Don’t you just love all the neat terms and acronyms the prepper community uses? “Operational Security” OPSEC is borrowed from the military. Personally, I prefer “Loose Lips Sink Ships” but LLSS doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so I guess we’ll stick with OPSEC. 😊 In the context of prepping, OPSEC means to not tell people who don’t need to know about your preps. This should avoid having an excess of people trying to beg, borrow, or steal your preps when you need them most, i.e. right after SHTF. How can we achieve sufficient OPSEC despite being, . . . Paranoid?
I touched on OPSEC a bit in my post on Convincing Others to Prep, and I also mentioned that not everyone in my MAG has been told they are in the MAG in my How I Formed a MAG post. Actually, most of my MAG members don’t know much. That may seem a bit weird to the typical prepper. How can one have a MAG without the members of the MAG knowing? It’s actually pretty easy. If I expect they would turn to me in an emergency, I don’t need to say anything. If I think that it might not be obvious enough, I just tell them that in the event of an emergency, come to my place. End of conversation.
Why Tell Anyone Anything?
Basically, there is no reason to tell anyone about your prepping activities unless you want them to do something, and the something is usually getting them to participate in prepping themselves. If one of my MAG members does some prepping, that will be a pleasant surprise and leave us with some surplus.
Outside of those folks, who really needs to know? Aside from the whole Internet, exactly one person knows that all my activity with food, firearms, old vehicles, etc. adds up to being a prepper. That person is the one other prepper in my 20 person MAG. Who are the others in the MAG I haven’t told? Children and young adults with no money. The most I want from any of them pre-SHTF is to prepare a BOB for themselves. I advise them to put together an emergency three day bag and that’s all I need to say.
Trying to Convince Someone to Prep
I wrote a post on Convincing Others to Prep, but in summary what I suggested was putting together a BOB, typically without using the term BOB. 😊 If they do it, then perhaps there is more to discuss, or perhaps they can figure out for themselves that a disaster may last more than three days. If they don’t prepare a BOB, then I move on to someone else. My OPSEC is only compromised to the extent that they may know I have a BOB. Not a big deal.
The other key suggestion for initial discussions I have is to avoid prepper lingo. Don’t use the term “prepper” or “survivalist”. Your BOB is just a 3 day emergency bag, just like FEMA and the Red Cross recommend.
OPSEC on the Internet
Obviously, I have shared with a lot of people on the Internet the fact that I prep. I suppose that someone who was really tech savvy could figure out exactly who and where I am, but why bother? Until the SHTF I am not worth tracking. If someone on the Internet tracked me down, they might then find I am 1,000 miles away from their location in any case. Surely, whoever is trying to knock on my door would find it easier to just knock on their next door neighbor’s door. The Internet actually enables a lot of relatively anonymous conversation between preppers who want to share ideas and encourage prepping by others. It may not be super secure, but despite being paranoid, it seems to work. That is what we’re doing here on this blog!
There is a concern that in our current surveillance state the government will figure out who the preppers are and use the information to track down and confiscate their supplies. Presumably Internet postings, like this one, would be used for that purpose. However, estimates that I have seen indicate that about 3% of the population preps. That is 10 million people in the US. Do I think I’ll be first prepper the government will come after? Hardly, or I wouldn’t be posting here. 😊 Furthermore, in the United States people tend to be armed. Stealing from them is not a good recipe for survival, even if you are “from the government and here to help”. ☹ Consequently, I am not too worried about the government knocking down my door and stealing my preps. They’d be better off letting me care for 19 other people.
OPSEC with Visitors
Another problem is that casual visitors may become aware of your preps. The result is lost OPSEC. The best way to avoid this problem is to keep your preps out of sight. Your visitors should be able to wander about your house without ever realizing that you are a prepper. A cardboard box full of preps can easily be labeled “Christmas Decorations”. Even if a visitor to my home saw all my preps, what has he really seen? He has seen a bunch of five gallon buckets and cardboard boxes in the basement. Unless he is a prepper himself, he is unlikely to translate that into long term emergency supplies.
OPSEC after the Apocalypse
Having maintained OPSEC up to the point of disaster, SHTF happens. You now have the problem of what to volunteer about your level of preparedness with your neighbors. In most prepper fiction people are running out of food within a week and violent conflict between the prepared and unprepared begins. I actually am optimistic that such conflicts would take a bit longer. We were without power and relatively cut off during Hurricane Sandy. Nobody came to our door looking for anything. (Actually, one fellow was looking for Internet access so he could send an email, but I’m not counting that.) However, sooner or later people will be out and about and looking for supplies. If the stores are not open, you will have folks looking for help.
If you are capable of providing some charity without harming your situation, that is terrific. It is up to you to decide what to share and what to keep quiet, but you need to hit a suitable balance between charity, and becoming everyone’s “go to guy”. The best way to maintain OPSEC, is avoid lingo and don’t call yourself a prepper. You’re just a guy who gave away an extra can of peaches. 😊
I would comment on this article, but OPSEC.
I’m glad you got the point. 🙂