Could you go missing without a trace?

[IAmKerplunk]

Following on from the Murder thread on AIBU it got me thinking. Do you think you could leave your life behind - family, friends, job etc and start a whole new life? I don’t mean emotionally/mentally - purely practically without being found by those who know you? Or has anyone on here done that?

Nobody?

I used to fantasise about doing this. Just packing a bag, throwing it in the car with my dog ... and just driving. No idea where I would end up, but getting odd jobs here and there in pubs / restaurants to earn enough money to feed up. Staying in bed and breakfasts.

I think I could stay off grid for a very long time. I would of course empty my bank account and take cash with me.

The difficult part would be staying off CCTV - there are just SO many around these days. So many places won't pay cash in hand anymore so you would need to use a bank account and all the ATM's have camera's.
I watched 'Hunted' on Ch4 in the early days before it got so many rules put in place and was in awe of the guys who spent the week/month cycling along the towpaths and proper camping to stay off grid. Don't think I could do that even if I didn't have family.

ANPR cameras? They would pick up your car. I would gradually withdraw cash over a period of time and leave in the dead of night. Unfortunately that’s where I would come unstuck because cctv on buses/trains/taxis - yet many people manage it each year.

Its practically impossible to do this. Everything has a digital footprint, mobile phones even when switched off can be triangulated to show your location by bouncing off masts. With the amount of CCTV cameras everywhere and banking cards being traced by police you'd stand no chance in reality of doing this successfully.

The guy with the canoe only managed this because a) he was incredibly lucky he wasn't seen by anyone coming out of the sea and b) because his wife helped him by cooking and feeding him.

I don't have enough money

I would run off to some remote island… I like the idea of Shetlands, or somewhere remote in Western Canada or in Alaska.

With a lot of money, sure -- enough to fly to somewhere with a huge, remote hinterland without CCTV, many inhabitants or much of a police presence, and keep myself indefinitely without using cards or withdrawing money from a known bank account unless or until I could work for cash, or somehow open a bank account without ID.

The problem with somewhere like that is that you can't be anonymous in a place that, however remote, has a small, interdependent population in which a new face won't go unnoticed. You'd be better off from an anonymity POV in central London, as long as you could disguise yourself sufficiently not to be recognised on CCTV.

Only with a lot of planning. I used to know exactly where I'd go but made the mistake of telling DH, though he's probably forgotten by now.

I'm very good at being invisible when I want to be: average middle-aged woman.

But I HATE discomfort, so there'd be no camping or sleeping rough. I'd have to somehow reinvent myself and get a new name.

Just googled - according to missing people.org.uk over 3000 missing adults were classed as long term as of March 2022, obviously no idea how many have been found since then but obviously some people have managed it unless they all came to a tragic end

Sleeping rough/in a tent I would be alright with but then it’s getting food isn’t it?
I’m an invisible middle aged woman and if I didn’t have young children (ergo no publicity) I think I could disappear quite easily.

I think if I were going to do it, I’d go to the local police station first and tell them I was leaving of my own volition and that I didn’t need or want them to hunt me down as I was safe. The thought of the wasted resources looking for me just because I’ve decided to check out of my every day life would make me feel so guilty.

I don’t think I could ever do it to my kids, but I certainly fantasised that I could just leave and disappear in some dark moments!

@Tillow4everno absolutely couldn’t do it to my dc and not do I want to but there was a small window of opportunity in my younger years where I could have/should have considered it. A vague acquaintance said she was doing it but our life paths separated and I don’t know if she ever did. We were au pairs in America on the east coast (in the 90’s) and she met a man (American) she was German, she married him and said she was planning to live in Montana with him and she had no intention of telling her family. No idea if she did or not.

Like I said it just made me think after reading the murder thread - again not about the emotional aspect but more the logistics.

I often wonder if anyone used a big disaster like 9/11 or the Boxing Day tsunami to disappear? So many people went missing on those days that if you wanted to I'm sure you could walk away and everyone would assume you'd been killed.

Yeah, you’re right in small communities, that’s definitely how it goes. Still, I always think that if I introduced myself as “Jane Doe,” no one would really question it; they’d probably just take it at face value.

We visited Canada a couple of years ago and did a road trip starting in Calgary, through Banff, Sun Peaks, Whistler etc. ending on Vancouver Island. The sheer vastness of some of those areas was mind-blowing even road signs warning that there’s no reception for hours. Going off-grid in a little wooden hut would be so easy out there, living off the land, especially if you can hunt. I love watching on TV Alaskas last frontier.

Ah well, one can dream 💭😂

I’m sure I read that this actually happened

No I’d be on TikTok and have bought something from Amazon prime on day 2

Actually… I just remembered this

https://news.sky.com/story/james-clacher-rapist-who-faked-death-and-fled-scotland-for-spain-jailed-13438426

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98dr9nrlglo.amp

Wow, I knew that the other way had happened, people pretending to be victims of the disasters - just listened to a podcast about a woman that claimed to have been in the twin towers but was not even in the USA at the time! I wonder how they know people deliberately disappeared afterwards (unless they later reappeared and confessed).

I completely get what you are saying! My husband is an emotionally abusive cunt that I’ve been trying to escape for years. If we had no children I genuinely could have seen me grabbing a bag and disappearing into the night a long, long time ago.

There was a documentary I think of a woman who led a victim group for survivors of 9/11 and it turned out she hadn’t been anywhere near any of the tragedies that day! 😱

Not now.

At one point it would have been scarily easy to do so. I only really had superficial connections with people; my parents died when I was quite young (still an adult in one case, but a young adult) and we don’t have much of an extended family to speak of. I remember reading about Joyce Vincent and understanding exactly how it happened. Thankfully my fate was a happier one.

Having money is the key to a succesful vanishing act. People do disappear without trace of their own volition so it is possible

It depends who's looking for you. If it's the police or such like that can track your bank accounts, check airports, etc pretty difficult. If it's just family much harder for them if you make it clear you don't want to be found.