Gray Man Theory: Practical Tips for “Blending In” When SHTF – SHTFPreparedness

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When you need immediate assistance overt actions rule the day. Yelling, waving your arms to gain attention may mean the difference between life and death. Most other times require a bit more subtlety. This is where the Gray Man Survival Theory comes in.

The gray man survival theory allows you to fade into the background or hide below the noise, even though you are fully loaded with skills and tactical gear. This strategy adds a layer on top of your skills and gear, leverages your situational awareness, and may just save your life.

Let’s look at the Gray Man theory and how you can add it to your bucket of prepper skills.

What Is The Gray Man Theory?

Wouldn’t it be great to hide in plain sight or melt into the background? That’s the goal of gray man survival theory. While a noble concept, it is at direct odds with all the other cool stuff that goes along with prepping.

Everyday life is filled with challenges that we want and need to be prepared for. That being said, without a gray man strategy, you may become a target. During normal times, this can lead to mocking and comparison to those crazy people on “Doomsday Preppers.” In an SHTF scenario, the presence of gear or survival mindset can make you a target.

Being gray masks your preparations via the veil of everyday life. The gray man concept builds a wall of normalcy around your looks, material preparations, and actions. The clothes you wear, the way you carry your gear, the tools in your EDC, even the manner in which you carry yourself should all construct a facade of a normal person.

Gray Man Survival Strategy

Why do we remember people? What makes a person stick out? Is it action or possession?

Our brain is extremely talented at filtering out the noise in our lives. There are very few experiences in our day that bubble up to the level of importance. The hundreds of people or cars we pass during our commute, most variety of smells and sights, simply don’t matter to our survival. In fact, processing every sight, sound, and smell would be debilitating.

It’s the rare person, place, or thing that stands out to a level of importance that we notice it. But when one does, we pay attention. Something that our “lizard brain”, that most primordial part of us that is only responsible for keeping us alive, wants us to pay attention to is worth the effort to focus on it.

This may be a car going a little too fast to stop at an intersection. Or a person walking against the crowd with too purposeful of a look on their face. These events grab our attention. This is what we avoid by deploying a gray man survival strategy.

Specifically, the gray man strategy touches on many aspects of your life. These include how you dress, how and what gear you carry, as well as how you present yourself to the rest of the world.

The good news is that the model for being gray and blending in is all around you. In fact, there’s a good chance that you’ve already spent a lot of time being normal. You simply need to duplicate this now that you have a bit more weight on your shoulders.

The strategy is all about paying attention while you compare and contrast yourself to everyone else. How do your clothes compare to those around you? How does your bug out bag compare to the bags that others are wearing?

Your gray man survival strategy moves you from a target into a place below the noise. Let’s take each aspect into consideration.

Clothes to Blend In

One of the easiest layers of gray man theory to tune up is your clothing. I love my tactical pants, shirts, and branded tee shirts. I even call these my tactical tuxedo. From a gray perspective, I also call them my “shoot me first” clothes.

Predators are not stupid. They do what they do, for whatever reason, and they become good at it. Their skills include success in the victim selection process.

Clothes weigh heavily into this.

If you have chosen to use violent force to rob a store, who do you strike first? Grandma or the well-built man in the tactical pants and “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” t-shirt? They go after the threat first while they have the element of surprise.

To a lesser degree, we all do this. We associate tactical gear with strength, means, and survival skills. Going gray will have you trade out your beloved 5.11 pants for jeans. Even better, select professional pants that still carry what you need without the look that screams MILITARY!

For the rest of your wardrobe, be selective. Leave the Magpul, Tap Out, and Black Rifle Coffee Company tee-shirts for the range. Look at the people around you and dress like them. If hoodies are the rage, invest in a few. If flannel is in season, get a few shirts.

Do your best to have this layer blend in with those around you.

Gear and Bags

We collect stuff as preppers. We even have names for our groups of essential gear. Every Day Carry (EDC) and Bug Out Bags (BOB) are just a few of the common terms we use.

While I love my Maxpedition Gearslinger and its traveled the world with me, it’s not exactly inconspicuous. After a trip overseas, I switched to a much “grayer bag.”

The Vertex Ready Pack has the same capacity as the Gearslinger. What is different is the look. There’s no Molle, no hint of military or law enforcement. There’s no hint of “shoot me first” to it.

Give the grey-looking tactical backpacks a review. They are neutral in appearance and built with the prepper in mind. Especially the ones designed to conceal a firearm.

Gray Man Packs I like:

Beyond bags lies your EDC. Unless it fits your day job, keep the Leatherman, utility knife, or box cutter in a pocket. Skip the big rigger’s belt and tuck your gear into your pockets. Likewise, if you work in law enforcement and the community knows you as such, then you’re the exception.

The rest of us need to keep the gear quiet.

Word and Deed

Gray man theory isn’t just about what you wear and carry. It’s also about what you do and how you carry yourself.

The goal is to drift into the background and be immediately forgettable. This includes how you present yourself in to your peers and in a crowd, particularly in urban survival scenarios.

The average commuter on the way to work isn’t overtly “checking their six” in store windows or making unexpected route changes to draw out a tail. No, for the average person on the way to work, life is much more mundane.

Even in an emergency, most people will just follow others like lemmings. It’s the A-hole in the crowd that gets attention. Moving against the flow. Barking orders. You know the type. Don’t be them.

Mix with the crowd. Keep to the edges, know your exits, and be confident of your routes if the crowd turns ugly.

During normal times, it’s best to blend in as well. Most folks surf on their cellphones while mindlessly drinking coffee. It’s amazing how much you can exercise your situational awareness while appearing to do the same. Look around, mimic others, but observe as much as possible about your surroundings.

Gray man theory applies to your words in normal times as well as SHTF. Being gray during quiet times is pretty simple. Keep your mouth shut, don’t stand out, and don’t make a scene about prepping.

Ok, let’s back up for a bit and take the edge off.

The gray man specializes in hiding in plain sight. During normal times, this consists of staying below the noise. I know this idea conflicts with our desire to build a prepping community of like-minded people we can count on.

What you need to focus on is keeping your prepper discussion close to the vest until you have a high degree of confidence that this person will keep your discussions private if they choose not to join you.

In short, be selective about all topics prepping and sharing with anyone you don’t have 100% trust in.

Gray Man Practice: Before, During, and After

Going gray is one of the easiest skills to practice but one of the hardest to master. Additionally, we don’t experience the end times every day, so practical application can be a challenge. For this, you simply need to plan.

Hiding in plain sight and avoiding drawing attention to yourself is currently pretty simple. Observe your footprint on the world and ask yourself a few questions.

Do you regularly wear tactical clothing?

Are you always the one that has to sit in the tactical seat in the restaurant?

How about your social media footprint?

Basically, are you drawing attention to yourself?

During an event, it’s necessary to double up your efforts. A well-prepared person may become a target.

Appear unprepared! This may mean caching gear rather than carrying the uber-BOB. It may mean taking the long and lonely road rather than the direct route. Regardless, review your emergency plans and see where you can tweak them to draw less attention.

After a SHTF event, it may be more difficult as it’s hard to stay gray while you are fit and everyone else is suffering. This may\will require some avoidance or deception on your part. Avoidance will be as easy as the situation allows. Regarding contact with individuals, you can always mimic their physical mannerisms be they slower walking, difficulty thinking, and halting speech.

Appearance may be a little more difficult. Purchasing clothes that are a size or two large can give the illusion that you are losing weight, but that, admittedly, goes only so far. It’s best to minimize contact.

Final Thoughts on Going Gray

Gray man survival strategy doesn’t just need to be theory. You can easily put it into practice.

All it takes is attention given to your dress and actions. Take a critical eye to the clothes you normally wear. Do they signal law enforcement, military, or 1980’s survivalist? Or do you look like everyone else at the strip mall?

Does your bag betray its purpose and contents? Will a few molle attachments make you a target when you need your supplies the most? Or will it look like every other traveler’s bag? Like the other sheep on that long walk home, your normalcy bias has left you incapable of leaving your business papers behind. That’s how you want to look and act.

Sharpen your critical eye and take a walk on the grey side!

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This content was originally published here.

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Making a water management plan for when SHTF – Survivopedia

During an emergency or when disaster strikes, the assurance of clean water becomes a significant concern for you and yours. Regardless if it’s a natural or artificial disaster, you must do everything possible to procure, treat and use water as efficiently as possible.

The lack of water might not seem such a big concern to some folks because they believe storing food, ammo, and having a bug-out bag and vehicle ready is more important. After all, water is always available, and there’s plenty of it all around us. Right?

Well, there wasn’t plenty of it for the people affected by Hurricane Katrina and Sandy or for Californians during last year’s blackout.

You probably have a bug-out bag ready, a pantry full of food, and a lot of gear stacked neatly on shelves in your basement, but do you have a water management plan?

Some smart ass will say that everyone knows how to store bottled water and should buy a good supply of it. Well, you should, but a water management plan is more than that. You need to be able and procure water regardless if you’re in a rural or urban environment, you need to have ways to treat the water and make it potable, and lastly, you need to figure out ways of storing and transporting the water.

Seeing that FEMA recommends having one gallon of water per day per person to use for drinking, cooking, and sanitation, you might realize that your water needs grow exponentially if you’re part of a big family. For example, a family of four will need 28 gallons of water to survive for one week. And to create a mental image for that water requirement, it will mean having up to 53 2-liter bottles readily available just for one week.

And if you have storage space available, that might not seem such a big problem as long as you have ways of procuring the water, but what about bugging out? If you’re forced to evacuate, you will need to carry more than 200 pounds of water to keep your family alive for a week. And hauling that much weight isn’t easy, especially if you have to rely on your and your family’s strength once your car breaks down.

So, you see why having a water management plan is mandatory if you are preparing for an uncertain future. When you set up your plan, your choices will be centered around those mentioned above three key concerns: acquisition, treatment, and storage/transportation. Let’s look more into it.

Here, the solution is simple, and you have two options: buy commercially “purified” water or bottle tap water and call it a day. It sounds good in theory, but it also depends on your budget and storage limitation. You will need to spend money to buy bottled water, or you will need to buy plastic containers to store tap water once you’ve gone through the soda bottles you’ve been stashing.

And this is all fine and dandy if you prepare now, in times of peace and tranquility (sort of, with the pandemic and all), but what happens if you go through your stored water supply during an extended disaster or if a crisis catches you unprepared. In those cases, you will have to procure water from whatever sources you can locate.

Most folks will start in their homes and use any available drop of water they can find by emptying the water heater and exploiting whatever other item holds water in their home.

Some will use the water from their pool or the rainwater they’ve collected for their gardening chores. In contrast, others will explore the neighborhood to buy whatever bottled water is left or to map potable water sources while trying to stay ahead of the competition. Some would use municipal water sources that may still hold water, such as hydrants or spigots from various public places, unless someone else got to use them first.

And depending on the season and the region you live in, there could be many water sources available, but even so, you must assume your water sources are contaminated. This may be especially true if you aren’t collecting it from a flowing water source.

How about if you are forced to bug out?

In that case, for the safety of your loved ones, you must assume that every natural water source may be compromised. You may be lucky enough to discover a natural water source, and once you do so, it’s time you take care of the second key factor, treatment.

If you manage to collect enough water to meet your needs, you must make sure your water is potable and safe for cooking or your hygiene needs. There are various ways to treat the water; however, none of the methods available to the average Joe will make it completely pure.

You can make sure the water you obtained is as clean as possible by subjecting it to various treatment methods. Your goal is to make water safe and reduce the risk of health issues associated with bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and dissolved chemicals. Essentially, your treated water needs to be tasteless and odorless. Let’s look at some viable options you have for water treatment.

This is the most used and perhaps familiar method for preppers and the average Joe. You have various options to choose from here, and the water filtration items range from the portable personal straw-like filter, like LifeStraw, to water filter systems like the ones made by Berkey.

There are all sorts of options available nowadays, and they all function more or less the same. Dirty water comes in through one end, it goes through various types of materials and filters, and it comes out the other end cleaner and potable.

Now, what type of filters you decide to include in your water management plant depends mainly on what level of contamination you expect to deal with in your region. The more contaminated the water, the more complex (and perhaps expensive) filter you will need.

Some folks will run water through a coffee filter or a few layers of cheesecloth and call it a day. However, in those cases, it mostly depends on where they got that water from. Some filters use more dense media than those improvised filters to keep out bacteria and microbes. Other filters have activated charcoal layers incorporated to improve the taste and filter out chemicals.

Filtering the collected water is the first step in the treatment stage of your water management plan, and some folks will go even further.

UV-light treatment

Municipal water treatment facilities use UV light treatment to kill protozoa, viruses, and bacteria. This cool and modern technology is also available on a smaller scale to everyone, and it’s even lightweight and portable. These devices are simple enough to be used by everyone.

They consist of a container you fill with water and a device that emits UV light inserted into the water. In theory, the amount of UV light emitted by the device for a specific amount of time will kill bacteria and microbes (by breaking up their DNA) in that particular volume of water.

Some folks will use these UV light devices even for the water they’ve filtered using whatever commercial water filter they have available. It’s sort of like a backup solution if you will.

This is perhaps the primary water treatment method that people resort to (instinctively, I must say) when they need to make their water potable. It’s deeply embedded in the back of their mind, and they found about it at some point throughout their lives from movies, from local authorities and magazines, and so on.

Someone told them that it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the primary method they’re using to make sure their water is safe to drink. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s not a thing you should do. On the contrary, boiling water kills most bacteria and other microbes and is perhaps the safest treatment method.

All you need to do is just put your water in a large pot, bring it to a boil, boil it for at least 2 minutes, and that’s it. Once the water cools, you can transfer to a clean recipient, and your water needs are covered for the day.

However, consider that boiling water cannot remove toxic metals and certain impurities while killing viruses and bacteria. Also, this is a time-consuming method. It would help if you considered certain limitations, such as the volume of water you can boil (limited by the container you are using) and the availability of a water source and fuel.

This is a method that many believe to be the best when it comes to water treatment, and it’s cheaper compared to other options since you don’t need much to improvise a distilling system.

Sure, there are water distillation systems that you can buy, but you can also create a mobile water distiller in case needed. And I’m not talking here about using copper tubbing and all sorts of still designs to start a moonshine business. It’s much simpler than that.

You can use a small pressure cooker and a ¼-inch stainless steel tube bent into a U or a hook shape to improvise a water distillation system.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Drill a hole into the lid of the pressure cooker.

2. Pour the water you’ve filtered or boiled into the pot and seal the lid tightly

3. Insert the stainless-steel tube in the hole you drilled, ensuring it’s a tight fit. The tube should extend away from the pressure cooker and slope down into a clean recipient of your choice.

4. Use some duct tape to seal the pressure cooker hole and tubbing in place.

5. Bring the water to a boil, and soon enough, the steam will rise into the tube, and as it condenses, it will drip down into the container below.

For this method, you also have to keep in mind that it’s very time-consuming and requires a lot of fuel to obtain a limited quantity of water.

This water treatment method has been advertised and encouraged in the prepping community in the last two decades. And in fact, this method works, and it’s pretty much safe if you don’t use scented or color-safe bleach or a mix of bleach and other cleaners. Instead, FEMA recommends using bleach (only simple bleach) containing 5.25 to 6.0 percent sodium hypochlorite.

If you have that type of bleach and if you want to use this method for making your water potable, remember the following:

1. Use 1/8 of a bleach teaspoon for each gallon of water.

2. Stir well and let the water stand for 30 minutes.

3. After 30 minutes or less, the water should have a slightly distinctive chlorine smell.

4. If that’s not the case, you can add another 1/8 of a spoon and wait another 30 minutes.

5. If the water still doesn’t smell like chlorine, discard the water and avoid using that water source. Find another source of water and try again.

Another alternative to chlorination will be to use water purification tablets. These are sold commercially and are not expensive. They work similarly to bleach, although the chemical process is different. They contain certain chemicals that cause an oxidation process, killing bacteria and other invisible critters.

Storage and transportation

Once you figure out how to procure and treat your water, you must deal with various storage and transportation problems. The main problem being that water is bulky and heavy.

You may find different ways of storing it if you have enough available space and various containers you can use. You can use anything from 2-liter soda bottles to 55-gallon drums and pretty much any container you can get your hands on. However, what happens when you have to evacuate, and mobility is your crucial consideration?

If you need to bug out, you should concentrate more on carrying the items that would help you collect and purify water rather than hauling your entire water supply. You can fill your truck with a few gallons of water (or more if you have the space) to last your family for 2-3 days, but you should figure out how to obtain water and purify it once you reach your destination or even before you reach it.

This requires a little bit of research on your side, and you need to map water sources regardless if you would obtain your water from grocery stores, gas stations, municipal parks, or natural water sources.

And regarding the natural water sources, keep in mind that you will need to carry water back to the campsite from a nearby lake or stream if you don’t set up your camp near that water source. There are all sorts of collapsible buckets, plastic bags, and other items that you can use to collect water, so make sure you have something available. Oh, and don’t throw away the water bottles you’ve emptied because those can be refiled and used for storing all the water you manage to purify.

Another thing to remember when handling your water is to have separate containers for clean and dirty water, to avoid cross-contamination. Everyone should use the containers for what they’re intended to be used because the water is only as clean as the container it’s stored in.

As you can see, having a water management plant becomes mandatory regardless if you plan on hunkering down or bugging out during a disaster. You also need to figure out other things, depending on several factors such as family size and needs, living area, time of the year, and types of disasters you are prepping for. Make sure you take everything into account when building your water management plan.

This content was originally published here.

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Prepping before SHTF: Stock up on supplies now before things get worse later in 2021

This article was originally published by Zoey Sky on www.preparedness.news

The coronavirus (COVID-19) plandemic isn’t going away any time soon. And it looks like it’s going to continue affecting the supply chain as author Michael Snyder warns that things will get even worse by the end of 2021.

According to Snyder, who wrote “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America,” the inflation the country is currently experiencing can be compared to one that citizens experienced back in the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s. (h/t to TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com)

Some are even saying that things will get even worse as 2021 nears its end.

If your survival stockpile is running low, it’s useless to wait for prices to get lower than they currently are. You should also keep in mind that these shortages in the economy will get even worse as the year nears its end.

On May 30, 2021, JBS S.A. (JBS) Brazil was hit by a cyberattack that forced the company to stop activity at several plants in American states. JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, was also forced to halt Australian operations. JBS informed the U.S. government that the ransomware attack on the company disrupted meat production in North America and Australia. Perpetrators were believed to be a criminal organization possibly based in Russia. Within a week, JBS reported that it had made “significant progress in resolving the cyberattack.” In June, the company released a statement saying that the “vast majority” of the company’s beef, pork, poultry and prepared foods plants will resume operation.

The statement aimed to relieve any concerns over rising food prices.

Union officials reported that on May 31, the attack forced Australian operations to shut down. Meanwhile, JBS stopped cattle slaughter at all U.S. plants on June 1. Andre Nogueira, chief executive of JBS USA, said that the company’s systems are back online and that JBS is using all resources available to deal with the threat. JBS’ North American operations, which are located in Greeley, Colorado, controls an estimated 20 percent of the slaughtering capacity for American cattle and hogs.

Karine Jean-Pierre, White House spokeswoman, said that the United States contacted Russia’s government and that the FBI was looking into the matter. The White House is cooperating with the Russian government to resolve the matter and “delivering the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals,” concluded Jean-Pierre.

Prepare for inflation by the end of 2021

A lot of products are also often going “out of stock,” and it doesn’t look like this issue isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon. And if products aren’t unavailable in stores, they’re often much more expensive because of increasing demand and companies struggling to meet consumer demands.

Inflation is also another looming threat. Late in May, Costco executives warned the public that inflation will be a major problem for most Americans. Costco reported that it has been seeing accelerating prices across different products such as aluminum foil, shipping containers and a 20 percent spike in meat prices early this year. At Costco’s fiscal third-quarter earnings call, CFO Richard Galanti said that “[i]nflationary factors abound.”

Galanti explained that these factors include “higher labor costs, higher freight costs, higher transportation demand, along with the container shortage and port delays.” At the same time, the company is dealing with increased demand in various product categories.

There are shortages for chips, oils and chemical supplies by facilities affected by the Gulf freeze and storms, along with increasing commodity prices. Costco and other companies also wrestled with passing costs onto customers, resulting in higher product prices.

According to Galanti, price increases as high as eight percent were observed in goods like pulp and paper, various plastic products and food and beverages like cheese and soda. Some apparel items also had price hikes of three to 10 percent.

Galanti said that Costco saw inflation in the one to 1.5 percent range in March to 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent on May 28. He added that Costco did “pretty well in terms of controlling “inflation as best as it could. However, “the inflation pressures abound.” Costco worked with its supplies to keep price pressures manageable. But “some of [inflation] has passed through,” admitted Galanti. He concluded that in the upcoming months items like Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken and $2.99 40-pack case of water could be affected by inflation, concluded Galanti.

Whatever happens next, don’t be complacent. Stock up on survival essentials now and hunker down before SHTF and prices increase even more.

This content was originally published here.

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