The military term OPSEC has been adopted by the prep community to refer to the steps we take to keep our friends and neighbors from knowing that we are prep. It's a good thing and something we should all practice. Letting people know you're a prepper is like inviting them to show up at your door when things go wrong, even if that's not your intention. Trust me, I know. I've been writing about preparedness for over a decade and I've lost track of how many people assumed that meant they could come knocking on my door in the event of a disaster. The only reason more didn't when COVID first broke out was because they were afraid to leave their homes.
But OPSEC doesn't stop when disaster strikes. If anything, we need to take our game up a notch, once we go from 'prep mode' to 'survival mode'. As we all know, there will be a lot of desperate people out there, and they will seek whatever they can find. This clearly includes everything we have.
It's one thing to try to hide the fact that you're stockpiling supplies. Most people don't pay attention to how often you go shopping or how much you buy. But you can be sure they'll notice if you're living well and not suffering like everyone else when things go wrong. This is when OPSEC will become really important. But this is also when OPSEC will be more difficult to maintain. Anything that might give people the idea that you have food, water, will cause them to either come knocking on your door, try to break down your door, or try to spy on you and see what you have, before you come knocking at your door. door.
The question for us is how to prevent this from happening; and at least part of the answer goes through our OPSEC.
odors
Probably the hardest thing to hide is the smell of cooking food. Not only is it something we all recognize, but it's also something we become more sensitive to when we're hungry. With everyone around us starving, cooking without them knocking on our doors is going to be a real challenge.
If you search online for how to eliminate cooking odors, most of the answers you'll find deal with eliminating food odors after the fact or covering them up with other food odors. Making a coffee maker to cover up the smell of something else you've cooked won't be very effective, as the coffee will attract at least as many people as the food.
That's not to say you can't mask food odors with other smells without attracting attention. Herbs, such as mint, basil, and lavender, will help cover up food odors, giving people something else to smell, which is rather obvious and not normally considered food. food. Although we use basil and mint in cooking, most people aren't used to thinking of them as more than herbs. They probably won't think of cooking basil soup.
But there are some things we can do. For starters, cook in a place where odors can be contained. The best location I can find for this is the basement. This may not sit well with other considerations, such as safety when cooking with wood; but with proper care it can still be done.
Baking soda has long been used to absorb food odors and can be used in these circumstances as well. Open bowls of baking soda placed around your cooking area will help absorb food odors. Another similar thing is to use a splatter screen with a carbon filter. This will capture odors before they even leave the pot or pan.
Boiling food to cook it can also help mask natural odors produced by food. While boiling won't completely hide odors, it will reduce them somewhat, making the baking soda and charcoal job easier.
Weight loss
Speaking of food, we can pretty much rely on everyone around us to lose weight, due to lack of food. If we don't lose weight too, it will prove to them that we have food, at least in their minds. We will have to follow a serious diet, in order to lose weight as well, otherwise we will betray ourselves.
When I say "serious diet," I'm referring to 1 calories a day or less. I needed to lose a lot of weight once and went down to 500 calories a day for several months. It may seem impossible, and goes against the advice of nutritionists, but it hasn't negatively affected my health in any way. On the contrary, I was healthier during and after this diet than before.
The type of calories we consume also makes a big difference. Many stocking lists I see are heavy on carbs, yet light on everything else. I understand this because about 50% of the average diet is made up of carbs. Plus, these foods are usually the cheapest foods we can buy. However, carbs are quickly converted into sugar in our body, giving us an energy boost that doesn't last. We would actually be better off with more fat and protein if we want to have the energy to last through the day.
Another tip that might help is to buy used clothes that are too big for you. Baggy clothes give the impression that you have recently lost a lot of weight. Wearing them in the public eye makes it look like you've lost more weight than you have.
Trash can
In addition to food, there is the problem of waste disposal. Investigators have long known that clues about a person's or family's life can be obtained by looking at their trash; even archaeologists do. We've all seen it enough on crime shows, that anyone will know how to check the trash cans to find out who's eating.
The simple solution to this is to burn your waste. But you have to be careful how you do it, because burning trash in itself is a dead giveaway. Instead, you want to burn your waste in other combustion operations, such as boiling water to purify it. Lots of people will, so if you can use burning trash for at least some of the fuel to boil your water, that will explain the burning, without revealing the secret you have of your food wrappers.
Of course, repackaging your food stock can help reduce the overall amount of waste you have to manage. You're not going to burn five gallon buckets; so anything repackaged to be stored there will reduce your disposal problem.
Waste water treatment
Another form of "waste" is our waste water. Chances are your municipal water and wastewater will collapse in a severe enough crisis. We all have plans to harvest water, if that's the case. But unless you have a septic tank, you'll have to find something to do with all your sewage. Letting it run down gutters and storm drains isn't just an environmental issue, it can easily be traced back to your home, letting people know you have water.
The best and easiest solution is to use gray water recycling. Greywater is all the waste water in your home, other than that going to the toilet. Most of this water really isn't dirty and can be used for other cleaning tasks. As a last way to dispose of this water, use it to water your garden. I have watered my vegetable garden with gray water for years and it has worked well.
Light
You wouldn't think light could be such a problem; but if your house is the only one with lights on, it will be visible for miles. That alone will tell people you're better off than them, leading them to believe you probably have food too.
If you are going to burn any sort of light indoors, you need to have blackout curtains on the windows in those rooms, preventing light from escaping. You'll want to do it, even if your neighbors know you have the power. There is no advantage in flaunting your relative wealth, showing that you have light.
A bit of reverse English might be appropriate here. There's no way to hide that you have solar panels on your house, so don't try. Instead, share your electricity with neighbors, installing a power strip near your gate, allowing them to charge their phones and other devices. The goodwill you generate could help overcome any feelings of resentment they may have.
Noise
Alongside the problem of light, there is the problem of noise. With just about everything shut down, the world will become eerily quiet. This will make all sounds more apparent, whether it's your chickens clucking, a power tool being used, or your kids watching a movie. Some of these sounds could draw attention to your home.
There's not much you can do about much of that noise. It's not like you can stop the chickens from clucking or the goats from messing around. Chainsaws are noisy, as are electric ones. But it makes no sense to make unnecessary noise that will attract attention. If your kids are going to watch a movie, don't turn up the volume enough to attract all the other kids in the neighborhood.
Rather than eliminating or masking the noise, which you probably won't be able to do, what you really need to do is be prepared to explain it. If you're using a chainsaw a month after a disaster, it's easy to explain; you just siphoned the gas out of your car. But six months later, that excuse probably won't hold up so well. You will need something a little more complicated. The same can be said for running a generator. Saying you had gasoline stored away will make them wonder what else you hid.
If you have solar panels, any use of power tools will be easy to explain; but you still want to be careful. If you use power tools all the time, while keeping your air conditioner running, people will wonder how much power you have. Worse than that, they will also want to use it.
The worst would probably be for a neighbor to come and ask you to sit in your air-conditioned house. They could very easily become a more or less permanent fixture. Worse than that, being a semi-permanent like this would let them see you're ready, with a stockpile of food and other essential supplies. Step from this realization to "Where is mine?" is short-lived in today's rights society.