Transcription
Here's the truth about safe houses. If you ever need to disappear without a trace and never be found again, I'm going to tell you exactly what to look for when finding the perfect safe house and how to make sure that savvy trackers can't find you. My name is Jason Hansen. I'm a former CIA officer and this is stuff that the intelligence community knows and I want you to know it, too.
I train a lot of people and they come to consult with me about disappearing without a trace. Unfortunately, many of them are women who are domestic violence victims. So, they got some loser ex-husband or ex-boyfriend or whatever stalking them and they need to vanish. Hopefully, you're not somebody who needs to vanish for that reason.
But here's the truth about safe houses. So, as a former CI officer, I am blessed to know a lot of information about safe houses and it's probably not exactly what you think because the movies of course make it look super ninja and the movies are often wrong. You just need to entertain people. Without further ado, let's get to what you need to know.
A safe house can actually be anything you're going to go to. It can be a cabin in the woods. It can be a regular looking house. If I had to guess, if I had to guess, in Northern Virginia, where I'm born and raised, there's a million safe houses there. There's safe houses that the US government has for people who have defected from other countries. And of course, there's safe houses that are adversaries have that Russia and China. So, there's US safe houses in the Washington DC area and foreign safe houses in the Washington DC area. And when you go in a neighborhood, those safe houses look like every other house. They blend in. They hide in plain sight.
So, yes, it can be a house. It can be an RV park. I love RV V parks for safe houses. There over 13,000 RV parks across the United States. Most of them, many of them are mom and pop. So, it's not like you have to worry about being in a big database. It's not like you have to worry about them checking 27 forms of ID. If you have a cash or a cashier's check or whatever, you can go in an RV park. And also, you don't need your own RV. Many places, not all of them, many places have RVs where you can go rent the RV. And it's awesome because the utilities are included. That way you don't have to worry about hooking up utilities. And yes, I may or may not have done this. So, I'm a big fan of using RV parks and an RV that you rent from them as a safe house.
Next, of course, um another safe house I may have is an off-grid shipping container. It's a bugout location. Really, bugout location safe house. Um but off-grid shipping containers. I do have one of these. Of course, these days shipping containers, they can do amazing things with you. Go inside them. You wouldn't even know you were in a house. So, don't think that only, you know, a safe house has to be some fancy $500,000 house in Timbuktu, Virginia or whatever. It can be any place that is going to give you shelter.
So, now you know what a safe house can be. Here's what you need to know about as you are getting your safe house ready to vanish without a trace and make sure that nobody finds you.
One, your safe house needs to be pre-stocked. So, if you are planning on vanishing, if you're like, "Hey, I'm leaving my ex-husband, ex-wife, ex-boyfriend, or whatever." You don't want to just immediately do it. It takes preparation, planning. So, you're not just going to wake up one day and walk out the door. I mean, you could, but it's going to be a heck of a lot harder to make it happen, right? So, we want to have your location be pre- stock. So, if we are using some cabin in the woods, we're going to make sure that there's food, there's water, there's toilet paper, there's everything that I want to be able to function in normal everyday life.
You must do this. Meaning, you do not tell your friend, even your best friend in the world, "Hey Sally, I got a safe house cuz I'm leaving my ex-husband and the safe house is in Laray, Virginia, and it's a small cabin in the woods. Will you please take this stuff there for me?" Why do you not tell anybody where the safe house is? Obvious reasons so nobody can find you. But and remember I'm a former CIA officer. I'm thinking with my intelligence brain is that if you do it, nobody else knows where it is. So you don't put your family at risk of being tortured because if they know where it is, then they're higher threat being tortured because somebody's going to torture them to get the location of the safe house. So you have to handle all this. Do not outsource this. Do not have anybody else do it.
When it comes to the food, you obviously have to have food. I'm a huge fan of canned meat, of the survival food pouches. and number 10 cans of wheat and beans and all that kind of stuff because it's going to last uh 25 years. So, here's I'll show you some of it. Well, first we'll just start with this. This is canned meat. I love canned meat. I'm a big fan of it. I have it for food storage for my family. This one is pork. And you'd be surprised how actually good it tastes. So, this pork if I were Well, I do have bugout locations that have this, but if I were setting up a safe house, I'm going to have a lot of canned meat there cuz I don't have to worry about refrigeration. I know it can sit there for a long time. It's going to be fine. Same thing over here. These are the number 10 cans. This one is pinto beans. Also good for 25 to 30 years. So I can have uh potato flakes. I can have beans. I can have rice. I can have flour. And I have a lot of beans at my place. I have like pinto beans, reffried beans, great northern beans. There's a lot of beans out there. So big big fan of these. So have this type of food at your safe house. That way as soon as you get there, you don't have to worry about, oh, I got to go shopping and do this and that. Pre-tocked. Do this. Have canned survival food. Make it easy.
Also, very important about your safe house. If you are vanishing without a trace, do not do everything at once. Meaning, do not go to Walmart and get 17 shopping carts full of food to stock up your safe house because that stands out. You don't want to draw attention yourself. You are trying to vanish without a trace and never be found again. You don't want to raise any red flags. I'll tell you why in a moment here. So, do not do anything at once. Same thing furniture. If you're in Stockholm, your safe house, don't go spend $5,000 on furniture and have a big furniture truck or two furniture trucks uh delivering. You need to do things in in peace meal, small at a time. So, you're going to make multiple trips to your safe house, take a little bit of furniture here and there, stuff that can fit in a car, take a little bit of food here and there.
Savvy trackers will question local places. So if again if you are a hopefully you're not a bad guy. If you are a bad person and the FBI or the intelligence community overseas is trying to find you, they are going to question all the local places. "Hey, has anybody made any big purchases in the last 30 days? You know, any just overly, you know, again, a bunch of uh furniture or anything that stands out." They question all these places and people remember like, "Oh yeah, I just sold $10,000 worth of furniture to this guy who was acting a little weird out of state." So do things in small runs. Make multiple trips. Very, very important. So savvy trackers don't find you.
When it comes to utilities, if you can avoid utilities, that is ideal. Luckily, this day and age we live in, it's not hard. There are generators. I have propane. I have gas. I have solar. So you can easily get a solar setup. If you are living in an RV at the RV park, well, utilities are paid, so that's done for you. But if you have a small cabin in the woods or if you have an off-grid shipping container like I do, well, you can run it off of solar and it's pretty easy to do. You don't have to worry about utilities.
But if you are going to a place where you have to get utilities, turn on your utilities at least 90 days in advance. Absolutely. Under no circumstances do you turn on your utilities within 30 days. Why? Well, a savvy tracker is going to go to your local utilities and say, "Give me the names of everybody that's turned on the utilities in the last 30 days." Right? Because that's what most people do. If people are trying to vanish and escape and we're hunting people down, we know that this is typical behavior. But you're going to do it the right way. You're going to do at least 90 days out. That way nobody can find you.
Intel. Speaking of savvy trackers, remember they're going to the utility companies. Hey, has anybody done anything in the last 30 days? They're going to the furniture stores. They're going to the real estate offices. So obviously, do not buy a cabin in the woods on day one and day 10 like immediately move into it and whatever. If you're disappearing, you spread everything out. So if you are going to disappear, you're going to say, "Okay, hey, you know, I want to leave for whatever reason. Plan 6 months out." So day one, you go by your cabin of the woods. Month six is when you actually do the escape. That way when trackers go into the real estate offices and say, "Hey, on the last 30 to 60 days, tell me everybody who's bought property here. Tell me everybody who's done this." You're going to be nowhere on the radar. And yes, in the intelligence world, there are people who are on many payrolls and all kinds of locations who look out for this stuff. and don't be the one that tips them off.
All right. Okay. Few more things. We're almost done here. And you're getting a perfect safe house. You're not going to vanish. Nobody's going to be able to find you. Do not worry about your driver's license and registration. This is one of the biggest questions I always get when I'm teaching people how to disappear without a trace, never be found again. Is they're like, "Well, can I get a fake license?" Listen, if you go online and you Google like driver's license or no fake license, you're going to send that money to that website and you're never going to see anything again. Or you're going to get back your driver's license that looks like Mickey Mouse made it. So, don't try and get any fake passport. Don't try and get any fake driver's license. That is Hollywood stuff. It doesn't work in real life.
The reason you don't worry about your driver's license, you can go years without it. I just got my my license, what did I get it like renewed and now I'm good another 9 years before I need to renew it. So, I'm good for that for 9 years. Vehicle registration. Heck, I know people had their vehicle registrations expired forever and they drive it around and they haven't gotten caught yet. So, don't freak out over this, okay? Don't worry about this. Remember this word. Where's my Where's my Abigod marker? and everything we're doing, we want to be nonalerting. Non-alerting, which is again why we don't buy $10,000 worth of furniture and have 10 trucks going there, which is why we don't walk out of Walmart with 50 carts worth of food, be non-alerting.
Do not apply for a new driver's license or tags for months. So, if you're one of these people, if you're like a Super Goody two shoes and you're like, "Hey, I you know, I can't take it." Well, listen, again, we're planning out. You've got to go months because in the intelligence business, they're going to go and find out, "Hey, who's applied for a Oklahoma DV in DL in the last 30 days? Who's gotten tags in this place? Who came to this DMV in Timbuktu, Milan nowhere, Oklahoma?" Don't do that. You can wait a long time. I know guys who have had expired driver's licenses and they've been driving around literally 4 years with an expired driver' license. And I also know a lot of people who don't have driver's licenses are still driving. Anyways, teach his own. So, don't worry about your driver's license or registration. Not that important. Plus, you can take public transportation. You know, obviously if you're off the grid in the middle of nowhere, it ain't going to work, but you know, if you get in an RV park, you may be able to take a bus somewhere or this and that.
And last, but certainly not least, when you get to your new location, RV park, cabin in the woods, small town USA house, whatever it is, this is going to sound contradicting and don't try to hide, but also don't go out of your way to meet new people. You want to be Goldilocks. So, why do I say don't try to hide? If somebody walks by you on the street and you're like, "Don't don't let me." Well, obviously that's not normal behavior. That's weird. You're going to stand out. But at the same time, if you're going out of your way like, "Hey, hey," you know, run across the street. I'm I'm the new guy in town. I I just moved in here. I want to get to know you. People remember that, too. Remember, savvy trackers are going around. Savvy trackers are looking. And they may say, "Yeah, this guy, he was hiding his face as I crossed the street. He was acting weird." That stands out. Or, "Yeah, I remember this guy. He's like overly eager. He's like brand new in town." You want to be Goldilock, okay? You want to be right in the middle. So, be normal. Don't go out of your way and be a crazy person, but don't go out of your way to hide. Just be normal.
Now you know some important information about vanishing to a new safe house. If you want, hold on. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. Don't go anywhere. What did I do with it? All right. If you want more information about how to disappear without a trace, I have a brand new book out. It's called Escape: How to Disappear Without a Trace and Never Be Found Again. Not only does it teach you the information here about how to find the perfect safe house, you're going to learn a tremendous amount of information about how to truly disappear. you'll never know about unless you've been in the intelligence community. If you want to get the book, go to spyvanish.com. Again, spy vanish.com.
Hopefully, you learned a thing or two about uh vanishing in a safe house. Hopefully, you don't need one. But guess what? You can still get a bugout location that is off the grid that nobody knows about, which is what I have because hey, we live in an unpredictable world. So, now you know what it's like. Remember what I taught you and hopefully you're not one of the people who has a a crazy ex- spouse trying to murder you. Anyway, that's it. I've got to run. I am former CIA officer Jason Hansen. God bless you. Stay safe.