Operational Security (OPSEC) is really, really hard for a motor-mouth like me to maintain, but it’s something we HAVE to do if we don’t want the whole town showing up on our doorstep if the Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF).
OPSEC at work
I work in an office, and we have two 20 minute breaks per day where we can get away from our desks and go to the break room to have a snack, talk, whatever.
My office is actually right next to the break room, and in years gone by I would hear roars of laughter from the crews on break as the stories tended to fly. (Sadly, this no longer happens… if you walk into the break room in 2018, all you see is a bunch of people staring at their phones, no interaction whatever going on).
I’ve always skipped break and stayed at my desk, because I don’t want to blab about what I am REALLY doing away from work. In fact, I’m doing that right now, writing this on my morning break… (strangely enough, my employers expect me to actually work at work, so my blogging is limited to break times and lunch hour).
When we bought The Place, it was impossible to hide that we were doing a land transaction. Fortunately, buying “hunting land” here in North Missouri is the most normal thing in the world, so I had to say to anybody was “yeah, I’m buying some land of my own to bow hunt on” and that was a complete and “normalcy bias” appropriate answer.
I actually avoid social contact with my co-workers to help maintain OPSEC, because I can’t trust myself to keep my mouth shut.
OPSEC in the neighborhood
I live in a small town, and I personally know of 3 other prepping families, more because I recognize what to look for rather than me talking to them about it. Here’s a hint… when you see a house with a huge amount of raised bed gardens, a water catchment system and a Bennington flag & “Don’t Tread On Me” flag on the front porch, you can pretty safely assume that person is a prepper.
If you see this flag flying on a house, you’ve probably found a prepper…
I’m sure some people have us equally figured out, because it’s a small town and there are no true secrets in a small town. Still, I try to keep it on the “down low” as much as I can.
Really though, there’s only so much you can do to keep your prepping activities private, especially if you have people in and out of your house for whatever reason.
What is OPSEC, exactly?
In the military, at least in one version of OPSEC, there are five steps to OPSEC. Rather than re-write the entire things, here’s an abreviated version of the Wikipedia entry on it which is well done:
- Identification of Critical information: Critical information is information about friendly intentions, capabilities and activities that allow an adversary to plan effectively to disrupt their operations.
- Analysis of Threats: A Threat comes from an adversary – any individual or group that may attempt to disrupt or compromise a friendly activity. Threat is further divided into adversaries with intent and capability. The greater the combined intent and capability of the adversary, the greater the threat.
- Analysis of Vulnerabilities: Examining each aspect of the planned operation to identify OPSEC indicators that could reveal critical information and then comparing those indicators with the adversary’s intelligence collection capabilities identified in the previous action.
- Assessment of Risk: First, planners analyze the vulnerabilities identified in the previous action and identify possible OPSEC measures for each vulnerability. Second, specific OPSEC measures are selected for execution based upon a risk assessment done by the commander and staff. Risk is calculated based on the probability of Critical Information release and the impact if such as release occurs.
- Application of Appropriate OPSEC Measures: The command implements the OPSEC measures selected in the assessment of risk action or, in the case of planned future operations and activities, includes the measures in specific OPSEC plans.
These five steps all apply to preppers as well, as we work to keep our preps to ourselves, and not be “that house where we will all go in an emergency because they have the stuff to take care of us”.
We need to look at each of these steps and come up with a plan to deal with them, depending upon our own individual situations.