Hunted

[dewi]

Gave this some thought today... presuming that the rules disallowed you to just stay put (I'd be happy in my attic for 28 days) and also assuming no other cash is allowed other than the bank account.

Deliberately research walking routes from Glasgow, leave a notepad with impression of your route plan (ie the written bit on the top has been removed, but the under bit can be rubbed with a pencil or soot to reveal what was written)

Get to the cash first and withdraw £400. This may have been made more difficult by bank limits though, they may have a £250 per day withdrawl limit. Pass the card and pin onto a friend, ask them to wait 2 days, travel to a local town and withdraw the remaining £50. (They've let one bloke have his mate give him a car, so this shouldn't be an issue for the program-makers)

Transfer mobile sim card into cheap phone, make sure its fully charged and post it to an address in Glasgow, 2nd class of course so it remains in the Glasgow sorting office for an extra day.

Paying cash, get an overnighter coach to Inverness.

Travel around campsites around Scotland for week one, then back on an overnighter to a few miles away from where you started (for the sake of argument, say somewhere in Kent).

Purchase pay as you go mobile, then ring the friend who withdrew the cash. At the end of the call, post that phone to an address in Bristol.

Take local buses across the south coast, stopping at campsites along the way.


And thats when I'd be caught I reckon. Caught, but having wasted their time tracking the first phone... hopefully, having discovered my route plans to Glasgow as well as the phone going there, they'd have deployed a ground team up there... another time waster is looking up all the personal info on my mate who withdrew the cash for me... then tracking a second phone I used to call him a few days later on (presuming they've bugged his phone).

The problem is that you have a camera person following you around for the purposes of the show. This makes you stand out where ever you go. If you buy food, he's filming it. If you want to pay for the campsite, he's filming it. And so on... meaning that the security services automatically have that edge... look up people talking about seeing something being filmed locally... social media being what it is, it wouldn't take long.

Without the camera man following, I'd rent a caravan somewhere for a month and lay low. No internet, no phone, no contact with the outside world other than to get food. Last resort would be disappearing into the woods which I would do if for whatever reason I had no cash. But taking a camera man into the woods with you... you know a dog walker will happen upon you, and unless you can convince them you're doing a nature programme... you'll be caught shortly after your location is broadcast on Twitter.

 

[mick91]

Good shout that dewi, totally with you on the fake trail with the phones. Totally off the grid is an option too. Were talking guerilla tactics of going to ground and staying there. Move at night if you have to and do it quietly. Failing that, white van and a hi vis best, uniforms grant anonymity. How many high vis jackets have you seen this week and not given a second glance?
Look for caves, disused tunnels, derelict buildings. Personally as I mentioned I think making your position look totally unsafe or inaccessible is an option. More so if you can get to a disused tunnel, takes nothing to lock things from the inside and make people assume it's been sealed for years

 

[sunndog]

Gonna have to watch this now

Assuming you evade the initial pursuit i honestly can't see any difficulty in it....they even give you access to money (a corner shop and a £50 taxi fare will make you very difficult to track down)

No grubbing about in the woods for me. Like i said above, plenty of campsites around, then the odd night in a little B&B for a treat

 

[kaiAnderson]

buy a train ticket to somewhere with the card and dont get on that train.

 

[dewi]

I think the difficulty for these guys is simply having to lug around a camera man with you everywhere you go... if it wasn't for that, only the terminally stupid would get caught. Everyone knows (or should know) about the ANPR network, so driving your own car is a no no... everyone knows we have more surveillance cameras than people in this country, so being constantly aware of where you're walking, what you're looking at etc. and once you have cash and somewhere to stay, you can pretty much just sit it out for 28 days... but that camera man... he needs to recharge the camera. He needs to eat, drink, poop and sleep.

Thats what has been bugging me... it shouldn't be called Hunted. It should be called "On the run whilst babysitting a camera man".

And that has just given me a good idea for some weird reason. You buy a microphone, stick a BBC sign on it and everywhere you go, pretend you're doing a documentary or an piece to camera. People will still talk about it on social media, but in the context of "I saw a BBC reporter today" or "Why was the BBC making a documentary about hiding in a disused tunnel?"

Its an interesting show though, so quite looking forward to the next one... makes you wonder though, mix 'Hunted' with 'Alone'?

 

[Chris the Cat]

Draw all your money out in person from the bank nearest you ( in my case Minehead ). Get a friend to drive my car north,as far as ,say Bristol and park up and come home on the train. Meanwhile I set off to walk the Southwest Coast path ( which also starts in Minehead ).

C.

 

[The Lord Poncho]

. Failing that, white van and a hi vis best, uniforms grant anonymity. How many high vis jackets have you seen this week and not given a second glance?

That's the trick I think - hide in plain sight. Plenty of cash in hand workers about drifting from one casual job to another in big cities. They effectively live off the grid, some deliberately do, others just by way of their lifestyle. They get paid in cash, they pay for everything in cash. If they have mobile phone, they will be basic models probably with pay as you go sims that aren't registered to a name or address.

Trying too hard to hide makes you obvious - the idea is to blend in with the pattern of life in whatever area you happen to be moving through. Blending in at every level - what you wear, how you behave, where you move to, what you do, how fast you move etc. but also down to the finer points of body language - how frequently you blink, your perspiration, what you are doing with your hands, what other involuntary nervous movements are you making without even realising it. How you react to accidental or deliberate attempts by the authorities to make you react in a way that betrays your nerves - i.e. when the spot a line of police/hunter force staking out a transport interchange - do you make a last minute change in direction and hurry away, do you confidently stride past them, or do you go the full extreme and ask one of them for directions?!

 

[dewi]

Or do a Jason Bourne and hunt the hunters!

That probably is the real trick though, not just blending in, but doing the opposite of what the hunters are thinking you will do.

Problem with living off grid in a big city is facial recognition software. We're led to believe it isn't already installed into the government/council owned cctv cameras, but when you think that for a little over £300 you can buy a basic system that can recognise up to 15 employees in a company and note what time they got to work, it is reasonable to presume that the security services have a more enhanced version that can draw on the multitude of databases they now have access to.

Problem with living off grid in the countryside or the hills, if they even get a sniff of where you are, a thermal imaging camera mounted to the underside of EC135 will make short work of locating you.

Sort of gone full circle back to Mick with the cave, disused tunnel or derelict building... but then what is to be done about the faeces? 28 days of it in your cave? Urghhhhh.

 

[The Lord Poncho]

Problem with living off grid in the countryside or the hills, if they even get a sniff of where you are, a thermal imaging camera mounted to the underside of EC135 will make short work of locating you.

You would be surprised actually. A while back I was lucky enough to be involved in an exercise where around 25 of us were individually evading capture in Wales. We had objectives to reach, and fairly constrained corridors within which we were allowed to move. Largely a mixture of exposed hillsides and wooded valleys (coniferous). Throughout the 48 hrs we were being hunted by a ground force and for much of the time a police helicopter with TI. The only people ever picked up were by the ground force - the helicopter didn't spot a single one - they were only supposed to be there for a few hours, but got so incensed that their kit wasn't achieving what they thought it would, they kept on refuelling and returning! I would suspect that the kit has progressed in the 8 or so years since that, but it does have its limitations, and the best equipment can still be overcome by someone that knows how to properly use the ground.

 

[mrcharly]

We're led to believe it isn't already installed into the government/council owned cctv cameras,

It isn't.

Most of those cameras just don't give a good enough image in the first place (btw, the software doesn't run on the camera). ANPR is working on very large letters in a set format and can't even cope with fancy fonts. Don't believe the hollywood spy films.

Tracking online however - that is very possible. Like everyone has said, ditch the phone. Don't login to any computer; if you log into gmail, for example, lots of data about you is immediately recorded by Google.

 

[sunndog]

The cameraman would soon get bored and go home i reckon. 99% of the 28 days would be me just lounging around drinking tea and dunking hobnobs

 

[mick91]

Anyone that knows. How effective if at all would Mylar be for hiding from FLIR? Like for example a space blanket lined jacket?

 

[Goatboy]

The Army was working on some thermal camo kit a while back. Think it was aimed at the likes of sniper teams who would be trying to avoid a foe who would be equiped with thermal imageing kit to spot them coming. It seemed to work okay though I would think that something trapping heat could cause the wearer to overheat if working hard. If ou keep pretty well covered and insulated you can blend away from thermal cameras fairly well.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[sunndog]

dunno about mylar but i can try some normal clear ziplock bags with my thermal later if you want, i doubt it will see through it very well

 

[Drain Bamaged]

Don’t know about Mylar’s effectiveness with regards to hiding from helicopters but I do know ordinary kitchen baking foil sewn into my hat has prevented the aliens from ever finding and abducting me and I’m guessing their gear is much more advanced that most TI equipment.

DB

 

[mick91]

dunno about mylar but i can try some normal clear ziplock bags with my thermal later if you want, i doubt it will see through it very well

Aye I'll be interested to know if anything kills the image actually sunndog. Merely out of curiosity

 

[sunndog]

apart from being the other side of a brick wall, glass is about the best thermal cammo, it simply cant see through it
the lenses on TI units are made out of germanium for that reason

 

[BigX]

Episode two and it's even more daft (see announcement at the start that 'we couldn't actually get any CCTV, so we simulated it afterwards')

Still, at least Dr. Ricky is enjoying himself.

For anyone like me who was wondering what the rules are, here's a snippet from an interview with the good doctor.

"You're told you're going on the run for a month. You can make as many plans as you want, but you're not allowed to prepare materially for going on the run. You're given the knock within a 48-hour period - they could turn up in the middle of the night - and the hunters are given the most sketchy details about you. Then it's kick-off and you can go anywhere in mainland UK."
"You can't take any money or food with you - they had a professional body frisker who came to search us. We were given a credit card that became live at the start, but you didn't know how much was on it in terms of funds."

 

[bopdude]

Watched it last night, the 2 Asian lads were going to get caught all day long, only for the the phone calls though imho. If they hadn't kept phoning off the same number I think they would have done well ?

As for Dr Ricky, he's enjoying himself but I think his ego will be his downfall ?

 

[Goatboy]

Episode two and it's even more daft (see announcement at the start that 'we couldn't actually get any CCTV, so we simulated it afterwards')

Still, at least Dr. Ricky is enjoying himself.

For anyone like me who was wondering what the rules are, here's a snippet from an interview with the good doctor.

"You're told you're going on the run for a month. You can make as many plans as you want, but you're not allowed to prepare materially for going on the run. You're given the knock within a 48-hour period - they could turn up in the middle of the night - and the hunters are given the most sketchy details about you. Then it's kick-off and you can go anywhere in mainland UK."
"You can't take any money or food with you - they had a professional body frisker who came to search us. We were given a credit card that became live at the start, but you didn't know how much was on it in terms of funds."

If you know that you're going to be stripped of kit and cash before going on the lamb then some prep in the months ahead by setting up some cashes and stores before hand would be a good idea? Would give you an edge that the producers wouldn't know about. Though trailing a cameraperson along with you would give the game away.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.