Stealth?

[by-the-throat]

The number one component of stealth is patience. Expect extremely slow going if you intend to avoid all contact.

Mobile stealth is 10x harder than static stealth. In a static position, if you are well camoflaged (by debris, ghillie suite, behind a blind) and do not move and remain quiet, the majority of people will not notice you. But if you want to be moving around it is going to be much harder to remain undetected. First off, movement is one of those things that draws the eye instantly, especially rapid or jerky movement. Second, even with noise discipline, the sound of your own footsteps (you will not have 100% silent footsteps with all your gear) can drown out other sounds in the area that you might be alert to otherwise, in addition to giving away your position to others. And thirdly, part of the awareness you could be using to search for potential contacts in the area is going to be given over to the basic task of moving and navigating the busted ass landscape.

Notice these tips are mostly about perception. It is exceedingly hard to hide from someone you do not know is there. So your awareness must be razor sharp if you truly want to move through an area undetected. Here are a couple of tips.

(Editor's note: I am not anybody high speed, but I played a lot of jailbreak as a kid)

1: When in doubt, freeze in place. Again, movement is the absolute first thing that the eye notices. If you suspect but do not know you have been spotted and you are not immediately being fired upon, there is no reason not to take a few seconds to look around.
2: Do not look over the top of things. Cresting a hill or peeking over a fence means that your silhouette is easily visible.
3: When trying to maneuver around potential contact, go farther than you think you need to. People move and if you are going around them it is unlikely you will have any idea what they are up to.
4: Almost more important than good camoflage is good optics. Again, it is highly beneficial if you see them before you can hope to evade them. Good binocs and maybe an NVD are a big help here.
5: Step slowly and carefully, but don't obsess over it. It is more important that you do not trip or knock over anything huge than it is to try some ninja rice paper walk. Most noises are relegated to background noise unless they stand out, so you can get away with more small noises than you think.
6: Be aware of ambient noise and how it can help you. A loud truck, gunfire or a siren can cover the noise if you need to move fast. On a similar note, use distractions when you can. I'm not saying try some ol' Manhunt shit here but the less someone's attention is focused in your direction the better off you are.
7: Sentry removal: Don't try it. There is almost never a reason not to evade in the first place, and that is the kind of stealth that is nearly impossible for us mere mortals. Remember, proximity negates preparation in almost all cases-if you do it right, you don't need to be garrotting motherfuckers.
8: A guy with a spotlight is blind to nearly everything outside it. You would be amazed at how often a spotlight can sweep just over or around you without giving you away. We used to play with a massive 8 D cell monster spotlight and it still only projects a beam 2 feet wide that you can play tag with all night if you are good.
9: Have an immediate plan of action if you get spotted. Depending on the situation, that might be fight or run away, but know what to do immediately and how to signal others to do the same. You will only have a split second in some cases so it is best to know now.
10: Smooth, deliberate movements. When you have to move, you can go faster than you think to if you keep all the movements very smooth. Don't power walk your arms or jerk your head around to look at stuff; instead make every movement flow together.

Ugh, I didn't mean for this to turn into some long pedantic lecture from a guy with a shitload of hide and seek under his belt and nothing else. But rest assured that each of these little truisms has been religiously field tested.

[prepper7]

Ugh, I didn't mean for this to turn into some long pedantic lecture from a guy with a shitload of hide and seek under his belt and nothing else. But rest assured that each of these little truisms has been religiously field tested.

I enjoyed your "lecture" (bits that made me LOL: "It is more important that you do not trip or knock over anything huge than it is to try some ninja rice paper walk." and ". . . you don't need to be garrotting motherfuckers.") and more importantly, learned from it useful things. Games are frequently valuable as training tools. Even in nature, young animals are "trained" (fighting, hunting, stalking, etc.) via "play". Thx for the post.

[Lucretius]

If you're bugging in, and raiders/looters are going from house to house:

Make your place seem like "already looted". Throw out some of your stuff that you don't like anyway on the lawn. Smash your least favorite window. Draw some untasteful graffiti on your front door.

That's ninja-class stealthy right there.

[RedneckReverend]

Stealth doesn't always mean becoming unseen and unheard. Stealth can also mean blending in.
In an urban environment there will likely be people around after SHTF whether it's a natural disaster like a hurricane or TEOTWAWKI.
If you are prepared, have your stores of food, water, clothing, etc. then stealth in the urban environment will mean not letting anyone know what you have.
If you have to go out, and you will, make an effort to look just as dirty, hungry, and sick as the rest of the masses.
If there are food distributions, water distributions, etc. go get your share even if you don't need it. Not getting it would draw more attention to you.
Be careful of smells, don't let cooking smells give away your preps.
If you have power and others don't keep your windows blacked out or only light an interior room.

You don't have to be invisible, as long as you can blend in with the herd.

[KnightoftheRoc]

Okay this has all really been helpful, especially the crickets thing. In Texas we have a lot of crickets, so that means if it goes quiet, ill know that im about to die. Practice moving so YOU don't make the crickets notice- the other guy certainly isn't going to practice it. Wait- where in TX? My brother just might Also the part about me getting arrested because of suspected robbery is the only thing stopping me from trying it. So stay away from any activity that looks like a B&E attemptIf I could leap onto my roof and jump to my neighbor's I would do it in a heartbeat.Where do we send flowers? I want to be stealthy because then I will never have to worry about getting mugged at night when the gangsters drive by. No, im just kidding, but stealth would be a funny thing to train on. Could you imagine sneaking up on your friends at night.Actually, that would be a good, safe way to practice- get your friends to try it too, and make a running game of it.

It's not URBAN, but learning to be stealthy takes practice, and if you succeed, you can crawl like I did, to within 6 feet of a live deer- a friend and I did it, just to see if we could, and only stopped at 6 feet, because if spooked, the deer could have kicked the CRAP out of either of us as he took off. So practice coming up on friends from behind without their noticing. A tap on the shoulder means you won. A tap on YOUR shoulder means you lost. But, FFS, leave the toy or real guns AT HOME! This aint the assassination game!

[Arkiser]

As they say in the Army Slow is smooth smooth is fast. and also one way to get a bit of military training for free and with out joining is to talk with your local army national guard recruiter and ask him a bout RSP recruit sustainment program... they take the new recruits and teach them some basic soldering skills before basic training. some of these skills include first aid, setting up ambushes, radio comunication, moving to contact and recon. pretty useful stuff if you ask me for when the shit hits the fan... and by the way it sounds like marine when the shit hits the fan.

[Squirrley]

Go play groundies - me and my friends from highschool (we're all in our early 20's now) just did that the other night, and a) it was a lot different than in middle school and b) stealth was the name of the game this time around.

For those of you with deprived childhoods, you play groundies on a play structure at a playground. Its kindof like tag, except the person who's 'it' has to keep his/her eyes closed the whole time, but to make up for that obvious detriment they get to call 'groundies' whenever they want, which 'tags' anyone touching the ground when they say that.

We also played an awesome last man standing/'zombie' variant, where instead of only having one person be 'it' (and the 'it' person switching every time someone gets tagged), everyone that gets tagged is on the 'it' team.

Obviously this wouldn't be good training or whatever the fuck for moving about in an urban environment at night, but it does focus on the 'hiding in place' part pretty good, and is fun as hell.

[mysterioso]

A REALLY good resource for this are the Marine Scout/Sniper Manual, which has info on stalking, stealth movement, camo, and strategy. Also, the military version of the Army Survival Manual FM 21-76 (i think?) has good E&E stuff in it, really similar to the scout/sniper info. I can also recommend Tom Brown's Wilderness observation and tracking book-- even though its not urban it has good principles about awareness and movement/camo/etc. It may also be useful to youtube fox walking and stalking videos. Practice makes perfect though, I practice walking silently at all times, foot placement, making sure all your gear is strapped down and not jangling. Sneaking up on your friends is fun too! I wont list any more advice because it is pretty much all covered in these books. Cheers!

[Regent X]

Another, pactice controlled breathing. Adrenaline is tough to counter-act, but it can be done. Few years back my pals and I had a huge game of some sort, Capture the Flag in a park at night. I laid down, wearing all black, and even with what I thought were dead giveaways on coat (silver cuffs and buttons), I had a girl actually step over me! The timing was amazing that she somehow didn't see me, and that she stopped PRECISELY over me without stepping or tripping on me. One in a million odds. I reached up and held her ankle. I expected a scream (which I had mischeviuosly hoped for), but she just said HEY! Nice work, ninja!
Part of why she didn't see me was also she didn't HEAR me. Many posts have already mentioned footsteps which is great. I do the same thing while walking, trying to be as quiet as possible. Last night I had a long walk home from work and found I had lost some of muy skill at being quiet. The types of shoes you wear will help or hinder. If I want to be quiet, I wear hiking boots (well broken in), if not, biker noots which I also use to ward off would be muggers. Walking in easy measured steps with confidence and a crisp step, heel to toe and not shuffling or tripping will go a long ways in an urban area late at night in bad areas of town. Carry yourself well, but don't swagger. Confidence is not over-confidence.
For stealth breathing techniques go a long way. Learn to breathe deeply and calmly. Practise breathing while walking. Not only will you develop a better diaphragm but it alleviates stress.

[lailr]

Shadows and patience

[A.C.E.]

The Swedish Army Manual offers the following wisdom on stealthy movement (recon, patrolling and such): SOLO

Stop
Observe
Listen
Often

By forcing yourself to stop and look around, you will be much more likely to spot a potential threat before the threat spots you. As someone said earlier, it is (nearly) impossible to hide from someone you don't know is there.

[Thorne]

Only really one thing I want to add.

Peripheral vision is keyed to movement and strong contrast; By being still you can often escape detection when only in someones peripherals so long as you don't contrast strongly and dont trigger the autonomic 'there is a person there' reaction that the brain does upon recognizing a human shape.

Key example, I do this all the time (I get a kick out of surprising my roommates, I've even had a few that return the favour, lots of good fun)

You are in a T intersection, you know the person coming the other way is going to turn away from you.

______
__<- __X(you)
| | |
| | |
X (next guy)

If he looks your way there is little you can do but if he's just going to turn the corner:

Get a little Distance
Get FLAT to the wall closest to them to change your profile and breakup your shape
Get Low to the ground without unsticking from the wall to further alter your profile
BE STILL

If you do it correctly you can 'come out of nowhere' because their peripherals won't trigger to you. Anytime where your going to be in someones peripherals this technique can help to avoid detection

[KnightoftheRoc]

-Break up your body's outline with baggier clothes that don't show every minute movement you make. Whoever came up with the 'stealth suit' spandex look just had a fetish, not any experience in how the human figure catches the eye.

I think you may be right there. The ONLY advantage to a close fitting set of duds is they are less likely to snag on things like barbed wire, or the tops of chain link fences. As such exercises like climbing fences makes you stand out in silhouette anyway, I don't see where the no-snag advantage is worth the loss of camouflage. The spandex idea of stealth/camo is likely from someone who has read WAY too many comic books.

[WhoShotJR]

The key idea in an urban environment is subterfuge. Like raptor's posts with a clip board and a white pickup truck and wearing PPE gear. Lots of ways you can do it, depending on the circumstances. In an urban environment you are likely to be seen, you want to be an undesirable target.

Be a homeless guy with a shopping cart. A "dad" with a baby stroller. In a wheelchair, crippled, or diseased. Bat shit crazy. A utility worker. It all depends on the situation, but you want to be the guy where it's not worth it to bother with, because you don't have anything they want, and you're not a danger to them.

[Wolfdude87]

Research and then practice, legally of course. If you're caught sneaking around then you may look like a fool, but make that your incentive to not being seen.

[Arkiser]

Barefoot you are much quieter barefoot

[A.C.E.]

Barefoot you are much quieter barefoot

True, but moving around barefoot, especially in an urban setting, increases the risk of injury. In any kind of shtf situation there's likely going to be lots of debris on the ground. Glass, perhaps pieces of metal from explosions and so on.

Any injuries to your feet are likely to slow you down a lot. Perhaps make it impossible to move at all.

[DynamicRabbit]

Barefoot you are much quieter barefoot

True, but moving around barefoot, especially in an urban setting, increases the risk of injury. In any kind of shtf situation there's likely going to be lots of debris on the ground. Glass, perhaps pieces of metal from explosions and so on.

Any injuries to your feet are likely to slow you down a lot. Perhaps make it impossible to move at all.

And an infection/tetanus in a SHTF scenario can kill you quick.

[doctor patches]

my $0.02 is this:

go slow, focus on your surroundings. having a very acute attention to detail and to things that have changed (was there, now isnt or visa versa) will be good. essentially, the best offense is a good defense.

biggest thing you can help: don't go where you don't belong. then you won't have anything to worry about.

[riverjoe47]

Things I learned squirrel hunting . Move in the middle of a rain storm . Move when the wind gusts .
Anyone who thinks squirrels are easy to stalk should go out in an Oak and hickory woods in squirrel season . Theyre just as wary as white tails and they have a lot better view . If you spot one before he spots you then you're probabley a pretty good stalker .
Things I learned in the infantry . Move in the middle of a rain storm .
Move when the wind gusts . Move in the middle of artillery barage or air strike .Don't move unless you have to . He with the iron ass gets to spring the ambush .

[Arkiser]

dont wear shoes if possible when trying to move quietly you should try it some times it forces you to move slowly and if you move slowly you will be quieter

[riverjoe47]

I always thought moccansins might be good , not minnitonkas with the little buttons on the bottom but just leather for soles .

I forgot about the following but we too were furnished those little cards .




One of the pocket reference cards we received before going into the field was a reprint of the standing orders issued by Major Robert Rogers to his Rangers in 1759. More than two hundred years after Major Rogers wrote them down, they were still relevant to Vietnam:

1. Don't forget nothing.

2. Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball, and be ready to march at a minute's warning.

3. When you're on the march, act the way you would if you was sneaking up on a deer. See the enemy first.

4. Tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don't never lie to a Ranger or officer.

5. Don't never take a chance you don't have to.

6. When we're on the march we march single file, far enough apart so one shot can't go through two men.

7. If we strike swamps, or soft ground, we spread out abreast, so it's hard to track us.

8. When we march, we keep moving till dark, so as to give the enemy the least possible chance at us.

9. When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other half sleeps.

10. If we take prisoners, we keep 'em separate till we have had time to examine them, so they can't cook up a story between 'em.

11. Don't ever march home the same way. Take a different route so you won't be ambushed.

12. No matter whether we travel in big parties or little ones, each party has to keep a scout twenty yards ahead, twenty yards on each flank and twenty yards in the rear, so the main body can't be surprised and wiped out.

13. Every night you'll be told where to meet if surrounded by a superior force.

14. Don't sit down to eat without posting sentries.

15. Don't sleep beyond dawn. Dawn's when the French and indians attack.

16. Don't cross a river by a regular ford.

17. If somebody's trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.

18. Don't stand up when the enemy's coming against you. Kneel down, lie down, hide behind a tree.

19. Let the enemy come till he's almost close enough to touch. Then let him have it and jump out and finish him with your hatchet.

[praharin]

dont wear shoes if possible when trying to move quietly you should try it some times it forces you to move slowly and if you move slowly you will be quieter

If taking your shoes off forces you to move slower your feet aren't properly conditioned and you should fix that if you are medically able to. Or just keep your boots on. Self discipline will solve this problem a lot better than equipment, or lack there of.

Beyond that, you are seriously oversimplifying the act of walking quietly. Walk slowly and you will be more quiet... Well, maybe. I is entirely possible to walk slowly and noisily at the same time. That will make you harder to track auditorily, but only to a significant level for a casual listener.

The real goal here would be to move quietly as quickly as practical. That takes practice.

[Mackatrin]

It all depends on terrain, if your in a jungle, its going to be hard to be quiet because of all the leaves, branches, etc. If your in lets say a City like LA, its better to stay on the outskirts of the city, "Stealth" isn't so much important as it is, seeing the zeds, keeping your distance from them is also a key to surviving, only shoot when you know you can hit them and only shoot them when you know you can hit their head, they aren't like us, where if you shoot them, they are going to cuddle into a ball, because of the pain. A Gillie suit is nice, when trying to avoid being seen, but its also alittle heavy at times, after awhile, not only that, a Gillie suit has to be made for the environment your in, like in the Desert you'd have sand on it, the jungle you'd have leaves, but again going back to Environment, you'd be making new gillie suits as you go, as you change location.

The Only way to really stay "Quiet" around zeds, is to just avoid them and keep your distance, other then that somthing like a Gillie suit would only be used to protect yourself from rogue survivors. Thats just my thought.