In scenarios where resources become scarce and the social order has broken down, drawing unwanted attention to yourself, your assets, and your operations could potentially make you the target of violence or even get you killed.
You may even feel prepared to share what you have with others but trust me when I tell you that not all who come to you in need will stay your friend forever.
Blending in and ensuring that you remain unnoticed or moving through crowds while creating the perception that you are unremarkable could save your life.
Being a grey man goes beyond dressing in a way that ensures anonymity. Instead, it refers to how you handle yourself and your operations throughout all the various stages of a disaster or societal collapse.
This article offers solid advice on remaining unnoticed, from staying under the radar while remaining in place to strategies for undercover food production.
Discretion and anonymity will go a long way to hiding your presence and avoiding conflict.
Remain in Place Grey Man Tactics
Disguised Entrances/Exits: Create a variety of entrance and exit points to your home base. Always alternate routes in and out. Always ensure you are not followed when you are on your way back home. I strongly recommend establishing at least one alternative “home base” to serve as a decoy or fallback position.
⇒ This “Quick Fix” Is More Effective in Keeping Out Intruders Than a Solid Steel Door
Variety: Avoid establishing predictable patterns. Vary times, routes, and dress codes. Never establish a routine. Never return the way you left.
Low-Profile Shelter: Shelters should be in unexpected places. You could have a regular sleeping spot in a semi-abandoned vehicle in your building’s underground parking. Always ensure that shelters seem like abandoned debris or are located in a building that won’t attract the attention of individuals looking for valuables.
Minimal Visibility:
- Avoid high-visibility places where you can be seen.
- Stay close to walls.
- Move-in shadows as much as possible to maintain a low profile.
Noise and Light Discipline: Maintain a low profile by practicing noise and light discipline. Doors that squeak, shoes that crunch gravel, or items in backpacks that click and clack can alert someone on the lookout of your presence.
The same goes for torches and lamps. If you can hear and see it, so can others. Use block-out techniques for windows and create low-noise environments using carpets to move on.
On the Move Grey Man Tactics – During or Shortly After SHTF
Plan Your Route Carefully: When leaving a city, avoid routes that others will also use. Be prepared to travel only short distances at a time unless it’s an emergency.
When you aim for a specific destination, ensure that you have a backup destination that can serve as a shelter should something happen.
Once again, choose routes that offer concealment and a variety of escape routes. Try to avoid crossing wide-open flat spaces like parking lots. Always stay close to walls or fences.
Travel During Off-Peak Hours: Time your departure to coincide with periods of lower visibility, such as late at night or early morning.
Never set out at sunset since that is when most other people will be setting out and when scavengers will be the most alert for someone to prey on.
Blend In with the Crowd: If you are going to move shortly after SHTF, which might be a bad idea, dress in nondescript clothing that allows you to blend in and won’t draw attention.
A famous study shows how people react to a homeless girl versus how they respond to a well-dressed girl, and in a SHTF situation, you want to be the homeless girl, trust me.
Related: 22 Prepper Tips From the Homeless
Avoid eye contact, move casually, and ensure your actions don’t attract attention. Don’t get embroiled in arguments, entanglements, or verbal altercations. Keep your eyes on the pavement and stay moving.
Use Discreet Transportation: Traveling by foot or bicycle is slow but emits almost zero noise and allows you to navigate congested areas. Flexibility and having options for movement are essential.
Maintain Situational Awareness: Situational awareness is a critical life-saving factor when in crowds or populated spaces with other individuals. You do not want to be the last one to notice the guy with the gun, the roadblock, or the large group of armed men who are moving in your direction.
On the Move Grey Man Tactics – Long After SHTF
Undercover Food Production
Concealed Gardening: Vegetable gardens for SHTF should look messy, be planted haphazardly, and preferably be hidden “inside” an ornamental garden. Otherwise, you should plant in pots and move in and out of sunlight as circumstances permit. A lush, formal-looking vegetable patch in plain sight will see your harvest become someone else’s dinner.
If you’re really committed to setting up a secret survival garden to see you through the hard times, I highly suggest checking out this all-inclusive guide. It’s packed with priceless tips and hands-on advice to help turn your backyard into a self-sufficient homestead.
Container Gardening: Grow food in containers or raised beds that can be easily moved or hidden. You can put wheels on mobile beds.
Stealth Farming Techniques: Use stealth farming techniques such as guerrilla gardening or “seed bombing” to plant crops in public or unused spaces. You can also scatter seeds at random places where water may accumulate and visit occasionally to see if something has been produced.
Low-Profile Livestock: If you decide to keep animals, opt for small breeds that make little noise. Rabbits and quails are pretty quiet species. You could give chickens a go, but not in your backyard. If detected, you will still be safe.
Nighttime Operations: Perform chores and animal care during nighttime hours. I suggest feeding your goats dressed in black and wearing night vision goggles. It sounds crazy, but in the aftermath of SHTF, it may save your life.
Operational Security (OPSEC): Be careful when using social media and online forums. Those pictures of your chicken run and sheep pens might be remembered by someone thinking about where to find their next meal. Discretion and privacy are always virtues.
Live Without a Trace
Dispose of Waste Properly: Nothing says “Someone is here,” like a mess of discarded food wrappers or other trash or waste. Good housekeeping will ensure that a place seems abandoned. Bury or burn trash.
Related: How to Hide From Thermal Vision
Personal Hygiene: I know this sounds far-fetched, but anyone who grew up on a farm will know that super clean and super dirty can both be smelled a long way off.
Reduce the use of floral-scented shampoo and strong deodorants, but also don’t smell so bad that someone will pick up your scent when moving in your vicinity.
Scent Management: This ties in with the above. Barbequing meat and frying garlic in butter can give your location away as sure as loud music can.
Avoid Strong-Smelling Foods: Be mindful of the foods you consume, and avoid cooking or eating foods with strong odors that could linger in the air or on your person. Prepare neutral-tasting dishes. Learn here how to cook without fire, fuel, smell, or smoke; a skill that could prove to be life-saving in a crisis.
This will also prevent upsetting digestion and help keep your excrement smelling as neutral as possible. I have done many trail runs around farms, and trust me, you can smell when someone has gone for a poop in the woods. Hot sauce lovers, be warned.
Dispose of Animal Carcasses: If you hunt, never skin or prepare carcasses near where you stay or eat. Nothing draws a crowd of flies or other hunters like the smell of a rotting carcass.
Be Aware of Wind Direction: Pay attention to the direction in which the wind may be blowing your food preparation activities. If this could pose a threat, stay hungry or find an alternative.
By implementing the above mentioned suggestions, you will maintain a low profile. Remember, in a post SHTF world, detection could mean catastrophe. Keep quiet my friends, your life could depend on it. Like they say, silence is golden.
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You will own nothing, as Bidenomics takes our life over!
It all depends where we are in the big bubble bust, the next Pearl Harbor, the coming radical Islamic terror.
To be honest the grey man look is what ever we see on the city sidewalks, streets and parks, the homeless and the Islamic crazy protesters. That is the look in the city, not what to look like moving outward to the wilds. Not necessary to details out for the woke or for the last minute fake preppers.
We need to eventually fightback the repressive government that has caused these ill wills to flourish by doing every possible means within the Constitution and The Bill of Rights first. Not many Americans have the stomach and will to do the right things to go beyond the current protesting.
The peaceful protesting as done back in the Summer of Love coined by a Demoncrat bureaucrat during Covid Plandemic. The riots of Antifa and the BLM all Marxist motivated that got Jan 6th political prisoners of Biden.
The Chinese worldwide social credit system is here in America, not fully implemented yet. Most has been done by ourselves, Ring doorbell cameras, interior and exterior home cameras, city stoplight CCTV cameras by the city for our safety. Are those audio and visual cameras really for safety and security or something else?
Where are those images, recordings from smart street lights held on whose database server farms for how long?
The old TV series Person of Interest was interesting how it would be in the future of total govt surveillance with a hint of AI. This was before the Chinese social credit system got implemented in China.
How far will the average American go to be independent of surveillance?
In a dark view of more Bidenomics outlook we could see more city life like the Peron of Interest series as the Chinese social credit system is going online in America.
Don’t believe we will be battling Terminator robots any time soon.
A twist with a touch of sci-fi we could see the Point of Interest TV series AI computer. Teaming up with Boston Dynamics robots and various appliances and equipment. To cause us a world of chaos as AI becomes self aware humans are the enemy.
We humans sometimes should know of but not implement the knowledge to do so. Look at Dr Fauci and Wuhan labs concocting lethal doses of bioweapons that wiped out part of the world’s population.
The Nazi’s medical experiments are alive and well in our modern world. Those people need to stop and think what they are really doing.
Gray man will survive but for how long?
God give us the strength to do the right thing always.
We may have to deal with aerial drones.
I’m sorry but our country really is too far gone to be able to save. The sheeple here are too cowardly and stupid to be able to rise up against government oppression. I just read something about yet another exec order from the idiot in chief preventing farmers (which would mean the rest of us, too) from stockpiling animal antibiotics. What purpose could this really serve unless the government was purposefully trying to kill off the masses. Only the liberal elite would be left. I wonder how that will work when they need a plumber? LMAO
Why do you think they brought in all the illegals!! They are the ones that will be the slaves to do everything for the so called “elites”!!!
The illegals as in radical Islamist and fringe Muslim terrorist cells now popping up from Biden’s midnight plane flights will be taking out the low hanging feminized fruit. Especially the tyrannies useful idiots.
Dearborn Michigan and other blue sanctuary state free zones harbor the throatcutters and military age males an females to punch a devastating blow to the sheeple soon. Possible before the 2024 presidential election, because the Biden administration is weak, weak.
Those dumb butt white liberal females and easy to manipulate pronouned freaks would not last in Gaza or the middle east.
Those Muslims don’t put up with queers for Palestine or the females who think they are for better self esteem.
We got a good indication their bodies would be paraded in the streets by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houtis an others under the Iranian banner.
These university protesters would not last in American prisons with Buba.
It is time to MAGA and deport these morons beck to the 3rd world hellholes regardless of circumstances here in the USA.
Biden can import the illegals we can also deport the illegals too!
Those who have experienced life in some capacity of LEO, Mil, lived long enough on earth have a better chance surviving the China takeover of the USA.
The DEI, CRT groupies will commit suicide after the internet goes down permanently, no more smartphones either the woke will pass on.
Their mass transportation, EV’s, solar farms and wind turbines all come crashing down. Oil and gas will become kings again.
The Chinese manufacture large portions of the cobalt batteries in the world under slave labor. The slave labor are mistreated and becoming sick from mining the cobalt. The cobalt is used in smartphones and tablet of slave labor. People don’t realize China has the cobalt battery market all sown up to competition.
The whole green energy push is by the UN elites who see green energy as a control issue of people.
There’s nothing wrong with mixed technology of gas/oil and green electricity and people’s choice to use any technology. Not a no choice, only by law mandates that don’t end well.
Remembering “Solyndra” – How Many $570M Green Energy Failures Are Hidden Inside Biden’s Infrastructure Proposal?
Remember Obama’s solar energy company Solyndra Scandal?
This land is never too far gone to return to a freedom & liberty loving union. Speak for yourself if you are a sheeple and stupid. I would say that most of the readers here at this website are not, and hope for the best but prepare for the worst. One must persevere in the face of oppression, bend but do not break and adapt to overcome. Stand up for America like our ancestors did, no wimps allowed.
Good words Buck. Remember the poster of the mouse and the Eagle? The last great act of defiance could be they become the mouse. I believe in the conservative Christian Amercian. The talk of the Mama bears at school boards is nothing compared to an older, arthritic and totally angered Grampa.
Dan, Please site the resources you found that back this up. It would be valuable to learn where it is happening and what can be done to prevent the stockpiling.
I”m sorry that last line was supposed to be prevent the stockpiling blockage
You people are all bat guano crazy. This was a cool commenting site a couple of years ago, useful insight and info from Left Coast Chuck, City Chick, the original Red, and others. Sigh…
Even tho’ I was not a fan of LCC, I admired his writings and experience. He seemed to be a little too big headed and expected people to agree with him. City Chick, I must admit that I forgot all about her, but I do agree with you that she too had useful input.
I believe in free speech, so I may read a post I disagree with, but I will not condemn the author for their political/social/religious belief. If that person makes an incorrect statement that may be harmful, or if they flat out lie, then I will make a statement.
Like you, I miss the old voices of reason and experience.
I miss them, too.
Pardon my ignorance but………..what is a Grey Man
Blend in to surroundings. People in east Texas wear camo shirts a lot. That wouldn’t work in Austin. You would stand out. In an event where people are all moving one way and you don’t. You stand out on camera or to watching security. Driving a red vehicle or one with political stickers. Basically being discreet on steroids.
JPW, A Gray Man blends into the surroundings. People should not be able to say anything precise about you because they really don’t remember you. At least that is what I have gotten from this site. It would help to have another topic like this go into more details
if this is a problem for you folks then move…. you live to close to people