At the risk of being a contrarian, even that scenario of driving into a national park until you can’t drive and then walking is probably a guarantee of you being found. National parks are managed land and they’re pretty popular. You’re also leaving your car behind, either on a designated access road or a fire lane which makes finding you more of an inevitability than anything else.
Part of what I do for work are wildlife surveys. People tend to steal the cameras or the SD cards. Something I’ve noticed is that when I look for places to put cameras, specifically to avoid capturing humans, I still get humans on them, or the cameras are sometimes tampered with. I think this is a sort of confirmation bias. Anywhere you or I go, someone else is likely to go. Even if we’re trying to hide, we still have shared common biases.
The least likely places for humans to go are the ones selected at random via GIS on a map. I select 10 random points in the management unit then i rule out the obvious bad ones that intersect with an access road or some kind of facility. The trouble with these points is that they tend to be really hard to access.
But you know what? I do think this is kind of splitting hairs. Obviously there are always remote areas, and a determined person could hike for many hundreds of miles.
I think the bigger factor in “disappearing”, whether it’s for some nefarious reason such as suicide or not, is how well known you are. Are there people who are motivated to find you? Are the local police well funded? Are there land management staff here willing to look for you? How many years will your spouse, parent, child look for closure? I think for most affluent people, enough of these factors align to make them easy to find. Those most capable of disappearing are those who have nobody. Unprivileged people, who don’t have the support structure that they need. This sort of person can disappear even in a well populated area. Where I live, there are many road signs warning of human trafficking. I suppose human trafficking is probably the leading cause of true disappearance, since the victims often fall into that category of person who has nobody.
Yeah I guess my perspective is scewed by being one of those people. I pretty much have no one that knows what I do day to day. There are people who might wonder where I went and call the cops when I don’t show up to certain places but they’d have literally 0 leads unless I was stupid enough to leave a digital paper trail or something.
Yeah. I guess I’m a bit used to it? It seems normal to me. I’ve been like this for over a decade now. Just working, getting by, and minding my own business. I have a cat. It doesn’t bother me a whole lot like you might imagine. But even as a kid all my interactions with other people were pretty negative. So I kind of associated other people with being hurt and saw getting to be alone as an escape. I see myself as like a modern version of the hermit who lives in the woods.
Edit: To be clear by saying yes to estranged I mean like I keep them at arms length. I see them from time to time. But I don’t tell them anything, and I don’t trust them. I mostly just interact with them to be polite.
I can appreciate that aspect of interactions shaping your sociability. When I was a teenager I once wrote in my diary that, “my favorite people to speak to are strangers.” I enjoyed talking to people I’d never meet again because the potential for abuse, emotional manipulation, etc, was lower. When the conversation was done, they would functionally disappear and there would be no consequences. The internet is quite a large pool of strangers.
However, I’m not really a hermit. I have a friend I see once a month or so, and a partner who I live with. I also work out of a field office staffed with co-workers, who I see on an almost daily basis. I do also see my family members from time to time out of what I image is a similar feeling of obligation.
Probably most of my communication is with my coworkers and my partner.
Do you feel at odds with your identity as a modern hermit? Or, do you enjoy it?
At the risk of being a contrarian, even that scenario of driving into a national park until you can’t drive and then walking is probably a guarantee of you being found. National parks are managed land and they’re pretty popular. You’re also leaving your car behind, either on a designated access road or a fire lane which makes finding you more of an inevitability than anything else.
Part of what I do for work are wildlife surveys. People tend to steal the cameras or the SD cards. Something I’ve noticed is that when I look for places to put cameras, specifically to avoid capturing humans, I still get humans on them, or the cameras are sometimes tampered with. I think this is a sort of confirmation bias. Anywhere you or I go, someone else is likely to go. Even if we’re trying to hide, we still have shared common biases.
The least likely places for humans to go are the ones selected at random via GIS on a map. I select 10 random points in the management unit then i rule out the obvious bad ones that intersect with an access road or some kind of facility. The trouble with these points is that they tend to be really hard to access.
But you know what? I do think this is kind of splitting hairs. Obviously there are always remote areas, and a determined person could hike for many hundreds of miles.
I think the bigger factor in “disappearing”, whether it’s for some nefarious reason such as suicide or not, is how well known you are. Are there people who are motivated to find you? Are the local police well funded? Are there land management staff here willing to look for you? How many years will your spouse, parent, child look for closure? I think for most affluent people, enough of these factors align to make them easy to find. Those most capable of disappearing are those who have nobody. Unprivileged people, who don’t have the support structure that they need. This sort of person can disappear even in a well populated area. Where I live, there are many road signs warning of human trafficking. I suppose human trafficking is probably the leading cause of true disappearance, since the victims often fall into that category of person who has nobody.
Yeah I guess my perspective is scewed by being one of those people. I pretty much have no one that knows what I do day to day. There are people who might wonder where I went and call the cops when I don’t show up to certain places but they’d have literally 0 leads unless I was stupid enough to leave a digital paper trail or something.
Really? I mean, not to pry, that’s a difficult situation to be in. Are you completely estranged from your family?
Yeah. I guess I’m a bit used to it? It seems normal to me. I’ve been like this for over a decade now. Just working, getting by, and minding my own business. I have a cat. It doesn’t bother me a whole lot like you might imagine. But even as a kid all my interactions with other people were pretty negative. So I kind of associated other people with being hurt and saw getting to be alone as an escape. I see myself as like a modern version of the hermit who lives in the woods.
Edit: To be clear by saying yes to estranged I mean like I keep them at arms length. I see them from time to time. But I don’t tell them anything, and I don’t trust them. I mostly just interact with them to be polite.
I can appreciate that aspect of interactions shaping your sociability. When I was a teenager I once wrote in my diary that, “my favorite people to speak to are strangers.” I enjoyed talking to people I’d never meet again because the potential for abuse, emotional manipulation, etc, was lower. When the conversation was done, they would functionally disappear and there would be no consequences. The internet is quite a large pool of strangers.
However, I’m not really a hermit. I have a friend I see once a month or so, and a partner who I live with. I also work out of a field office staffed with co-workers, who I see on an almost daily basis. I do also see my family members from time to time out of what I image is a similar feeling of obligation.
Probably most of my communication is with my coworkers and my partner.
Do you feel at odds with your identity as a modern hermit? Or, do you enjoy it?