This text is meant to compliment the below zines that are found on the notrace.how website.
- A Recipe For Nocturnal Direct Actions (onion)
- How To Have A Fun Night To Forget (onion)
- DNA You Say? Burn Everything To Burn Longer: A Guide To Leaving No Traces (onion)
- Minimizing DNA Traces During Riotous Moments (onion)
- Threat Modeling Fundamentals (onion)
The purpose of this text is to prepare you for how different things such as stress, nervousness, and a lights and sirens response from the police may affect you on your forgettable night of fun. This is not a guide about how to prepare for or perform an action, there are many of those already available, links have been provided to some resources that we have found useful.
You’ve picked a target, done the recon, obtained the required supplies, made a plan. The night has arrived and its time to party. Tonight’s party is different though. Its not urban exploring, vandalizing the corporate offices of some company that is destroying the planet or slashing tires of a capitalists SUV, things that most likely wont be noticed until morning. Tonight’s party is gonna heat things up and there is risk of serious repression if things go wrong.
Some thoughts on gear.
DO NOT BRING ANYTHING WITH YOU THAT YOU WANT TO KEEP. DO NOT BRING ANYTHING WITH YOU THAT ISN’T NEEDED TO PERFORM THE ACTION.
Wear a watch. Wear a mask that covers as much of your face as possible. Wear non de-script clothing that you don’t care about, wear a second set of non de-script clothing you don’t care about underneath your top layer to facilitate changing afterwards. When choosing your second set of clothing it may be good to pick something that is light and breathable. When you leave the party you will probably be running and will soon learn that running while wearing two sets of clothing is extremely warm and a lot more tiring than going for a jog around the block in shorts and a t-shirt. Backpacks are handy for carrying items needed for the action but are identifiable, possibly hard to dispose of, have potential to snag on something or be grabbed by a pursuer(this is worst case scenario if a pig, or vigilante type catches you in the act). Reusable shopping bags are non de-script, capable of holding a lot, can be stuffed in a pocket or collapsed and held in the palm of your hand as you depart the party. Dropped on the side of the road/trail, tossed in the forest or disposed of in a dumpster, they probably wont even get a second look.
DO NOT BRING ANYTHING WITH YOU THAT YOU WANT TO KEEP. DO NOT BRING ANYTHING WITH YOU THAT ISN’T NEEDED TO PERFORM THE ACTION.
Why wear a watch? You are NOT going to have a phone and its nice to be able to tell the time especially if you are coordinating with other people.
Your sense of time during the action is probably going to be severely distorted. There is a good chance that things will seem to be taking a lot longer then you expected them to. They most likely are not. This is known as Time Expansion Experience. Time seems to be going slower then it actually is, seconds feel like minutes, minutes feel like eternity. Check the time when you arrive at the action site, then if you think something is taking forever, check your watch again, it will probably only be a minute or two since you got there, be aware of this.
REMEMBER TO KEEP BREATHING
When the action is done, leave. Do not take a moment to admire your work just leave, do not look back just go. This is when cardio training comes in handy especially if it is an action that will draw an immediate police response. At this point running is the best way to stay safe, you run and you run and you don’t stop until you have put distance between you and the action site.
KEEP BREATHING, LONG DEEP BREATHS IN LONG DEEP BREATHS OUT
Sirens are disorienting. If your action is going to draw an immediate police response the sirens will be coming from a variety of directions. It will be hard to tell where exactly the pigs are coming from and it may even sound like they are right behind you. Your brain will probably tell you that the pigs are hot on your tail and you might start to panic. If the pigs didn’t actually see you run away from the site they are going to have no clue as to where you are and no idea where to start looking. The first thing the police need to do when arriving at the party is secure the scene. This will probably take several minutes to do, giving you further time to escape. If things are on fire the police are not going to leave scene and go looking for suspects. They are going to remain at the scene shut down the roads and coordinate with the firefighters to make sure no one gets hurt and keep the public away. A fire will draw a large police response and as you are making your escape there is a good chance you will hear sirens going by heading towards where you had been partying. They do not know where you are. They most likely do not have access to any security cameras that captured your escape and probably wont see that footage until several hours after the party. You may hear sirens going different directions, your brain will probably make it seem like they are coming for you, listen to that voice but be aware its probably wrong. If you ran immediately after performing the action and did not stop to look at the explosions you are most likely safe for that night.
BREATH IN BREATH OUT
You get to the spot where you are going to remove and possibly dispose of your outer layer of clothing. There will probably still be sirens going by, don’t let that panic you. They don’t know you are there more units are being activated as the thing you did continues to grow and off duty officers who were at home sleeping comfortably in their beds are called in or fire trucks from other stations in the city arrive to provide back up to crews already on site.
BREATH
Dispose of your clothing and no longer needed items in the ways you decided on before hand. Continue on with your night in a calm, collected manner. Go home, go party, go sleep, go back to your normal routine like nothing happened.
BREATH
Your brain is going to come up with all sorts of ways that the pigs could link you to the party. Any potential mistake you made will seem amplified 100’s of times in the days, hours , weeks after the party. Decades of copaganda TV shows seemingly give pigs super human abilities to see into the minds of criminals. Pigs pick up some random item and and all of a sudden understand how everything went down. You’ve been fed this BS your entire life and none of it is true. Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character. CSI Miami is a a TV show, Law and Order is a TV show. They are not accurate portrayal of how police investigations work.
BREATH
Unless you were already under surveillance before the party they have no idea it was you. If you concealed your identity, left your phone at home, did everything possible to minimize the chance of leaving DNA behind, told no one else what you were doing, the pigs have no idea where to start the investigation other than security footage of shadowy figures running in the night. Statistically speaking pigs are hella bad at their job. Most crimes they investigate never get solved. Look at how many direct actions have happened across BC and Canada in the last few years, without anyone ever being charged.
Go out, be safe, and have fun. They may know we are coming but they don’t know where or when or how. They have to be everywhere all the time. We just have to be where they aren’t for as long as it takes to light a cigarette.