Living in the Shadows: Total Resistance (Part III)

How to disappear when the system turns on you.

Whether we’re talking about military occupation—as Total Resistance prepared Cold War-era Switzerland for—or a tyrannical regime, or a society sliding into collapse, one truth remains: knowing how to vanish from the intruding eyes of power is vital to survival.

For paid subscribers, there’s a bonus downloadable guide to building a low-tech message drop system at the end of the article.

The Art of Disappearing in Plain Sight

Forget the Hollywood image of resistance—black masks, dramatic shootouts, fiery declarations. Real resistance, the kind that survives, thrives not in spectacle but in silence. In movement that leaves no trace. In lives lived just below the radar, humming with quiet defiance.

The art of camouflage is not just about what you wear. It’s about what you don’t reveal.

It’s how you walk, where you linger, what you carry, what you don’t. It’s about training the world to look at you—and see nothing but background noise.

Blending In vs. Standing Out

You are not a warrior in the open. You are a rumor with a heartbeat. That means knowing the difference between being invisible and being forgettable.

• Standing out gets you noticed. Being different, loud, righteous—it might feel empowering, but it paints a target on your back.

• Blending in makes you ordinary. Predictable. Part of the furniture. That’s what keeps you safe when they’re looking for someone else to blame.

In the cities, this means:

• Neutral colors, unbranded clothing.

• Walking like you belong—never too fast, never too slow.

• Avoiding eye contact, but not avoiding presence.

• Being the person they almost remember seeing, but couldn’t describe to the cops.

In the countryside:

• Knowing which boots leave the least trace.

• Moving when the dogs don’t bark and the birds don’t scatter.

• Timing your steps with wind gusts, train whistles, traffic.

• Ditching your modern silhouette—replace zippers, logos, high-vis gear with natural textures and broken patterns.

In the wild:

• You don’t just hide in the land—you become part of it.

• Blend with shadows, foliage, mud, silence.

• Learn how to move without snapping twigs or shifting leaves.

• Mask your heat, your shape, your scent.

Hiding What Matters

Because the most dangerous thing you can reveal is intention.

The systems of control aren’t just watching where you go. They’re watching how you move. When you move. Why you move. And if you’re not thinking several moves ahead, you’re already leaving a trail.

Concealing Movement: Routes, Routines, Body Language

Predictability is a death sentence.
If you always take the same street, use the same phone, walk the same rhythm, you’ve given the enemy your coordinates. You might as well be waving a flag.

Break the pattern.
Scramble your signals.
Make chaos your shield.

• Change routes daily, even if it costs you time.

• Vary your timing. Don’t always leave at 8:00. Leave at 8:03. Or 7:56. Or stay put.

• Alter your pace and posture. Walk confidently, but not rigid. Limp slightly one day. Slouch the next. Don’t be a silhouette they can trace.

• Ride differently. Walk where you used to drive. Bike where you used to bus. Know what transit cameras catch—and where their blind spots live.

Discipline of movement is a martial art.
You're not just evading surveillance. You're becoming unreadable.

Caching: Supplies, Tools, and Information

A good resistance cache is like a buried seed: invisible until it’s needed—then everything blooms.

• Supplies: tools, clothing, medical kits, burner phones, maps, documents. Stored in waterproof, animal-proof containers. Hidden in places you control but no one else notices.

• Locations: tree hollows, beneath loose floorboards, inside abandoned buildings, fake electrical boxes, buried in forest edge zones with natural landmarks.

• Rotation: Check caches regularly. Move them if exposed. Make duplicates. Never lead someone directly to them—not even a friend.

• Leave no signature: No labels. No scent. No consistent placement pattern.

You’re not hoarding. You’re pre-positioning for the day when logistics collapse and control tightens.

“Grey Man” Profiles: The Art of Being Unremarkable

The goal isn’t to hide in the shadows. It’s to become the shadow.

A Grey Man isn’t invisible. They’re forgettable. She’s average. He’s unmemorable. No one remembers them at the café. At the protest. At the checkpoint.

• Dress plainly. No slogans, no standout colors. No MOLLE or camo. Fit in with the lowest common denominator of your location.

• Speak softly. Don’t dominate conversations. Don’t draw attention in shops, stations, or on the street.

• Carry nothing suspicious. Not even suspiciously nothing. A reusable bag. A receipt. Something to make you boring.

• Digital Grey: No strong social presence. No ideological posting. No patterns of radical consumption or contact.

When the watchers scan, you’re just background static.

Modern Surveillance Evasion

How to disappear when the machine sees everything.

We live in an age where the walls have ears—and the sidewalks have cameras. Your phone tracks your heartbeat. Your car rats you out at every toll booth. Your face is stored in more databases than you’ve ever consented to.

This is not paranoia. It’s infrastructure.

Every inch of your life is part of a dataset. And that data feeds a machine whose goal is simple: total predictability. It doesn’t need to understand you. It just needs to map you, box you, and crush deviation before it spreads.

So you don’t fight the machine by shouting.
You fight it by glitching the feed.

Avoiding Phone Tracking, Facial Recognition, and License Plate Readers

Phones are the snitches in your pocket.

• Turn it off? Still trackable via passive towers.

• Use it without apps? Still leaking metadata.

• Think Signal is enough? Better—but not invisible.

Best practices:

• Burners only for ops. Buy with cash. Use once. Destroy if needed.

• Faraday bags or tins for transport.

• No location services. No Bluetooth. No Wi-Fi. Default is off.

• Keep digital and physical identities separate. Never bring both to the same place.

Facial recognition doesn’t need your cooperation.

It’s fed by:

• Storefront cameras

• ATM security footage

• Social media tagging

• Law enforcement street cams

• Your friends' Instagram posts

Countermeasures:

• Hats. Glasses. Masks. But mix it up—pattern recognition is AI’s drug.

• Hair shape, cheekbones, walking style—these are all ID points now. Practice different gaits. Exaggerate posture when needed.

• Reflective materials, angled visors, or infrared makeup (yes, really) to confound cameras.

License plate readers are everywhere.
Mounted on poles. Dash cams. Patrol cars. Toll booths.

To beat them:

• Learn blind spots in your area.

• Map LPR zones like you would surveillance cams.

• Consider temporary plate covers in emergencies—but remember: every trick you use raises your profile. Choose wisely. Use rarely.

Low-Tech Workarounds for High-Tech Eyes

You don’t need a quantum computer. You need discipline and creativity.

• Message drops: tape under benches, tucked into tree knots, marked books in public libraries.

• Signal systems: a red ribbon on a fence. Chalk marks under overpasses. The position of a trash can lid. No tech needed.

• Decoys: leave your phone at home, carry a dummy. Let them follow your ghost.

Make your habits illegible. Make your footprints meaningless.

Disrupting AI-Fed Pattern Recognition

AI doesn’t understand you. It doesn’t care about your cause.
It just recognizes patterns. Repeats. Routines. Groupings. Symbols.

Break them.

• Never take the same route twice.

• Delay gratification—don’t act on a plan the day it’s discussed.

• Interleave safe actions with risky ones.

• Practice the art of plausible randomness.

Every deviation is a static burst in their signal.
Every act of confusion is a small rebellion.

Counter-Deception: Faking the Fakes

If they’re going to watch, give them a performance.

Surveillance isn’t just about seeing—it’s about believing what is seen. And that’s your weapon.

When you can't hide the signal, corrupt it.
When you can’t go unseen, make them see the wrong thing.

Because the machine only works if it can trust its inputs.
So give it garbage.

Laying False Trails

Every action leaves footprints. So sometimes, the smartest move is to make extra ones—on purpose.

• Leave misleading digital traces.
  Log into a burner account from a coffee shop you’ll never visit again. Leave comments that suggest a direction you’re not going. Search for gear you don’t need.

• Create redundant paths.
  If you scout a route or location, scout two more and let them “see” you. One real, two fake. Make it hard to know what mattered.

• Stage ghost movements.
  Leave town for a day with your phone on, so it looks like you're traveling. Meanwhile, your real work is done offline, elsewhere, in silence.

The goal is confusion. Cost.
Every investigator burning time on a false lead is a win.

Using Doubles, Decoys, or Fake Digital Identities

If they’re looking for you, show them someone else.

• Doubles: someone with your build and walk wears similar clothing and hits familiar places. It’s crude, but it works—especially in low-res surveillance.

• Decoys: online aliases, fake profiles, burner accounts. Let them argue in forums, subscribe to newsletters, chat idly. A whole persona living in parallel.

• Behavioral camouflage: use common apps, browse common sites. Blend your signal into the noise of millions. Be statistically average.

And remember: the more data you generate, the more camouflage you have. The trick is making sure it’s the wrong data.

Symbolic Disinformation

Symbols are power. So are misused symbols.

• Tagged walls with altered signals: a known resistance mark placed intentionally in the wrong place.

• Misdirected signs: chalk symbols near police stations to test for surveillance response.

• False drop locations: old-school spycraft, updated—leave an empty envelope at a known handoff point to see who picks it up.

These aren't just psychological traps. They're tests of how closely you're being watched—and how they interpret your signals.

If they’re going to surveil you like a story,
write the script they’ll regret reading.

More to come in this in-depth series looking at the Cold War Era book Total Resistance and its contemporary applications. Stick with me here on Collapse Curriculum.