There are many reasons why people have had to run through the wilderness and practice survival evasion against much larger forces in a desperate pursuit of their freedom or life. Ranging from world wars, ideological or ethnic genocide, or widespread chaos and a failure of civility. Regardless of the reason, when it’s required, the skill becomes much like a parachute to a man falling from the sky — extremely helpful.
Initiating the first phase of evasion should occur as soon as it becomes clear that avoiding a larger, more powerful force is necessary. Again, it could be an undercover operative getting discovered and needing to break contact. Or a downed helicopter pilot, waking after a crash far beyond the friendly lines. Or perhaps it’s a small family trying to get to their bug-out location safely during the zombie apocalypse. Whatever the circumstances, the first phase is immediate actions, and it’s the “oh sh*t” moment when you realize you’re being hunted.
Make use of your surroundings to blend in and avoid detection from pursuers.
Survival Evasion Phase 1: Immediate Actions
If you still have communication capabilities (and aren’t “NORDO” — a real term meaning “no radio”), calling for help should be a top priority. For military personnel, this might involve using covert electronic methods to avoid detection, such as activating the IMM button on a Combat Survivor Evader Locator radio. Civilians can achieve the same goal by discreetly notifying a trusted contact, perhaps by sending an email to let them know you’re enacting your plan and will be on the move. Tools like a Garmin InReach or other satellite communication devices are excellent options for staying off the grid while sending out a call for assistance.
If you’re carrying sensitive information, it’s critical to eliminate anything you won’t be taking with you. This means destroying anything that could give away your plans or location. For military personnel, this is referred to as “dash-one” procedures — making classified equipment and data completely unusable. For civilians, it’s about ensuring there’s no trace of where you’re headed or how you plan to get there. Even something seemingly harmless, like a map folded to highlight a specific area or smudged with oil from your hands, could tip off a pursuer. Notes written in shorthand or unencrypted coordinates can be gold mines for anyone tracking you. These small details are exactly what enemy intelligence teams look for. Don’t give them that advantage. If you have to keep certain sensitive items, always have a plan to destroy them if capture becomes imminent.
A hide site should provide enough shelter and security to afford a brief respite before moving on to the next evasion phase.
At this stage, it’s crucial to gather all necessary and available resources. Consider everything you might need to accomplish quickly and efficiently. Focus on items that can aid your travel, minimize your visibility, and won’t weigh you down. Whether it’s grabbing your go-bag or packing up your Jeep Wrangler, this is often the first step that comes to mind. Now is the time to put all those carefully planned preparations into action. If your vehicle is out of commission, salvage what you can — improvised tools or parts could make all the difference in the journey ahead.
Keep your five basic survival needs in mind:
1. Communication
2. Health
3. Protection from the elements and threats
4. Sustenance (water and food)
5. Efficient travel
Focus on quickly gathering items that support these essentials without weighing yourself down. If something can make a difference in one of these areas and you can grab it without compromising your mobility, take it.
If your situation begins with a high-speed impact or a chaotic ambush and you’re dealing with serious injuries — like bleeding heavily — address those first. However, if it’s something minor that you can push through, dig deep and stay focused. Don’t let hesitation or delay put you at risk of capture. Many POWs and hostages found themselves in that position simply because they didn’t act quickly enough to start moving when they had the chance. Time is critical — get moving as soon as possible.
Good use of camouflage effectively breaks up the outline of features that might give you away.
Survival Evasion Phase 2: Initial Movement
This phase is all about “getting off the X,” a term that means moving as quickly as possible to escape immediate danger and avoid being a stationary target. It’s about rapid movement toward your intended goal, ensuring you’re not where the threat expects you to be. The only exception to this rule is if you can immediately create a false trail to mislead less-skilled trackers, buying yourself more time and distance.
Which direction should you head? That depends. Do you know where you are? Having a general sense of your location is critical for making accurate decisions, which underscores the importance of studying terrain and maps beforehand, especially in unfamiliar areas. You need to know both your intended destination and where you might encounter adversaries along the way.
For military personnel, this relies heavily on how well you absorbed the pre-mission briefing. You’ll likely have an evasion plan of action (EPA) detailing the direction to move, approximate distances, and other crucial information like communication plans, authentication codes, and methods for securing transmissions.
Don’t neglect camouflaging your gear.
For civilians, this falls under the category of worst-case scenario planning. Ideally, before engaging in high-risk activities, you’ve accounted for both your MDCOA (most dangerous course of action) and MLCOA (most likely course of action). In simpler terms, this means preparing for the worst possible situation while also anticipating the most probable challenges you’ll face. Planning ahead is the foundation of successful evasion.
Speed is your best security. How fast can you move? If you don’t have electronic devices that can be tracked, any pursuit will begin at your last known location. Your priority is to create as much distance as possible from that starting point as quickly as you can.
Focus on time, distance, and terrain. Your goal is to delay and mislead your pursuers at every opportunity. Use tactics like creating false leads, setting misleading trails, and carefully masking your direction of travel. Small, quick actions can make a big difference: Sweep away tracks, restore disturbed foliage to its original position, and stick to hard surfaces to avoid leaving prints in loose or wet soil. Every second you gain and every sign you erase increases your chances of staying ahead.
Distance is critical. You need to put as much space as possible between yourself and your pursuers, ideally in a direction they won’t anticipate. Successful evasion hinges on being unpredictable to the enemy while remaining predictable to recovery forces or allies.
Outpacing your pursuers is essential. If it means upgrading to a bicycle, commandeering a boat, or finding another unconventional mode of transportation, so be it. Creativity in your travel methods and routes is key to maximizing separation from your last known location and staying one step ahead.
Terrain is your ally. Think harsh, rugged, unforgiving terrain that slows your enemy down and disrupts their pursuit. Use the landscape to your advantage with terrain masking to stay out of sight and seek dense overhead cover to evade aerial threats like drones, FLIR, or thermal imaging. Remember, the hardest paths for you to navigate will be just as challenging for your pursuers. If they’re using tracking dogs, focus on outsmarting the handlers. After all, the dogs can only move as fast as their human counterparts. Instead of striving for an impossible goal of leaving no scent or trail, focus on strategies to outmaneuver and outlast the team chasing you. Use their limitations to your advantage.
Exploiting easy hide sites like this cave will save time, but make sure to conceal the entrance and any trails leading to it.
Survival Evasion Phase 3: Hide Site
No one can keep running indefinitely, so when you’ve reached your limit, it’s time to find a concealed spot to rest, regroup, and address your security needs. Use this pause to strategize and take care of any injuries that weren’t immediately life-threatening but still need attention before they worsen through blood loss or infection. If your med kit isn’t up to the task, it’s time to get resourceful. Channel your inner MacGyver and improvise to maintain your health. Look at what you have on hand. Could it serve as a splint, sling, or pressure bandage? Creativity and quick thinking here can make the difference between staying in the fight and being forced out of it.
Communication is absolutely critical in a situation like this. Make every effort to reach out to your recovery team or anyone providing assistance to share your condition and location, as well as to receive updated intelligence. If there’s a closer quick reaction force available or if enemy positions have shifted, you’ll be grateful you took the time to establish contact. Flexibility is key, and your plans will need to adapt to changing circumstances.
Maintaining effective communication can be tricky when you’re in hiding, since the best concealment spots often have poor signal. Strive to find a location that balances concealment with connectivity, ensuring your device — whether it’s HF radio, SAT comms, or even a covert ground-to-air signal — can function effectively. Staying in touch with recovery forces or allies is crucial to getting out safely.
Ration your food and water carefully to maintain your energy. While rest is essential, security takes priority. If you’re with a small group, establish a rotating watch schedule to ensure someone is always on guard. If you're alone, set up early warning systems to alert you to approaching threats.
Sensitive information, like maps or important notes, should be destroyed before pursuers can use it for their own intelligence efforts.
Conceal yourself and your equipment to minimize your signature. Consider the adversary’s capabilities. Use visual, auditory, and thermal camouflage as needed. Continuously improve and maintain your concealment by reducing shine, noise, and any unnatural colors or shapes. If necessary, incorporate natural materials like foliage, ash, or mud to blend in with the environment. Effective camouflage is a skill that can always be refined.
When it’s time to move, leave no trace of your presence. If complete erasure isn’t practical, eliminate as much evidence as possible. Your safety — and that of those coming to help — may depend on how well you cover your tracks.
Use all your senses to detect potential pursuers. Sounds, smells, and visual signs can give ample warning if you’re being situationally aware.
Survival Evasion Phase 4: Evasion Movement
It’s time to move from your hide site. Ideally, you’re venturing out under the darkest skies, the harshest storms, or the most extreme conditions nature can provide. Wind masks noise and movement, rain erases tracks, and snow buries them. Adverse weather combined with the cover of darkness creates the perfect conditions for evasion. Minimize daylight movement unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.
Now, it’s a delicate balance between speed and security. Move with the silence of a shadow and the invisibility of a ghost. Stick to dense terrain and deep shadows where visibility is minimal. Eliminate your sound and light signature and take care to leave no trace. No footprints, no broken foliage, no clues that could betray your path.
Stop, look, listen, and smell (SLLS) — make this a regular habit. These moments of heightened awareness can be the difference between detecting the enemy first or being discovered. Can you catch the scent of smoke, diesel, or cooking food? In dense foliage (where you should ideally be), your senses of hearing and smell are often more reliable than sight. Stay sharp — your survival depends on it.
If you do get discovered, you’ll want to try to break contact, but remember you’re back to Phase 2 and now they have an updated last known. This is doubly bad because this also means they know which direction you’re traveling, if they didn’t before. So, stay hidden and fade into the background. Caution is the better part of valor here. Let your primal instincts for survival heighten your alertness, and you may be surprised at what you feel.
Taking shelter while evading should be clandestine, and not stand out as an obvious place someone is hunkering down.
Trust your gut. If something feels off, it likely is. Pay attention to pre-event indicators, such as things that seem out of place for the time of day or location. Equally important are the subtle absences — situations where you expect something to be present, but it’s not. Maintaining strong situational awareness is a constant effort and one of your most valuable tools for staying ahead of potential threats.
When crossing linear danger areas, like roads, power lines, or firebreaks, it’s essential to conceal your direction of travel. Avoid crossing in a straight line that aligns with your overall movement; this makes it easier for trackers to follow your trail. Always move from one point of concealment to another, and whenever possible, cross at a sharp bend or curve rather than along a long, straight section. Steer clear of open terrain and populated areas, as these increase the risk of being spotted or compromised. Instead, navigate around these obstacles, using natural cover to remain hidden and maintain your security. Prioritize stealth and unpredictability in every move.
Be careful not to leave obvious signs behind, like broken branches, disturbed leaf litter or footprints.
Survival Evasion Phase 5: Recovery
Your journey finally concludes when you’re either discovered or reunited with friendly forces. This could mean arriving at your bug-out location alongside trusted allies, reaching a forward operating base, or linking up with a local asset in a designated area for recovery. Whatever form it takes, this is the moment you’ve been striving toward for hours — or even days — and it’s as welcome as an ice cream truck in the middle of the Sahara.
Remember, you may be linking up at a designated time and place, or you might need to flag down someone aligned with your cause. In either case, getting noticed could require prearranged signals or on-the-spot improvisation. If you have electronic communication with your recovery team, that’s ideal. If not, be ready to get creative. A bit of reflective material, a flare, or even a whistle can grab attention when needed. Contrasting fabric or an object you can wave in the air could also do the trick. If you’re equipped, tools like tracers or IR lasers can be effective as well. Whatever your method, have it prepared in advance to deploy quickly in case of an unexpected sighting.
Be careful though. Surprising your allies in enemy-controlled territory is a quick way to learn that friendly fire is anything but. Always ensure your actions are non-threatening — think of the classic hands-up gesture, like a French salute. More importantly, be ready to authenticate your identity to avoid any confusion. Even if a team of pararescuemen is fast-roping out of an HH-60 Blackhawk and kicking down your captor’s front door, they’ll need to confirm it’s actually you before loading your battered self onto a stretcher and getting you out.
Help your rescuers by making authentication simple — they’re risking life and limb to bring you home. Once you’ve confirmed your identity and linked up with them, you’ll finally be in safe hands. From there, you can recover and start planning how to secure a decisive victory against the adversaries who had you on the run in the first place.
“Amat victoria curam” — preparation creates victory.
About the Author
Michael Caughran served as a U.S. Air Force SERE specialist, equipping aircrew and warfighters for their worst scenario behind enemy lines. Founder of ARC, a veteran operated training company, he actively teaches survival as well as combative and defensive firearm courses around the country.
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Editor's Note: This article has been modified from its original version for the web.
The post Phases of Survival Evasion appeared first on RECOIL OFFGRID.
By: Nick Italiano
Title: Phases of Survival Evasion
Sourced From: www.offgridweb.com/survival/phases-of-survival-evasion/
Published Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2025 12:00:33 +0000
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