Concealment & early warning

Before

• This page is for a war, a foreign adversary overhead, an occupation, or a collapse, when being obvious is the risk. It is about cover, quiet, and an alarm. Devices meant to injure (booby traps) are illegal and dangerous. This page has no instructions for them. It is not an attack plan, and it does not describe taking down a drone.
• A drone is often heard before it is seen: a buzz, a hover, or the same pass more than once. Write the time, direction, color, and any number you can read from where you already stand. Do not chase it. Report a crime to local law enforcement. The drones-and-privacy guide states the law: jamming, spoofing, or shooting one down is illegal under federal law.
• Overhead cover is a tree, a porch roof, or a plain tarp. A garden, a parked car, and a cache are easier to see from above when they sit in the open as a bright rectangle or a neat row. Put them under canopy you already have. Break up a long straight edge and a hard shadow with ordinary clutter, a bush, or an irregular cover, not a costume.
• Blackout is the night version of that cover. If the block is dark, your window, a phone screen, or a flashlight in the yard is a beacon. Hang covers before dusk. Agree one dim indoor light for walking safely. Turn headlights and porch lights off when you are trying not to be a landmark. Noise discipline matches it: a generator, a radio, and a slammed door carry farther than people think. Finish the loud work, then stop.
• Gray-man blending is how you move if you must leave the house. Match the clothes, pace, and errands of people already outside. Do not wear matching gear as a group, do not take a direct path that only your household uses, and do not stop to stare at a checkpoint or a convoy.
• A cache is food, water, medicine, or fuel you can reach if the house is searched or you cannot go home. Put it under something ordinary: a shed, a thick bush, a pile that was already there. Do not leave a fresh rectangle of bare dirt. Split it so one find is not the whole supply. Tell only the people who would resupply it. Do not draw a map and do not put the spot on the radio.
• Counter-surveillance awareness means you notice a repeating watcher: the same vehicle, the same person at the corner, the same drone path. Log the time and leave. Do not follow. Following is how a family gets separated or hurt. The neighborhood guide’s lookouts are who you tell.
• A thermal camera, the kind people call FLIR, sees heat difference, not color. A warm person, a running engine, a stove, or a sun-heated roof can stand out against cooler ground. It is not an X-ray. Thick walls and dense trees block a lot of what a movie shows.
• An open umbrella, a mylar emergency blanket, a wool blanket, or dense brush can put a cooler layer between a warm object and the camera. That is a mask, not a cloak. The cover itself warms up. That is heat soak. Edges leak. A shiny blanket can reflect a warm object that is sitting nearby. Wool and a thick canopy last longer than a sheet that becomes its own warm shape.
• A generator, a stove, and a vehicle stay obvious while they are hot. Let them cool under cover. The exhaust, the hood, and the ground under the tires stay warm after you turn them off. A barrier and distance hide some of that. They do not erase it.
• Early warning on your own land can be alarm-only. A line in brush you control can pull a can of pebbles, a bell, or a chime. A battery tripwire alarm sold as a doorbell does the same job. Motion lights, a driveway sensor, a trail camera, and a dog that knows the yard are the other ordinary tools.
• Tell your household where every line is, and take the lines down when the reason has passed. A wire can still trip a person in the dark. Do not string one across a path a neighbor, a child, or a firefighter will use.

During

• If you hear a drone, log it and go under cover. Do not gather in an open yard to look up together. Do not try to bring it down.
• If a bell, a can, a light, or the dog announces someone, look from inside. Call 911 for a crime, a fire, or an injury. Do not go out to challenge a stranger, a patrol, or a crowd.
• Shelter when the house is still the safe place: you have water, a way out, and no order to leave. Black out the windows. The neighborhood lookout watches from a window and reports direction, number, and vehicles. The lookout does not follow.
• Leave when officials order it, the house is no longer safe, a fire is coming, or the family leave line is met. Gray-man on the way out means ordinary clothes, an ordinary pace, and no convoy. Do not travel toward a checkpoint you do not understand.
• Keep the generator and the stove from running in the open if you do not want the heat and the noise to mark the house. Finish the job, then let them cool. Radio the same way: one short call, then silence. No cache, no route, no names of who is hiding.

After

• Walk the lines in daylight and remove any that your own family forgot.
• If you stayed, reset the blackout before the next dusk. If you left, tell the out-of-area contact that you arrived. Do not describe the route or the cache on the air.
• Read the log. One drone is a note. The same pattern, night after night, is a reason to tell law enforcement what you wrote down. Do not go find the operator yourself.
• A device that could injure someone does not stay “just in case.” Do not build one. Do not keep one.

Checklist

• ☐Drone log: time, direction, color
• ☐Blackout covers and one dim indoor light
• ☐Vehicles, garden, and cache under ordinary cover, split, and not on the radio
• ☐Gray-man clothes for a leave, with no matching gear
• ☐Stay-or-leave line written for occupation
• ☐Quiet hours and lights you can turn off
• ☐Wool, mylar, or an umbrella understood as a temporary heat mask, with leaky edges
• ☐Alarm-only lines, bells, or a driveway sensor on your own land
• ☐Lookout role: report from a window, do not follow
• ☐A repeating watcher or drone goes in the log, not into a chase
• ☐Everyone knows booby traps are illegal
• ☐Lines mapped for the household and taken down afterward

Sources

Official pages only. Open them for the full instructions.

• FAA: Unmanned aircraft
• FAA: Drones and public safety
• Ready.gov: Build a kit
• St. Johns County Emergency Management
• Ready.gov: Evacuation