Lori was strange, but no one knew just how strange until she died and they started poking around, trying to figure out exactly who she was.
Before she was Lori Ruff, she was Lori Kennedy.
Before she was Lori Kennedy, she was Becky Sue Turner. And here’s where we learn she was kind of a soul mate to old Joey Newts: the real Becky Sue Turner had been dead since 1971. At some point seventeen years after little Becky Sue said the long good-night, a woman acquired her birth certificate and took it to Idaho, where she snagged a state ID.
That was Lori’s first stepping stone. She now had a plausible birth record and a legit state identification. She took these promising nuggets to the great state of Texas and pulled another awesome camouflaging move: she changed her name again. She became Lori Kennedy via a legal name change.
Honestly, this was a boss move on many levels. Lori had quickly put two full layers between her current identity and whatever name her biological parents had bestowed upon her.
After that, she blitzed through a GED and went to college, firmly establishing an impressive new life for herself.
There’s no need to get into the tall grass about why this mystery woman broke down and took her own life. What’s interesting from my perspective—and yours, too, I’d guess, given this talk we’re having—is how after Lori was gone, very little about what she left behind gave any clue as to who she might have been. She left behind mysterious scribblings: an attorney’s name (he said he never knew her), the words “North Hollywood,” and some info that seemed to hint at legal trouble. Someone also uncovered an example of just how carefully Lori had concealed herself: she’d set up a mail-forwarding service in Nevada that kicked correspondences to her actual address in Texas.
I couldn’t find any evidence anyone ever knew who Lori really was. Considering she was alive and kicking well after the Internet began making it seem impossible to hide from anyone, that’s a hell of an accomplishment. The sad thing about Lori’s story is while we could easily suspect all these guys of being on the run from their own nefarious past, there’s something to be said about running from the demons inside you. Lori may have escaped from any prior crimes or abusers, but it seems as though she was never quite able to find peace within herself.
If my goal is to get your mojo working toward a new life, I’m not doing my due diligence unless I note that the stories I just told you have several common elements and one of them is death. Specifically: suicide comes up a lot.
So let’s be real. Red meat, bitter coffee time: this shit is tough to do. I’m getting this out there right now because we’ve got more of the fun and fascinating world of getting the hell out of Dodge to explore. Keeping your head down, not popping up like a prairie dog to sniff the air and get the attention of The Man: it’s a full-time job.
So, think back on your police training (if not yours, then someone else’s) and keep track of your alertness level using Cooper’s Colors: white, yellow, orange, red.
Former Marine Jeff Cooper broke down combat mind-set into four states: “white” (relaxed and oblivious) to “red” (hyperaware and focused on a target). The in-between levels are “yellow,” which is the average person’s state of mind when driving, let’s say. Relaxed enough, but alert and aware. Up from that is “orange.”
Condition orange is a state of readiness. You’re pretty sure something’s coming, and you have an exit route and a go-bag you can grab the moment you are certain you have to skedaddle.
Everyday humans who haven’t left another life behind exist pretty much day to day in white to yellow zones. In an unwelcome environment, they’re at orange. If they get mugged, it goes up to red.
Here’s the thing about performing your one-night-only vanishing act: you’re always going to be at orange from here on out.
When I sleep I guess I must dial my awareness down to the white condition. No choice there. Maybe yellow, if every bump in the night snaps me awake in a drenching sweat. But from the time I wake—and this has to be true for everyone in this boat, even if they’re under witness protection or something official like that—it’s orange all the time, until I lose consciousness again.
Simply put: jumping off the grid and becoming another person on paper, in a new place, with a new career, you name it—well it involves a constant level of pucker factor.
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.
A premade go-bag might cost up to $500 depending on where you get it and how extensive it is. If you want to assemble your own, analyze what comes in the prepackaged go-bags and see what’s missing. Maybe you’ll want to make sure you’ve packed your own camouflage-colored underwear.
Dirt-Simple Disguise. Barring some really hard-to-hide feature like a vestigial twin, I’m pretty sure most people don’t realize just how quickly and easily they can disguise themselves well enough to evade surveillance.
Your gender doesn’t matter: nothing like putting on a simple ball cap and a pair of shades to suddenly and simply obscure your identity. Keep those on hand; they make light, collapsible ball caps now that fit easily in a jacket pocket. Or, just wear a hoodie with the hood pulled up, if the weather is right. Another tip I’ve read about is reversible clothing. There’s a limit to how much of that you can find, and you might consider learning some tailoring skills to make your own, but it could be incredibly useful to double your wardrobe.
If you’re in the unfortunate position of having to rough it because your need to drop off the grid was too immediate to lay down the groundwork for a new identity, you are probably going to need some of the following skills, which are sometimes called Urban Survival Skills.
Dumpster Diving. Yeah, I’ve already touched on this. No, I’m not fond of it at all, but let’s face it—people throw out a lot of stuff, and some of it is actually useful. More than that, just as I mentioned early on, there is information in that there garbage. Let’s say you’ve had to make your emergency bug-out and fled your abode, and for some reason it only then occurs to you that you might need a temporary new identity. Probably gonna find all you need right there in your new best friend’s trash. Maybe double-stock that bug-out backpack with as much long-lasting food as you can, so you won’t be forced to snack like a well-dressed raccoon.
Straight-up Burglary. I’m not advocating stealing for the sake of stealing. But let’s face it, there are specific situations where it may even be judicious to briefly bust in and make yourself at home in a residence that is not your own. Rather than instruct you in the actual art of burglary—which is very straightforward unless you want to get sophisticated and learn lock picking, etc.—I’ll just note for the record that there have been a few folks who have made an art of this and lived off the grid for years doing it.