

Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened - diego
http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

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h34t
5% reality, 95% dramatization. It's not hard to disappear if nobody is
looking, and in this case the "search" was an artifice created by WIRED.
However, it's entertaining nonetheless.

I've "disappeared" a few times simply going about my business--by moving to
new cities knowing hardly a soul, and starting from scratch: Quetzaltenango in
'03, Beijing in '07 and now Buenos Aires in '09.

It can be terrifying to realize that you really can walk away from everything
you've ever experienced and take for granted. It's kind of like pre-living
your own death. You see exactly who remembers, who cares, and who doesn't.

And when you choose to re-engage, you deeply understand that everybody you let
into your life is a choice, not an obligation.

~~~
sutro
This is a fascinating subject.

I recommend the novel "Oracle Night" by Paul Auster for its treatment of this
topic. At the core of "Oracle Night" is a short passage from Dashiell
Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon," reproduced in full here:
<http://www.fallingbeam.org/beam.htm>. This story within a story within a
story is about a man named Flitcraft who is walking to lunch one day when a
beam from a construction site falls next to him, narrowly missing him. The
experience rattles him so much that, after lunch, he walks away from his job,
wife, kids, and city, and starts a brand new life elsewhere, never looking
back.

Another work that touches on similar themes is the novel "Fearless" by Rafael
Yglesias, made into a movie in 1993 starring Jeff Bridges.

As you say, it can indeed be sobering to consider how thin the threads are
that tie us to our lives.

~~~
h34t
What a fascinating read. Thank you for the pointers. Oracle Night will be the
first book I buy for my new Kindle, which arrives in Buenos Aires on Friday.

Speaking of which, the international Kindle makes dramatic, life-altering
geographic purges all-the-more palatable to those of us who live on bread,
water, and books.

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pmichaud
That was really long, but actually quite interesting. It seems as though he
could have disappeared if he hadn't been quit so sloppy. Plus, he did a few
things deliberately to leave hints. So, if this were a matter of life and
death instead of just a game, he probably could've vanished.

~~~
ams6110
Yeah he was caught basically because he was still using twitter, Facebook,
etc. under his new identity. If he had really "dropped off the net" it's
unlikely he would have been traced.

~~~
stcredzero
Instead of using a stationary relay machine in Las Vegas, he should have used
a laptop connected to a mobile broadband card. That would have been quite
difficult to trace. Even if you can get the IP address of one of those cards,
you still only have a vague idea of where it is. If you are the law, then how
do you approach the judge to get a search warrant? You have no address to ask
for a search of! You can buy such a mobile card in one part of the country,
then carry it with you to another, so no useful address need be attached to
it.

What's more, you can arrange to have such a machine mailed to a different
location across the country. In one day, for the price of a Fedex, your relay
is in a different state.

~~~
joezydeco
From page 4:

"On board, I staked out the bus’s backseat, where I could use my laptop
without anyone looking over my shoulder. With a $150 wireless broadband card
from Virgin Mobile, the only nationwide service that didn’t require a credit
check, I had almost uninterrupted online access."

~~~
stcredzero
Yes, but that was the _machine on hand_ and not the _relay_. Before having
someone read more carefully, be sure that _you_ have read _them_ carefully.

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flipbrad
'Tried to vanish' but posted updates, in public, to twitter (at least long
enough for google to cache them) - does not compute...

He then stopped using Tor. Or his remote-login Vegas computers as proxies.
Reopened his twitter account to the public. Added local businesses as friends
on twitter.

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paulshort
This is one of the most interesting articles I've read in quite some time.

The main reason he was caught is not necessarily that he was careless or left
clues, he was caught because the whole thing was designed to be a game
(experiment?) orchestrated by Wired. Ratliff had hundreds, maybe even
thousands of people with incentives ($5000, notoriety, the challenge, etc.)
looking for him. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did given that he was
also 'trying' to get caught.

However, as other commenters in this thread mention, if he had done this
independently and planned a little longer than he did, he most certainly could
have vanished for up to a year.

Edit: spelling.

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brown9-2
Nice to see that the article credits some work done by a HN reader in the
search (as preposterous as this fake search is).

------
fojerdod
What I don't understand is how the general public gets access to information
about his ATM withdrawals.

~~~
paulshort
It's mentioned somewhere in the article that Ratliff's editor at Wired was
given access to his bank accounts. The editor then leaked details of the
transactions online.

