobo Gadgets
Vise grips for pliers, pliers for a wrench wrench for a hammer, hammer everything else.
The philosophy of James Bond is entirely contrary to actual effective gadgets. Specialized, unique, expensive, invariably single use, and basically unrepairable unless you have immediate access to a member of Q-Branch.
They do however have one thing that is genuinely relevant to good gadgetry. They’re small. Although often Smaller than would actually be useful… You want your tools to be convenient and compact without actually being finicky, easy to misplace, or hard to use. For this reason one of the most relevant “gadgets” is just having some good roles of tape so that you can give finicky little items a more substantive handle, and also keep bright orange tape so you can add a high-vis stripe so you don’t risk losing finicky little mission critical Hex-Keys, wrenches, or others in the dark… Since half your tools are going to come to you painted Matt-Black for no fucking reason…
Seriously! Somehow every external item you’re invariably going to want to be camouflaged is going to come to you with massive reflectors unless its some Camo-tactical surplus stuff that’s basically a billboard saying “Dedicate police resources to me”… Meanwhile all the finnicky tools you need to be visible are going to come to you so perfectly non-descript and camouflaged that even you can’t find them.
Keep a role of good grippy matte-black hockey tape in your tool box, keep some bright orange electrical tape, and stock-up on matte-black spraypaint from your local dollarstore to get rid of the shine on blades, weapons, external hobo clothing or camping kit, and other things you’ll probably want to actually be disguised.
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But the real secret to effective Hobo gadgets, the real key to modern irregular-warfare in general… is simply using the tools that are already common to their true effect. The Best gadgets ever invented are rusting in your grand-dad’s tool shed… because they were so effective they’ve become universal tools owned by every competent old man in the western world.
48. Butane Lighters ($2 each)
I cannot emphasize enough that you want multiple disposable lighters and you specifically want the Butane rocket lighters.
These are basically the same price as normal lighters, as close as makes no difference, but the butane rocket is a true modern wonder of science, vastly more effective at starting fire in the wind, the cold, and in getting non-standard forms of fuel up to higher ignition points. Butane burns up to nearly 2000 degrees celcius, and this is highly useful if you want to get a metal fire started (more on that later), or destroy evidence or sensitive data that might be stored on a digital medium.
The only real weakness of these lighters (which most convenience stores sell) is if the mechanism breaks, they run out of fuel, or if the butane freezes… So buy multiples and store them in your inner layers in extra cold weather.
49. Red-light Flashlights / Flashlights + red cellophane ($10)
Red light transmits vastly shorter distances and vastly less brightly… It also reflects far less. Without any of the upper wave lengths it terminates down to invisible infrared within 1-2 bounces. This has made it a staple of military night operations for over 100 years.
The big thing is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, you want dedicated single setting white and red-light devices. Every surplus store sells these one button headlamps with 5 settings, including strobe, that are white and red-light… but completely useless because you have to cycle through the strobing white light to get to the red light… risking giving you away.
Ultimately I strongly recommend just getting a roll of red cellophane so that you can convert various hardware and dollar-store mini-flashlights to red-light. You need both red and white light and you need redundancy for both.
Note: you can order single setting red-light flashlights off Amazon they’re actually basically the same price as normal flashlights, but you have to juggle the risk of you dropping one and them tracing the manufacturer transaction record vs. dropping one you’ve made and them finding a hair or fingerprint in the tape… Both incredibly minor risks… but something you should be considering, If you need it immediately make your own, if you need it months or years from now, worth ordering.
50. Parachord
550 Parachord is rated to 550 force pounds, which is not exactly the same as 550 pounds… But close enough that it was used in parachute riggings, its stiff, yet has some flex that reduces injuries (all ropes are on a spectrum from perfectly stiff to bungee chords (get into rock climbing to study more)) and it generally has tons of properties that are very useful to understand and tons of tricks.
Its the most common survival and general purpose rope you’re going to find, and its very useful to read the Wikipedia page and watch some videos on common tricks with it. You can make “less lethal” Bludgeons, and being rated for 550lbs it “““can””” be used for rappelling or arresting descent for SHORT DISTANCES in emergencies but will quickly build up frictions and rip itself apart if you try to descend more than like 1-2 stories… However that little arresting of momentum would have let a lot of assassins and criminals we’ve seen break their legs to not injure themselves and keep going.
However the real thing you’re going to use paracord for is tying kit together and setting up tents, making shelters, and doing repairs and riggings on your kit… and its very useful for that.
51. Duct-tape
This one’s like Parachord in that everyone already has seen HUNDREDS of videos on different tricks and tips with ducttape… And the main one you’re actually going to be doing with it is just repairing rips in your kit or yourself (its the improvised bandaid of choice for people who really regret not bringing a full sized 1st aid kit… yet somehow live to keep regretting it. Its designed to stop leaks, and it does that shockingly well.)
It also makes a good stick base for combining things for fire starters, homemade fuses, etc.
Also because it sticks to skin and fabrics, it’s insanely useful for hiding items on your person
52. Wire-cutters
We already covered these at the start and breaching fences, but they’re also really useful for general feild-craft skills. Depending on your multi-tool you might already have a good one built in… but if you only have a Swiss-army knife or wallet multi-tool having additional wire cutters is maybe the biggest addition you can have, likewise if your multi-tool is on the cheaper side and might break, the wire cutters are the tools you really want to have a backup of and can’t really improvise. Getting “through the wire” either in or out is the limiting factor in warfare at all levels from the 1890s to today. Whole lot of people have died in no man’s land or a federal penitentiary for want of a backup set of wire cutters.
53. Multi-Tools/ Swiss Army Knives ($2 to $200)
Everyone Swears by Leatherman’s… Militaries issue them. And Their “wave” is $200. Victorinox sells a $200 Swiss army knife…
This strikes me as insane for something you’re inevitably going to lose and I’ve gone through dozens of (Use the orange tape).
You could maybe justify buying ONE good expensive multi-tool in your lifetime.. And then realistically when you actually need it, it’s going to be at home or in your other pants, or you didn’t think Armageddon was going to hit while you were on vacation…
So what I actually recommend is just buying lots of cheap Multitools. the $2-5 knock off Swiss Army knives, the little wallet mutltitools, the crappy 20 dollar leatherman look-alikes that always need to be retightened?
You can have dozens of these buried in you wallet, your toolbox, your car, your kitchen, your backpack, your motorcycle pants, your little camping kitchen set.
A multitool is already a crappy backup version of itself. If you really knew what you were going to need you would have brought the single use dedicated tool and had a screwdriver, or scissors, or a knife, or wire cutters… The purpose of the multi-tool is to have it so that you have a backup on hand and are never caught out just unable to do X or Y…
Sure if you really want to blow the socks off someone in your family and tell them your really love them, buy them a Leatherman for their birthday (assuming they’re smart enough to realize that’s a $200 multitool and not think you got them a surplus hunk of junk)…
But for myself? I’d rather have 10 $10-20 multitools all stashed in odd bits of kit, in my car, on my bike, in my kitchen, in my various backpacks, etc. so that I know I always have a backup on me.
54. Bolt-Cutters
($30-300)
Bolt cutters are another one of those things you can spend INSANE amounts of money on for really marginal increases in capability….
And it’s not really worth it. They tested $300 breaching bolt cutters vs. $30 surplus store bolt cutters…
(This is a great video btw just for getting a feel for standard breaching jobs with bolt cutters)
And they basically performed the same. Neither penetrated a bike-lock meant to defeat bolt cutters, and both penetrated basically everything else.
They managed to damaged and degrade the cheapo bolt cutters on the bike-lock they both failed to breach… but it still functioned. And you could replace it for $30 afterwards or just have a backup in your car… And not only have you saved $240 you can now spend on ammo and training… you also have spare bolt cutters in your car, which is very useful for general preparedness.
55. Lockpicks and Training Locks ($20-50)
Lock-picks really do work exactly like they do in video-games, it just takes some practice to get confident with them.
Most standard door and key locks can be penetrated with some really basic tools without damaging them, and it’s really handy to know how to do this.
There’s an entire “Locksport” subculture that has guides and videos all over YouTube on how to penetrate different locks and all kinds of specialized penetrating tools… but if you understand the basics of how to get through a standard door lock and how to crack a cheapo bicycle combination lock, that will get you out of like 90% of the situations you might find yourself in.
56. Handcuffs / Handcuff Keys ($10-20)
Escaping handcuffs is a skill you want to atleast understand the basics of… Also having a set of handcuffs lets you spice up your love life without having to learn 1000 different knots from perverted weirdos.
But the REAL thing you’re looking for, is the handcuff keys.
Handcuff keys are all basically standard, some are longer or shorter, and you may want to file yours down slightly if its a cheap one so it’ll fit in more expensive more finely machined handcuffs…
But hiding a handcuff key on your person is really one of those SERE cheat-codes that can genuinely get you out of some tight binds.
Sure you could hypothetically shim or pick handcuffs but the real limiting factor for handcuffs isn’t the lock, its that your hand are bound, facing away from eachother, and properly applied have the backs of the hands facing away from the mechanism and with the mechanism on the reverse of the cuffs making them basically in accessible to your hands…
If you’re in a team of 2 taken together you can free eachother, but if you’re alone even with the key, freeing yourself is enough of a struggle.
Try feigning an injury so they won’t twist you to get your arms facing apart. this will make escape easier.
57. Matchhead Fuses
Youtube is overflowing with videos on making various homemade explosives and all kinds of stuff…
And as said previously I’m not going to get into making explosives in this piece, both for legal reasons, because it’s really dangerous, and because that’s a topic I want to visit in a more detailed piece some other time.
However i do want to get into basic non-explosive Incendiaries, which are generally safer, and have vastly more survival/utility/everything use….
The two most common ingredient you’ll see crop up again and again in explosives videos is either potassium nitrate or ammonium nitrate… These are saltpeter and fertilizer respectively. They’re oxidizers, and highly useful in all kinds of applications because of this… They make explosives, but they also make good fertilizers, cure meats, remove stumps non-explosively, are are highly useful for making non-explosive objects you just want to burn fast, or oddly.
They’re also controlled in most countries outside the US (where you can buy them at the hardware store)…
However there is a ready alternative: Match Heads.
The chemistry is different, but the red phosphorous in most match heads is perfect for predictable timeable burns of this type without having to get out the chemistry set or stark mucking about with registries, gunpowder, or acids.
If 12 year old boys find it easy and fun compared to messing with fomulas, high school chemistry and various sludges, its convenient enough for most utility applications too.
58. Road Flares ($15)
These were a staple of horror movies and video games for a reason.
Aside from NOT GETTING REAR ENDED when you’ve broken down in the road at night…
Road Flares are also very useful for signaling, emergency illumination, and just general utility. If you’ve never set one off you should just to get a feel for the properties, light, smoke, heat, and duration you get out of the ones that are sold in your region from local hardware stores.
59. Snare Wire ($20)
This is one of those things that you’d never guess, but is maybe one of the most effective weapons in history. The “Barb wire empires” of the 1890s through the world wars were all made possible by steel wire confining everything.
We started all this talking about wire cutters… And you can be the one wielding the wire.
Wire Snares and invisible road blocks are truly evil traps, I’ve heard horror stories over the years about lost toes, decapitations, shattered windshields, and all manner of things… When you look up Snare design and see decapitated bunnies some guy has caught… Know that that steel wire will do the same thing to you.
Likewise Wire that’s been run across a room is one of the things consistently used in Urban Warfare to deny areas… Sure tripwires and traps are common… But just strung steel wires that you don’t know if they’re tied to an explosive or not slow down forces immensely. A single strung wire Immediately raises people’s hackles and makes them step insanely slowly…. All that CQB room-clearing “Go-Go-Go” training slows to a crawl at the mere suggestion that a single strand of wire gives most novice door-kickers.
This especially is one of those things you want to consider and reconsider before using, because how it plays out won’t be determined by your attention but some poor unfortunate’s inattention…. but it’s a powerful and very compact tool to have on hand.
60. Fire Escape Ladder ($100)
The single most likely way for an operator to injure themselves on a getaway is by jumping off a roof.
John Wilkes Booth did it.
Tyler Robinson (Allegedly) did it.
Something about the panicky tactical scenario of having just committed the crime of the century makes people panic and dive 10s of feet onto their poor ankles…
25 steps. A 12 foot drop… Just 12 feet. Just Two 6 foot tall guys… Is sufficient that some the best pro-athletes in the world have consistently injured themselves and is considered one of the most dangerous trick attempts. And they have the assistance of forward momentum letting them roll it off, they aren’t doing it straight down.
You are NOT more athletic than these people, and you’re probably fatter and have a worse weight distribution for impacts.
The thing is though, by and large, we’ve solved how to get 1, 2, or even 3 stories down safely without destroying our ankles and throwing away our getaways… You use a rope ladder.
Sure you could rappel or do fancy ropework, but PRE-MADE rope ladders designed for people of zero-skill are sold in every home depot and hardware store in America FOR CASH… Take the solution that works for children!
Hell if you live in an apartment or multistory house you should have one anyway, and if you do shady stuff that you might have to escape the cops kicking down your door, you should definitely have one.
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61. Lighter Fluid ($4)
That’s right. You’re buying the butane lighters, but you’re getting the bottled liquid lighter fuel.
Specifically you want to get the plastic bottle lighter fluid that can burn-up its own bottle.
This is a crazy useful tool for destroying evidence, starting fires at odd angles, and if you wrap a lighter-fluid soaked rag around it with a fuse or other delay tool, you can toss it like a little mini-molotov cocktail to start small fires at a distance.
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62. Steel Wool ($2)
Steel wool has countless uses, not least doing your dishes.
But there’s an under appreciated trait of it most people don’t realize.
Steel wool burns.
Indeed it’s one of the only metal fires you can start with a simple lighter. The steel is that fine that it can combust and oxidize… very slowly and not impressively, at first glance.
You see steel wool barely gets enough oxygen when it burns to not extinguish (actually depending on the grain it probably will)… however it burns at 700 degrees Celcius. It’s not cooling off, it’s just running out of available oxygen. It’s actually sustained burning almost twice as hot as flint sparks.
This has several uses.
First off almost no amount of wind will extinguish steel-wool, the extra oxygen actually helps it burn vastly better… This makes it incredibly useful in any thrown or shot item to prevent the movement through air from extinguishing a flame.
You can see just how the movement through air makes steel wool burn faster:
Fire arrows? Molotov cocktails? Starting a fire on a miserable windswept hill? Anything that’s getting enough wind it might extinguish can be rendered windproof by combining ordinary steel wool into the burning element, as the wind goes through it the steel wool will burn, and then when it reaches a still point where the steel wool starts to extinguish itself, it’ll reignite the ordinary fuel.
I especially think this is relevant for molotov cocktails since the standard designed molotov (with the cloth wick in an OPEN bottle) is genuinely extraordinarily dangerous and suboptimal for throwing. I’ve seen so many videos of people setting themselves on fire when the fuel sloshes out midthrow, or fumbling because of the awkward upright grip this mandates. Yet the standard design requires this because otherwise the flame will extinguish midair before the bottle can break. By incorporating steel wool into a dry cloth-wick you can fully seal the “cocktail” letting you grip it by the thin part of the bottle, making it much safer and more throwable.
But the other use of steel-wool is as a springboard to other metal-fires. Usually you need an Oxyacetylene torch or something comparable to get a lot of metal and other reactions up to ignition point… however steel wool lets you do this up to 700 degrees…
And another common household item lets you get to 1000 degrees.
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63. Sparklers ($12 for 20)
Sparklers burn at 1000 degrees celcius, and they burn amazingly slowly and consistently.
This makes them really great and consistent fuses, and it makes them convenient and transportable tools for igniting powdered metal fires.
Cut a stretch of one some uniform length to time it if used as a fuse (you can use your wirecutters to test this out)… and double or triple up the end of the sparkler if you want to light a really inert metal fire, like Thermite.
64. Thermite
Thermite is a non-explosive mixture of powdered Aluminum and some oxydized metal, for incendiary activity it’s most often Iron Oxide, or common powdered rust (the thing steel wool makes when you leave it in the sink)…
This two ingredient mixture is kind-of an internet obsession on youtube and elsewhere because it is SO incredibly easy to make from literally dollar-store ingredients, it’s in an interesting legal place that its not an explosive, and therefore monetizable on YouTube without risking a felony.
And its just freaking cool.
Now because it’s so cool, its been kinda beaten to death, and has a mythology which can be overstated (it does not always cut like on Breaking Bad) but It is a genuine military tool that’s been used to quickly weld and destroy tank and artillery barrels and breaches by flash welding them, to break and breach all kinds of obstacles, and to start fires that can’t really be put out…. And the ingredients are at the hardware store.
Bladerunner style Anti-material campaigns against surveillance nets, and the assets of illegitimate Tyrannical states is this cheaply and easily accessible. (though obviously not YOUR government, that’s totally legitimate)
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65. Magnesium fire Starters ($7)
I always kinda hated these for starting fires the intended way… I always bumped the little pile of magnesium filings you were to make before I could get the little device to spark the flint just right.
but as a quick easy vehicle to flint and magnesium these little fire starters are infinitely useful.
Magnesium strips or powder is the classic way to start a metal fire or get a survival campfire going, and flint rods which reliably spark when struck are useful in all kinds of applications, and improvised devices… Basically allowing any mildly energetic physical movement to be quickly rendered into an igniting spark (there’s a reason early firearms used flintlocks).
That this works will never cease to blow my mind… And also probably an entire oxygen tank in a pure oxygen explosion… This maybe the most profoundly dangerous thing I’ve seen in it’s construction, seriously probably don’t try this unless you know more than me.
Of course if you’ve seen Theif by Michael Mann you know that Thermic Lances can get truely massive with huge industrial sized oxygen tanks and 4-5 meter long Lances when you’re breaching a safe the size of a room…
But being able to have a mini-version of this that will cut through basically all metal barriers with the only limit being the Quantity of Oxygen you have on hand… That’s really incredible for things you can improvise on a hobo budget, and I think really demonstrates the essence of the hobo philosophy…
All the advanced technology of barrier construction, safe making, and advances in materials science and people control… Is defeated with individual knowledge, ingenuity, and some highschool chemistry + Shop class skills.
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67. Dedicated Camera (Signal free, SD card or wired only)
($20-100)
Paradoxically sometimes the most powerful covert action is the evidence you gather, or even the evidence you publish.
Since the 70s on and especially since the invention of the internet and the war on terror… Non-state groups have published photos and video, often at great risk of their escapades for the propoganda value… And this has only escalated with the rise of social media and the virality the messages of these Stollen Scoops, bragging posts, and Combat footage can have…
Sure it’s a major vulnerability and inherently a form of information leak, but even groups like Hamas or Frontline fighters in the Ukraine war send their potentially compromising and vulnerability exposing glory photos and videos… Because the propoganda value is just that extraordinary.
In Fry The Brain, John West details how Insurgent Iraqi sniper went out of their way to document and film their own sniper missions that the morale, propaganda, and fundraising value of these videos were so extraordinary.
The big thing is though you have to tightly control what information is and is not getting out. Cellphones obviously errupt data everywhere and are Electronic Warfare nightmares… But they also compromise their photos, hiding various forms of metadata in the photo including time, date, GPS location, the works…
Oldschool junker cameras that run off an SD card and can’t receive any signal on the other hand? Those are natively vastly more anonymized, and lend themselves to use in OPSEC intensive settings.
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Earlier generations had to figure out more “via experience” whilst crawling through the trenches for years on end. if it comes down to it, you can crawl through the ditches for a day to infiltrate and exfiltrate.
In Conclusion
“Other than death, all defeat is psychological.” -unknown
As always this is far from exhaustive: The shockingly effective gadgets, ordinary items, skills and improvised tricks and techniques to defeat advanced tyrannical and totalitarian nation states (those other ones, not yours, yours is legitimate…) is nigh limitless.
On genuinely shoestring budgets, and with not really any extraordinary effort or fitness beyond 5-10 hours infiltrating and exfiltrating, effective operations which blind, bleed, and cripple the AI-augmented Leviathan Panopticon State can be achieved by very ordinary people of very ordinary capabilities with equipment widely available.
All the skills and tricks presented fall into what could aptly be described as “Advanced Hooliganry”… And the camping/survival skills are largely very basic tricks any good scoutmaster would have once taught.
A person could genuinely afford to carry out a guerilla resistance campaign whilst living as a hobo.
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I strongly Encourage all readers to post their own recommendations, tricks, and personal stories about kit which has served them well.
Part of me regrets how scattershot this piece has been and how truly non-specialized it is, but as a survey and highlight of a philosophy of modern tactical espionage warfare as a low-tech, high-intelligence endeavor to take our freedom of action back from the machines… I think it’s a good jumping off point.
Across dozens of countries and dozens of issues online you can see countless people saying “we should do something, Democracy does not work, the only thing these tyrannical regimes understand is real action” only to be countered with a thousand, often quite delusional cries that “no they have [insert magical AI-surveillance capability], don’t you see, they want you to react. they want you angry”… As if all these regimes that “want you to react” weren’t famous for censoring videos and reporting of the things that would actually make people react and actively punishing people for merely expressing anger.
No there is no moral or philosophical reason direct action can be only a Left Wing phenomenon or that one must obey various “Democracies” even as they violate all the supposed principles on which they are alleged to be founded… The reason the right loses and does nothing is a simple combination of ignorance, lack of will, and learned helplessness resulting from dependence and unwillingness to think methodically and deliberately about the problem of state surveillance and how to overcome it.
Leviathan’s gaze can be avoided with less than a full day’s effort , and as the Bladerunners in Britain have shown, the Leviathan surveillance state can even be blinded with simple anti-material missions repeated often enough.
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AI does not change the fact that the individual will and intellect is the only factor which has ever decided any conflict in human history. Indeed Clausewitz famously defined warfare not as a contest of arms but of wills.
AI is consistently less intelligent than the median intelligent investigator… All it does is multiply (within a still limited computing power) the ability to process and sift through information which was already leaking and which you already basically know you are leaking…
You can choose to Embrace more primitive methods of doing things, travel like a hobo, and employ the wonders of modern knowledge and technology not via a digital screen but directly via your own hands, and in doing so make your data footprint basically non-existent. You can use your little notebook.
We have the hobo technology, we have the hobo ethos, and Even the really fat slobs amongst you basically have the fitness if you’re willing to sweat a little… But do you have the will to stand out in the rain and fiddle with a little protractor and surplus store compass on a tourist map? Do you have the courage to be an awkward fucking sperg at 4 am, but in real life, not online?
Such questions will decide the fate of dozens of nations in years to come.
Whether Humanity and its spergy extremists reassert the primacy of the individual will in matters political… Or whether the screens and your gamer chair are just too comfortable and the AI Glowies win… not because they were particularly smarter or more tireless, but because free capable men all came up with excuses to surrender before they could get cold or tired or scared.
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Post-Script
Depending on when you read this this work will either be in the 2 week Paywall period before it rereleases to a universal audience. In which case I can’t thank you enough for your support. You make this project possible.
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This has been a book length endeavor, and I probably could have self-published it as a novella… However that would have gotten way less of an audience, and would have taken way longer and I like to have content going out. Also I can’t include media links in a book.
I usually give myself a Mandate of 2000-4000 words a week for this blog. About 7-14 university essay pages, or a mid-sized New Yorker article.
This piece has been been 34,000 words or about 116 pages, and took about 36 days (5 weeks) so if you’ve been one of my very patient paid subscribers and wondering where the content is you pay to support… I think this has been a good return on your patience.
Please. Please Please. Contribute to the comments with your own tips tricks and wisdom, as well as what you’d like to see more on… After this I’m probably going to have some more geopolitical commentary and podcast episodes. And the Motorcycle pieces are coming.
Anyway dear reader hope you enjoyed! Please don’t let me and my cat freeze to death this winter🥺😿
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The Blade Runners also used spray foam. Very effective and cheap. Absolutely can destroy a surveillance camera. Spray it in a key hole to jam a lock. Fill an exhaust pipe. Use your imagination.
One thing I noticed that was left out, unless I missed it in the food and snacks section was water. I might have just missed it in the 116 pages but a 3 liter hydration bladder will be absolutely necessary and also a list of places in one's maps to obtain fresh and clean drinking water.
Just one thing that came to mind after thinking on this a bit.
The Blade Runners also used spray foam. Very effective and cheap. Absolutely can destroy a surveillance camera. Spray it in a key hole to jam a lock. Fill an exhaust pipe. Use your imagination.
One thing I noticed that was left out, unless I missed it in the food and snacks section was water. I might have just missed it in the 116 pages but a 3 liter hydration bladder will be absolutely necessary and also a list of places in one's maps to obtain fresh and clean drinking water.
Just one thing that came to mind after thinking on this a bit.