It has occurred to me that a number of people interested in this pathway into a new life might be well-served if they figure out a plausible cover story to aid in leaving behind some kind of smoke screen.
Think about the alternative. One of the quickest ways to get some very unwanted attention after you exit stage left might be leaving behind a juicy mystery. That’s all well and good once you’ve kicked the bucket and joined Joey Newts in John Doe Purgatory to eat cobbler and laugh at the named world—but my friend, it’s contrary to your purposes if what you want is another few decades kicking around this terra firma under a different identity.
To put a razor-sharp point on the proceedings: one of your biggest projects is to lie. Lie often and well. It’s vital to do so as you’re ramping up to leave, because you need to create a distinct pattern of deception. Part of getting away as scot-free as possible is creating an effective disinformation campaign.
Hey, with casual friends and acquaintances—coworkers, people at church, the cute chick you always wave to at the supermarket—that’s not so hard. It gets stickier when we talk about close friends and, most of all, family.
It’s not as simple as setting up an automated e-mail responder that tells folks you’re going on a Caribbean Cruise for the next two weeks. You need something longer term than that.
The following hints and suggestions won’t be of much use to you lucky singletons and others who have no close family to answer to. If you’re married or partnered up in any fashion, the following is a bit more in your ballpark. Remember that these are just the themes you need to improvise on. I can only lay down the tracks, it’s up to you to riff.
World Travels. This one is tried-and-true for folks with fewer connections, and I can guarantee it has been used by some to give themselves a cushion of time between disappearance and investigation. The solid tip for any family man or woman who wants to try this cover on for size is: don’t make your fictional gallivanting to points unknown appealing to your partner.
Let’s say Jeff from Oregon is setting up a changeover to becoming Dave from Kentucky. Sadly, he’s got to leave his partner Dana behind, since having more than one person on the run from a past life is pretty much a guarantee it won’t work. Now, let’s say our pal Jeff knows Dana absolutely hates cold weather. Snow falls, Dana locks the doors. If I were Jeff in this scenario, I might dream up plans to embark on one of those chilly jaunts to Antarctica. Depending on his skill set, he could even fake a job opportunity. Someone who really loathes the cold is likely to pass on that adventure, and not think twice about lack of correspondence until a fake notice comes from the snowy wastes in the form of an official message indicating poor Jeff died in some horrible ice-floe surfing incident. I’m spitballing, of course.
The weakness of the vacation cover is always going to be how appealing it sounds to any loved ones who might normally expect to go along for the ride. So unless you engineer the deception appropriately and make it sound miserable, this isn’t the option to use.
Language Immersion. I’m pretty fond of this one. It’s simple: pick a language—like French, Russian, Mandarin, or Spanish—and make every effort to set up a plausible scenario that has you jetting off to whatever exotic locale is appropriate.
Maybe it’s a Cold War childhood talking, but the idea of saying I’m heading to Moscow for four weeks of deep immersion in Russian sounds pretty cool. Plus, you get to seem real scholarly; people will be impressed. Might even get you laid a few times before you go. The kicker with this is: you may need to be kind of brainy in the first place. If people don’t think of you as a lifelong academic, someone with an interest arguing with Ivan and Mischa over bites of pickles and herring, the foreign language gambit will only raise suspicion. Still, it’s a slightly more solid option for some than a mysterious cruise to a far-off land. As with so many recommendations, use with care and caution.
A Romantic Gambit. If you’re single, this one is almost perfect. I call it “The Canadian Girlfriend Maneuver,” and it’s not just for those unfortunate young men who feel a pressure to stay in the closet. It’s as simple as saying you’ve fallen in love with someone in another nation and your heart can’t take another moment living long distance. You may need to set up a pretty complex charade. Make it look as if you’re working on a passport, residency visa, the works. You could even invent evidence of the relationship (fake online profiles, maybe pay a model to pose with you in photos). Once that’s all established: hit the road with the blessing of all around you, because who wants to get in the way of true love?
In all the cases we’ve looked at, we were examining scenarios that require time and careful planning. The problem with needing to ditch your old life and identity for a new one is this: sometimes troubles aren’t slowly seeping floods, they’re by-God tsunamis threatening to swallow you up mere moments after the precipitating earthquake. If you’re a federal witness and you’ve decided to drop a dime on some major kingpin, for example, the nice boys at the DEA or FBI or wherever could squirrel you right off the grid in the space of a few hours, leaving your house like the creepily deserted Mary Celeste plopped in the middle of the suburbs, with nearly fresh food still on the dinner table.
That probably won’t be you. But what if you discover the need to leave is immediate and pressing? And what if you don’t have a lot of time to plan?
There are, I have to admit, a good number of ways to skin this cat. For the casual reader who currently has no plans to leave the grid at all but maybe, just maybe, has the niggling feeling they should be prepared for any possibility, I’ll list some smart skills to acquire and a couple of contingency supplies.
Survivalists get a bad rap from the unprepared world. They’re portrayed as unhinged and paranoid, certain that doom is just around the corner. When you see survival-obsessed characters in a movie, they’re usually presented like lunatic rednecks interested in wearing your skin for warmth through the long nuclear winter that they’ll be waiting out in their creepy bomb shelters.
There is probably a percentage of survivalists who fit that bill, just as there is likely a small percentage of attorneys who also moonlight as male strippers nicknamed Kevin Cosplay. But a ton of these folks are everyday people who just want to face calamity in a realistic way. They’re the well-prepared students of life, realists who understand that when times get tough, people can get desperate and dangerous. There’s nothing wrong with keeping an earthquake kit in your house and a hatchet in your car—as long as you don’t plan to use the latter when gridlocked traffic starts stirring up the road rage within you.
Anyone who is looking to exit their identity can learn a little something from the world of the well-prepared, especially if you’re that unfortunate civilian facing some kind of sudden-onset personal disaster.
Kitty. Not a cat, though they’re perfectly nice little balls of fur and fangs. Something we already talked about—money, honey. There’s a consistent theme for you: save the hell up. See if you can set aside a ten-spot a day for the next two months, and boom, you’ve got $600 you can grab in an emergency.
Bug-out Bag. If you’re going to buy just one thing, buy this—or put one together on your own. Select a big box store and go to the department where they sell the fun stuff like desert camo underwear, for folks who like to run around in the desert… in their underwear, I guess. Many sell a go-bag. It’s a backpack or duffel, and it comes prefilled with an awesome assortment of crap sure to appeal to your inner Boy or Girl Scout. Stuff like a battery- and solar-operated flashlight, waterproof matches, a hand-crank radio, a knife, duct tape, first aid kit, and some dry food designed to be edible even after a nuclear blast.