Did I Hear Something? Of Course, You Didn’t

This is the second of three posts regarding OPSEC this week. Today we’re going to discuss the need to keep quite; I don’t mean about your supplies and gear, I mean when you’re trying to keep a low-profile during a SHTF scenario. Besides, the ability to see, humans have a pretty good sense of hearing as well. Again, not as good at it as many animals are, but certainly good enough to detect other humans nearby.

Just like with avoiding detection by sight, we’re not trying to avoid the most thorough of inspections here, just the “cursory” ones if somebody is walking down the street.

So, what types of activities are we trying to minimize. Well, there are a lot; far more than activities that may require light. For example, cooking food, bathing, chopping firewood, and basically anything else you can think of probably make some noise. Add in noisy children, barking dogs, sick people coughing, and who knows what else… there’s a lot to be concerned about. Obviously, you can’t keep everything quite at all times but you can try.

The important question is: what can you do about it, if anything?

Unlike with light discipline, it’s a bit more difficult to do something that directly minimizes noise. That is, there’s no such thing as an equivalent “blackout curtain” for noise. Well, that’s not entirely true. While there are noise-reducing substances that exist, they’re either expensive or just not very applicable for reducing noise from an entire house.

So, what can you honestly do?

Well, it has to start with being conscious of your activities, especially the kids. Everyone needs to learn very quickly that they need to be much more quite than they are normally, especially at night. Maybe night time is a good time for the kids to play quiet games, such as cards or board games if they need quiet entertainment options.

Of course, there are activities that just make noise and there isn’t much you can do about it. An example would be chopping firewood. It’s noisy and very distinctive. In this case, my only suggestion would be to enlist another person’s help to get the job done faster.

With regards to minimizing interior noises, you could consider moving noisier activities to an interior room, though, I understand most homes are not setup like that. Instead, consider a basement if it’s underground (or even partially so). In addition, the most probably sources of noise “escape” would be the same as for light, namely windows and doors. In this case, it could prove helpful to put something over the windows and doors that inhibit noise, such as a thick comforter. But, sadly, even that won’t do much good and then you’re down a comforter that could be otherwise used for warmth.

Perhaps a better idea would be (assuming you triage a part of your home) is to purposely remove carpeting from the unused part of your home (also assuming you have carpeting there) and erect several layers of carpet that cover windows that your family will occupy. This sounds like a lot of work but you could possibly kill two birds with one stone here in that you’ve erected both a noise and light barrier in one. To be honest, I’ve never tried this myself so I can’t say for sure if it works, but I do recognize how much difference a single layer of carpeting makes in reducing noise throughout a house (as opposed to tile or hardwood flooring) so I’m assuming the same can be said here. Of course, if you don’t want to rip up your own carpeting I’m sure you can find a roll that somebody was just throwing out. If you don’t like the carpeting idea then maybe you can find something else to use. The point is to force sound to “slow down” around windows and doors.

It might also be wise to construct a “room within a room” to help reduce noise. Basically, anything that you can do to slow down noise from escaping your home is what you’re trying to accomplish. In this way, you might have quiet areas (such as rooms without any noise reduction solutions), less quiet areas (rooms where you do have noise reduction solutions such as carpeting over windows), and some noise allowed areas (such as the room within a room idea).

What can you think of?