Quickness, Slowness, and Stealth
Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 4:30 am
Reading the most recent introduction's mention of parkour got me thinking about how I like to move at night, and I realized that there's really no set way of moving. It all depends on the terrain and obstacles in front of you, as well as chances of being seen.
Movement at night is a careful balance where no particular attribute is best but you need to be good at everything to have the best chance of remaining unseen. Sometimes you want to move as quickly as possible in a high risk area but at the same time you don't want to move fast because a fast object is the easiest to see. All the same, moving quickly will produce the most noise but sometimes if you don't move fast you risk exposing yourself to infrequent "traffic" in an area.
It's a tough call to make and I find that my operations as far as movement plays out kind of resembles a weird game of red light/green light, with a little Mother-May-I? thrown into the green light portions. It's an erratic cadence of movement necessitated by the need to try to strike the best balance. I probably don't get it right sometimes, maybe even most of the time, but who does? We're limited by being human and the fact that there's only so many hours in a night.
I submit this topic not as any kind of "how-to" but just as a prompt to think about the idea. There is no "how to", this is something you have to play by ear every single time and make the decision of what's right. When you enter high risk areas it even becomes a mental issue because you have to make the decision of how to move constantly over and over, finding the best way to move from cover to cover. How long to safety stay at certain cover. It can become nerve wracking but also incredible. If you're in over your head, choose a different route and/or objective.
Me, I try my best to move as slowly as possible as much as possible as long as I can do so while keeping a good amount of surplus time for things to go wrong during the operation. I figure that moving slowly makes me harder to see but also allows me to better assess areas as I enter them. Plus I'm usually exploring and it's hard to explore sprinting through an area. Move slowly from cover to new cover, and make my move from there. If it's something like crossing an illuminated street and I know I need to run, I run. Sometimes you're far enough away from any potential humans that moving slowly even in full gear is ok because they're only going to see a dark silhouette in the distance and you don't want to draw attention by running.
It all depends! I'm sure this topic seems totally erratic and random, maybe even pointless. That's fine, I'm not trying to be a guru here and tell you what to do. Just want to bring up a very important basic fundamental that's always in play for everyone to mull over. Share your thoughts.
Relevant Reading: http://nightops.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1461
Movement at night is a careful balance where no particular attribute is best but you need to be good at everything to have the best chance of remaining unseen. Sometimes you want to move as quickly as possible in a high risk area but at the same time you don't want to move fast because a fast object is the easiest to see. All the same, moving quickly will produce the most noise but sometimes if you don't move fast you risk exposing yourself to infrequent "traffic" in an area.
It's a tough call to make and I find that my operations as far as movement plays out kind of resembles a weird game of red light/green light, with a little Mother-May-I? thrown into the green light portions. It's an erratic cadence of movement necessitated by the need to try to strike the best balance. I probably don't get it right sometimes, maybe even most of the time, but who does? We're limited by being human and the fact that there's only so many hours in a night.
I submit this topic not as any kind of "how-to" but just as a prompt to think about the idea. There is no "how to", this is something you have to play by ear every single time and make the decision of what's right. When you enter high risk areas it even becomes a mental issue because you have to make the decision of how to move constantly over and over, finding the best way to move from cover to cover. How long to safety stay at certain cover. It can become nerve wracking but also incredible. If you're in over your head, choose a different route and/or objective.
Me, I try my best to move as slowly as possible as much as possible as long as I can do so while keeping a good amount of surplus time for things to go wrong during the operation. I figure that moving slowly makes me harder to see but also allows me to better assess areas as I enter them. Plus I'm usually exploring and it's hard to explore sprinting through an area. Move slowly from cover to new cover, and make my move from there. If it's something like crossing an illuminated street and I know I need to run, I run. Sometimes you're far enough away from any potential humans that moving slowly even in full gear is ok because they're only going to see a dark silhouette in the distance and you don't want to draw attention by running.
It all depends! I'm sure this topic seems totally erratic and random, maybe even pointless. That's fine, I'm not trying to be a guru here and tell you what to do. Just want to bring up a very important basic fundamental that's always in play for everyone to mull over. Share your thoughts.
Relevant Reading: http://nightops.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1461