The Gray Man Theory is the idea of blending in rather than standing out, for survival purposes.
For survival planning, this can save your life whether you’re bugging in or bugging out. In a wide-spread disaster, bugging out will be especially dangerous, so let’s start with that.
In any disaster scenario, there are going to be a lot of desperate people who’ve been driven from their homes – more than the police can handle. It may be harder, or impossible, to call for help because cell phone services may be overwhelmed, or down completely. And bad guys know that.
What do the bad guys want? Anything valuable that you have. Food, weapons, clothing, first aid kits – these will all become priceless in an SHTF scenario, and the worse off the scenario is, the more desperate people will become.
So in a scenario like that, the one thing you do not want is stand out in any way. You want to blend in to the crowd. You do NOT want to look like the person who has lots of shiny toys.
PRO TIP: When SHTF, don’t look like this guy!
How Do You Apply The Gray Man Theory To Bugging Out?
If you’re bugging out, you are fleeing your home and a lot of other people will be too. There will be big crowds of hungry, scared, angry, desperate people and there will be little to no law enforcement available to help you. You do not want to stand out in any way. You want to melt into the crowd.
- Clothing: Do not dress in bright, eye-catching clothing. You don’t want to increase the odds of anyone glancing your way. Do not dress in recognizable designer clothing. Wear drab-colored clothing – grays and browns and tans are ideal. In a grid-down scenario where things are really desperate, women should wear figure-concealing clothing. Wearing cargo pants means you can store a lot in your pockets; just don’t look too “tacticool”, like a survivalist/prepper who’s got supplies bulging out of every pocket. If the weather permits, wear a jacket – a light jacket if it’s summer – and conceal your weapons and any valuables inside the jacket.
- Accessories: Don’t wear expensive watches or jewelry. If you’re trudging down the road with hundreds or thousands of other people, don’t wear binoculars dangling around your neck; if you have them, keep them tucked in your jacket.
- Backpack: A drab-colored, beat-up looking backpack is best. If you and your families have new backpacks, you should beat them up a little, walk on them, rub some dirt on them. You don’t want to look as if you have anything worth stealing.
- Shoes: Wear comfortable shoes, but make sure they don’t look shiny and new.
- Weapons: Is it a good idea to be bristling with visible weapons and dripping in guns if you have to bug out? It’s really impossible to predict what situations you’ll run into. However, one thing to keep in mind is that the larger the group you’re traveling with is, the less likely anybody will be to try to take you on. One person, with lots of weapons, or even a married couple traveling with their children, and they’re quite visibly packing? That might make a tempting target. If you’re in a group of a few dozen people and you’re all open-carrying – that’s a much less tempting target. If there’s a grid down scenario and you’re travelling with a group of people, try to see if there are groups of people who seem decent and sympathetic, and suggest that you all stick together because there is safety in numbers.
The Gray man theory applies to both you and your family. I am on a lot of prepper forums and I recently saw someone talking about TEOTWAWKI scenarios, and saying, if you are travelling, there are NO WOMEN in your group. As in, anyone who is female should dress to hide their sex, cut their hair or tie their hair back, not wear makeup or perfume, and basically try to be as invisible as possible.
Extreme? Yes, but we are talking about a terrible, end of the world scenario where you and your loved ones are trying to survive. If there’s a collapse of law and order, there will be violent, vile gangs who will want to kidnap women and children and abuse them. That’s just the reality that we see across the world. Women are perceived as vulnerable, and valuable.
Obviously, every situation is different and you’ll have to evaluate how you want to respond to a total collapse of society, but me personally – if my family has to bug out in a TEO – I’d certainly consider obscuring my gender.
The Gray Man Theory When You’re Bugging In
We all hope that we can bug in and stay in our homes which are comfortable and familiar and full of our stuff. We want to bug in and stay safe.
What we don’t want to do is advertise to everybody that we are the prepper family who has stockpiled tons of food and ammo. Before SHTF hits the fan, it just means that the ignorant and the foolishly optimistic will make fun of you, and will make stupid jokes like “Ha, I don’t need to prepare. I’ll just show up at your house if things get bad!”
After SHTF, it means that everyone that you’ve told about your preps will show up at your house with their hands out. They will get bitter and resentful if you say no. They will tell their friends, and family, and neighbors, that those a-holes down the street have lots of food and ammo, and they’re not sharing.
When people get really desperate, when they are watching their loved ones starve, they won’t just show up with their hands out. They will show up with guns.
So what can you do to prevent this happening?
Be a gray man. Or woman. Or family. Don’t stand out.
When you start prepping, do not tell anyone. You don’t necessarily need to tell your kids, either, because kids, especially younger kids, do not keep secrets. They will blab.
You should absolutely be teaching your kids basic life skills, like gardening, canning, preserving, raising livestock, processing livestock, emergency first aid, and you should discuss with them what to do in an emergency situation. However, depending on your child and their maturity and how much you trust them not to tell all their friends, you may not want to tell them that you are stashing a lot of food and ammo in case things go bad.
You and your spouse need to discuss who needs to know about your preps. Can you trust your extended family? Will they tell all of their friends and neighbors that they know a house where there’s lots of food and ammunition and other supplies? If someone was robbing their house and threatening to kill them, would they try to deflect attention by giving you up?
You may form a MAG – mutual aid group – but anyone outside of that group doesn’t need to know your business.
When you’re shopping and buying supplies, it’s a good idea to stash the long-term preps in places where friends, family and neighbors won’t stumble across them when they’re visiting your house.
You can store your preps in closets, under beds, in the garage, in a spare room, etc. You don’t want people visiting you to see stacks and stacks of MREs or boxes of dehydrated meals or cases of ammo.
If you’re ordering boxes of supplies from companies like Mountain House or Wise Food storage, you don’t necessarily want these boxes sitting on your front porch. It’s not a bad idea to have a p.o. box and get the boxes delivered there, drive them home, go straight into your garage, and unload the boxes there.
Generally speaking, conspicuous displays of wealth like having a very expensive vehicle will advertise to everyone around you, including your neighbors and the guy watching you fill up your vehicle at the local gas station, that you have a lot of money and you’re an attractive target.
This is the case both before and after SHTF. Standing out and being known as that rich family with lots of cool stuff just paints a big target on you.
There are some preps that you can’t necessarily hide, like your chicken coop or your garden, although growing a camouflaged food forest can be an excellent way to hide your crops. This is where living in a more rural, remote area can come in handy so people are less likely to stumble on you and your preps.
But if you’re stuck in a suburban or city situation, the best thing you can do to increase your family’s chance of survival would be to grow as much as you can indoors, to physically hide your preps in your home, and to keep quiet about the fact that you’re prepping.
