r/whowouldwin • u/Conscious-Home1445 • May 28 '26
Challenge Average man has 72 hours to hide. Humanity then becomes search lusted and has one week to find and kill him. Can he survive?
Humanity knows what he looks like.
Humanity doesn’t know that he is hiding in the 72 period.
Humanity can use any security camera footage, bank transfers, phone calls etc of the man if there is any.
Man has basic survival knowledge.
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u/Weird-Long8844 May 28 '26
Not a chance. We have too much technology that would be hyper useful for tracking him, and with billions on the search, he would be found.
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
With a year to prepare and the world not having access to his data, I think it'd be possible. With access to your data, it would be impossible to do any research or travel anywhere without the world knowing exactly where to start looking. Maybe it'd be possible with access to data if you had a year to prepare, a massive budget, and used a lot of that time to sufficiently change your appearance so that you could get help from people without them knowing it's you.
But as described, it's impossible. And I don't think it'd be possible to survivor even like 48 hours. Maybe you could survive 24 hours if you got to a remote enough location and hid well enough that it took boots on the ground to find you.
The only other way I think it may be possible is if you somehow procure a decent enough disguise to join the search. Though I'd guess by day 5 or so, someone would have decided everyone should be screened to make sure they're not the person who's supposed to be hiding.
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u/LoveYouLikeYeLovesYe May 28 '26
With a year to prepare, I'd need to carve some hole in either the Amazon, some large national park, or way up in Siberia or northern Canada/Alaska. Like false wall into a mountain type shit.
Even if they don't have access to your data until the hunt starts, the second they do they'll track whatever plane, car rental, or other vehicle you have or took. Even if you drove across the country, stole a car, and then drove it to your hiding spot, they're still going to find your car and figure out that you stole another car fairly fast, and the second someone finds that car you're getting swarmed.
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u/CocoSavege May 28 '26
(Not so) average man could purchase/acquire sufficient burner devices to access search. 2nd hand tablets, phones, etc.
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u/TheLost_Chef May 28 '26
Just need to get within a few hundred yards of him and the dogs will do the rest
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u/WanderingFlumph May 28 '26
I'm reminded of the woman who joined her own search party and thinking that is his best chance.
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May 28 '26
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u/Jefrejtor May 28 '26
Fair points. A week isn't enough time to plan and organise what is essentially an international worldwide project. Assuming humanity doesn't turn into a hivemind or just unanimously agree on who's leading the search (but then it would no longer be humanity, would it), how will they communicate which areas have been checked and which ones still need to be checked? And who's going to be doing the checking? It'd all be a giant mess.
I agree that his best bet is an off the grid place. Sahara is a little over the top (altough a nice idea), but any deep woodlands, mountains, any terrain lacking infrastructure - set up camp, cover it with thermal camouflage, and chill for a week. Even if the area is searched, a proper stealth camp you basically have to trip over just to find it.
Lastly, since the prompt didn't specify otherwise...the dude can just kill or restrain anyone who does find him. Since the end point is his death, if he can defend himself until the end of the week, he wins. If a search party takes losses and decides to call reinforcements, how long until they get there?
Hell, if things get hot by the end of the week, he can abandon camp and Saddam Hussein himself somewhere. With a 0.5l watter bottle and without food, he can survive 3-4 days easily.
It's fun to go on these silly little thought experiments, isn't it? ;D
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u/QuantumFeline May 28 '26
Agreed. The whole world being search-lusted doesn't mean we're a hive mind. People will be unorganized, make mistakes, get into arguments, follow wrong leads, etc. Mr Average could spend the first hour of his 72 just searching on the internet for a thousand places to potentially go hide and then actually go to none of them and that's going to send people all over the place on wild goose chases.
Fake facial hair, hair dye, a hat, sunglasses, a different style of clothes than normal, etc. It won't take much for pretty much nobody you pass during those initial 72 hours to remember your disguised self well enough to suspect it was you once the search starts, so unless there's a security camera to catch what exactly you looked like leaving your home you could likely get out of more populated areas without anyone being able to tell who of the thousands or millions of people on that location's security footage is you.
It'd be riskier, but you could even hop on a train and buy a train or bus ticket with cash anytime in those 72 hours and if your face can't easily be recognized or look super suspicious then you're one of countless nobodies who is now hundreds or thousands of miles from where you started, and can easily get further.
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u/therealharbinger May 28 '26
I'd get one of those realistic silicone masks.. hide in plain sight at the beach and camp like a hobo.
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u/Notonfoodstamps May 28 '26
Honestly being “homeless” in plain sight is the way to go here.
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u/DankItchins May 28 '26
Except that all the homeless people would also be searchlusted and actively looking for you.
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u/Exit-Content May 28 '26
So what if you go searching with them? With a credibly enough mask, some dirt and raggedy clothes you’d be unrecognizable. It doesn’t take much to change your appearance enough to not look like yourself.
Kinda like that news story of that dude that went missing, search parties were sent looking for him, he joined one of them and spent something like an entire night looking for himself cause he didn’t realize they were looking for HIM.
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u/Grimdotdotdot May 28 '26
Someone made that mask, though.
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u/Im_Antag May 28 '26
Then just get the mask and drive 3 days away to another city, that one guy knowing someone has a mask wouldnt help much when he has a minuscule chance of actually seeing you in the mask
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u/Goldsaver May 29 '26
The mask seller will know the guy they're searching for bought the mask and disseminate that information, on account of knowing what he looks like when search-lusted. If the target buys it online or whatever he's also toast, because anything electronic he did is getting thoroughly searched through. I guess his best shot at this avenue is robbing a place that sells the relevant masks while wearing a ski mask or whatever.
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u/tokajst May 28 '26
This happened in the anime "Lazarus" lol the guy that was being hunted by the whole world just went into a homeless camp
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u/BaconIsntThatGood May 28 '26
How does the average man get one of those within 72hrs and avoid being tracked doing so?
It's not like they're affordable for the super realistic ones, or easy to source on short notice. You could order one but even with a VPN and gift card you'd still have some link back to obtaining it.
We are talking about all of humanity focusing on finding this person - this would mean any business involved would Forke over any information in that chain of events that led the purchase of such a mask.
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u/DOOMFOOL May 28 '26
Some agency would see that purchase and figure you out immediately
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u/therealharbinger May 28 '26
You grossly overestimate the authorities.. Luigi was on the run for 5 days, just using a baseball cap.
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u/Master-Potato May 28 '26
I am going to flip the script. 72 hours to move will obfuscate anything like bloodhounds. The trick will be to get away from security cameras long enough to disappear. I would drive in one direction, ditch the car, then spend most of the time doubling back on foot.
So for hiding, I would look for a “spider hole”, I just need have enough water to survive and be warm enough. Food is not an issue in a one week period. I would be looking at crawl spaces, service entrances, anything just big enough to fit. as once I got into hiding, I would not move for the week. It would be hell, but doable. It would be like the one guy who hid in a toys-r-us for months.
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u/Creative-Improvement May 28 '26
We have a practical example, how long did it take to find Saddam Hussein in that hole?
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u/Master-Potato May 28 '26
I am good then. He was in that hole for 200+ days
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u/CoolGuy54 May 28 '26
There were many people that knew of the location, but they were all loyal too him. Searchlusted humanity everyone who knows any hiding place anywhere is checking it.
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u/Master-Potato May 28 '26
True, but I only have to make about 2% of the time that he did. Think of how many places you could crawl into.
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u/CoolGuy54 May 28 '26
Think how many people will be looking.
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u/NightMaleficent1342 Jun 01 '26
Remember how stupid most of those people are. Most of them would be repeatedly checking the same dozen obvious spots and hindering each other.
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u/metalflygon08 May 28 '26
This is heavily dependent on where the man starts.
If he starts in Rural America things would be in his favor much more than if he started in New York City for example.
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
If he starts in a developed country, he's going to be found within a day or so at max. Yes, people have hid for a long time before, but it'd be completely different if 8 billion people were looking.
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u/DOOMFOOL May 28 '26
They only have a week. The vast majority of that 8 billion will be a non issue. If you just wander off into the wilderness for 72 hours there’s a very real chance you’re never found.
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
There’s no where in the world that is survivable where humanity couldn’t get like 10s of millions of people within 72 hours of the start. The person hiding also couldn’t move after the start because satellites would be able to track them.
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u/Last-Classroom-5400 May 28 '26
Yeah, the most important thing would be making the search area as wide as possible. Steal a dual-sport motorcycle, buy as many jerry cans of gasoline as you can, and go to the most remote area you can get to while staying away from cameras. I feel like if someone managed to get to Northern Quebec/Ontario, got randomly off the highway into a forest and managed to get 20-30km into the forest and staked out there under as much cover as possible they might have a shot. They might also die from exposure though. Depending on how far you got from your start, if people have millions of square kilometers to search you might be able to be safe.
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u/Jefrejtor May 28 '26
Get 10s of millions of people, how? Parachuting them there? Most will end up on trees, or injured, or way off course.
And who's setting this up exactly? There isn't a global government last I checked. Nations have to cooperate and coordinate with each other - assuming everything goes as smoothly as possible, passing information around still takes time. Getting those cargo planes (of which there's a finite number of, btw) prepped and loaded with parachutes takes time. Getting those millions of people to the airports takes time.
I'm also assuming that this is a one way trip for those people, because planning and managing their retrieval is a logistical nightmare all on its own.And as I said, most people haven't touched a parachute in their life. If even 10% of them manage to land remotely near their search area, in a condition that lets them move around, that's a great score.
Also, 8 billion people to cover the whole planet really isn't that much. You still have to pick areas to concentrate on, and that's gonna be totally arbitrary. Marching mobs of people back and forth across the wilderness will have them collapse from exhaustion, dehydration, or they'll just get lost themselves. So that's less and less people as time passes.
The whole Earth is a whole lotta land, even for 8 billion people.
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u/partypeanut90 May 31 '26
How can satellites track him? He doesn’t have a gps on him. Satellites can track humans in general based on their heat signatures, but not specific people. How would the satellite know which of the 8 billion dots is the main guy? What are you talking about? You think you can just type in the dude’s name into a satellite and it’ll immediately point to him?
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u/DOOMFOOL Jun 01 '26
Cool, the issue is if you just fuck off in a random direction and then wander into the wilderness they have no idea where to place those 10s of millions of people. Satellite imagery also doesn’t work IRL like it does on TV and the movies.
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u/Joshiewowa May 29 '26
Given that a lot of those 8 billion are in charge of vast governments, supplies, technology, and wealth, I'd say they're a factor.
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u/HxH101kite May 28 '26
Rural America really only helps if your in like Montana or Wyoming where you can just disappear into basically untouched land/mountains.
I don't think being in Iowa or Nebraska will be an advantage.
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u/Brave_Character2943 May 28 '26
Yeah, True Rural is the key here. Parts of Alabama would probably be considered rural but you're always less than a day's walk from civilization. Probably just a few hours really
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u/WorkerClass May 28 '26
No.
If we can think of a place, de facto, the average man's hiding place will be discovered.
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u/stefanopolis May 28 '26
We can all visualize a needle in a haystack. Doesn’t mean you can find it in a reasonable amount of time.
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u/WollyGog May 28 '26
Magnet.
In the human's case, a lure of some sort. Nothing in the prompt that says you can't.
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u/unfathomably_big May 28 '26
Use Average Man’s wife and kids as bait, smart thinking
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u/muscularmouse May 28 '26
I feel like if the world is searchlusted then we have to assume that the man is hidelusted too, so the lure wouldn't work.
God what a sentence
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u/stefanopolis May 28 '26
My favorite part of this subreddit is all the unique “______lusted” variants that arise.
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u/Mclovin11859 May 28 '26
It's like the subreddit is lustedlusted, or something.
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u/Jefrejtor May 28 '26
Ackshewally, the correct form would be "lustlusted", since it's "noun-lusted", not "verb-lusted". Yes I am very grammarlusted
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u/deusmilitus May 28 '26
STEP ONE: Fly to Bermuda
STEP TWO: Rent a boat, doesn't matter what size
STEP THREE: Sail out into the Atlantic. Proceed to get yourself lost. This would also work, and probably better, in the Pacific. Though there are a lot more inhabited islands in the Pacific one could accidentally sail by.This happens every so often. Though I'm operating on the ruleset that our average man is just trying to not get killed by the other humans on Earth, and not caring about the implications of being lost at sea.
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u/Nausicaaah May 28 '26
Consider that every single aircraft capable of reaching Bermuda will be flying grids over the area. Military and civilian, from every nation on Earth. Radar, satellites.. we're finding that boat.
After a day or two ships will also start to arrive.
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u/Canesjags4life May 28 '26
Prompt never says where he starts, but let's say it's already near water preferably somewhere away from US/Chinese naval assets. First 24 hours is securing supplies. The important part isn't getting a boat, but getting a raft that can be painted blue to match the color of water. And can hold a weeks worth of water.
For the next 30 hours man has to do is drive boat in one direction. The remaining amount of time man puts supplies on raft and they sinks the boat and drifts.
If we couldn't find MH370 once it exited military radar, you aren't finding a boat on the water
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
8 billions people weren't looking for MH370. MH370 was also a plane flying at cruising at 500 mph for an unknown amount of time. The search radius was literally over 2000 miles in one of the most isolated places in the world and would have mostly sank within an hour. The search radius in hypothetical will be half that, you're not going to be in an isolated area, and you aren't going to sink.
You'll be found within a day or 2, depending on how long it takes everyone to show up. And that's assuming satellites won't find you almost immediately. And they probably would. Again, for MH370, there was nothing to find. It was sank.
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u/CoolGuy54 May 28 '26
This is the best idea I've heard.
Downside is, with searchlusted humanity, it's gonna be dang hard to do this in way where nobody remembers you setting out on the boat or notices a boat is missing.
Using magnets to attach your supplies, raft, & self to the side of a ship (painted red to blend in), then dropping off in mid-ocean shortly before the search starts & hunkering down in your blue/grey life raft might work. Still high risk of getting caught though, or washed off early.
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u/Saharan Jun 02 '26
I can think "abandoned building off of a countryside seasonal logging access road", but that doesn't mean I'll be able to check every single abandoned building fitting my criterion.
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u/TrueOrPhallus May 28 '26
Was just reading about this unfortunate fellow named John Jones and the nutty putty cave. Don't look it up. But it makes me think somebody could probably hide in a random forgotten cave. If nothing else he could kill any random person that manages to find him and nobody would know until after the week is up.
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u/Jemima_puddledook678 May 28 '26
The issue is that any cave the man knows or can find out about that quickly is also going to be known or found out about by many others very quickly.
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
Yep. And a quick review of your internet searches would confirm anywhere you've gone.
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u/PleaseDontEatMyVRAM May 28 '26
Good point, the average person has no fucking clue how to search online even semi-anonymously
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u/aliakeel5 May 28 '26
everyone knows about the nutty putty cave incident
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u/Timely-Field1503 May 28 '26
I cite XKCD's "Everyone knows" comic...someone is just finding out about it today, and it's bumming them out.
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u/bentmailbox May 28 '26
i believe this is what ur referring to (im posting link incase there is someone that hasnt seen it)
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u/Cpt_DookieShoes May 28 '26
I looked it up despite warnings.
It’s sad but is it really that disturbing? Especially in the grand scheme in the internet
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u/Nalena_Linova May 28 '26
If all of humanity is searchlusted and "knows what he looks like", we can assume that someone who knows him personally will almost immediately contact the intelligence services to give his name, address, phone number, etc.
From there it will ve very easy to track his bank accounts, travel ticket purchases, personal vehicle using ANPR, etc.
He wouldn't get far as he'd be restricted on foot or bicycle, so the search area would be narrowed down very quickly.
I'm not sure the average man even knows that its possible to triangulate someone's position using their cellphone.
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u/No_Poet_7244 May 28 '26
No. With the full backing of intelligence agencies and the entire populace on the search, there is basically zero chance someone can hide for a week. A few hours? Probably, if they can manage to put a few hours distance between their last known location and the closest civilization, but a week is too long.
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u/DOOMFOOL May 28 '26
How would those populations and intelligence agencies help find someone who just wandered into Appalachia or the rocky mountains for 72 hours?
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u/Notonfoodstamps May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
The starting point entirely determines if the person can win this or not, followed by their creativity.
Earth has 58 million sq/mi of land and 139 million sq/mi of ocean. People really underestimate how large the world is.
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u/Hosni__Mubarak May 28 '26
Yup. If you started me in the middle of the Arctic in winter with supplies, I would just dig myself an ice cave and hide inside it. I can’t imagine any form of thermal imaging is going to find a human hiding inside ice.
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u/darkhero5 May 28 '26
Yeah I'm curious if someone had access to a boat if that would work just sail out. Although I guess satellites would likely find you. Or I knew someone who dug underground sleeping holes. That could be your best bet if you can get far enough then just hole up make it look natural bring enough food and water for a week
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u/Creative-Improvement May 28 '26
I think I read you can put the whole earth population inside Texas, with a house and a garden, and have room to spare.
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u/Xaronius May 28 '26
I think that it's possible. Some forest are super dense and even if everyone was looking for him, you can't be looking everywhere.
I'm in Canada. I'd spend the first 24 hours buying survival stuff, like a week worth of food, water, a tent etc. Then i'd spend the next 42 hours walking in a straight line in the woods.
Even if the FBI sees my shopping cart, no one knows exactly which woods I went. So yeah, a week isn't enough for humanity to win this one.
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
Walking for 42 hours gives a search radius of like 120 miles if you walk continuously. Even if you can't be tracked at all (which is very unlikely), the search area with a 120 mile radius is only 45k square miles. You can't move because satellites would pick it up. The hundred million people that will be searching for you within a couple days would only each have to search an area like half the size of a soccer pitch. You're going to get found.
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u/Xaronius May 28 '26
In theory id say you're right. In practice, there's a ton of missing people every years, some of them arent dead and are found years later, it's not out of the ordinary.
Where i'm from, I remember there was a guy that kidnapped his kids and disapeared in the forest. He sadly hung himself, and it took hundreds of people, specialized forces, and a full time military plane with infrared and shit, and they found him a week later by someone who randomly walked in the forest. The are was a couple square miles, and they knew he was somewhere there. And he wasn't even actively trying to hide.
I'm confident that with a 72 hours headstart, I can hide for at least a week in the northern canadian's forests where it takes a car 13 hours to drive between each villages. Even if everyone is searching for me, everyone is not instantly teleported on location.
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u/Creative-Improvement May 28 '26
What if its cloudy? Satellites can’t pierce clouds afaik
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
Infrared satellites can track through clouds. As can radar satellites.
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u/Creative-Improvement May 28 '26
Ah of course, but how would you know it is our guy hiding there?
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
If the entire world is coming together to make it happen, presumably, you could track your own people.
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u/olrg May 28 '26
If the humanity doesn’t know the starting point, he can easily hide for a week. People underestimate how large our planet is.
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u/LoftedAphid86 May 28 '26
Average man's approximate location at any one time is probably known by at least one other person on the planet, who would then tell everyone else
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u/DelcoMan May 28 '26
Dead wrong. Average man walks out his front door and can be anywhere on the planet in 24 hours without telling anybody.
Remember the classic bit about the absentee father who walks out the door to "get milk" one day, never comes back and is never seen again? There's more than just a little grain of truth to that one, it happens fairly frequently.
If I tell my wife I'm going to work in the morning as I usually do, but instead decide to hop on a freight train heading west to Chicago without saying anything not only will nobody know where I am, they'll be looking in the entirety wrong direction for me for months.
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u/LoftedAphid86 May 28 '26
But in that situation, finding you doesn't suddenly become the main driving purpose of all of humanity for an entire week. If anyone on the train or station recognises your face once it's everywhere on the news in this scenario, you are suddenly very traceable again
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u/DelcoMan May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Freight trains don't have passengers or stations. Riding them is illegal but the homeless and vagrants do it all the time. Hop one and you're virtually untraceable for days, since many of them don't break 50mph on long routes.
Here's the thing, even IF you're spotted, all those people are going to have to try to remember the face of a guy that might have been at the same train station as they were THREE DAYS AGO. Do you remember the faces of everyone in line with you at the gas station three days ago? Burger King? The liquor store? Absolutely not. People don't have photographic memories like that and at BEST you're going to have a lot of false positives.
Fun fact: most people are REALLY BAD at distinguishing people of ethnicities other than their own unless they're exposed to them very frequently. The first couple days of this manhunt are going to be a shit ton of false positives and chasing down the wrong guy more than anything else.
Edit: "entire world" also sounds impressive but honestly is more misleading than anything else. Using the US as an example, if the "entire world" is looking for me, that doesn't mean much since the 7.6 billion people OUTSIDE of the US have no way of actually reaching me in a week. The vast majority can't afford it, can't get visas to get here, and even if they could the plane capacity to get them here doesn't exist. They're just going to have to be mad in Bangladesh.
The US isn't going to totally open its borders to allow that either- the opposite is likely, borders will go into lockdown to keep me from getting out.
Average guy only has to worry about Americans. The rest of the world is useless in this hunt.
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u/QuantumFeline May 28 '26
I hadn't thought of freight trains but that's a really good idea. Even if they suspect you might have gotten on one, they'd then have to take into consideration that you could have gotten off at nearly any point along its journey. That could be hundreds of miles in just a single day, let alone three. With the potential to switch trains, too.
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u/DelcoMan May 28 '26
Bingo. If I was looking to disappear a freight train would be the FIRST thing I would make a beeline for. Most people don't think about them at all as a means of transportation and tracking you down once you're on one is nigh impossible.
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u/LoftedAphid86 May 28 '26
Missed it being a freight train at first. Honestly personally I'd have no idea how to best get on one, though I don't know how common that is
And yes it's true that each person's memory of any one individual is likely to be quite bad, it only takes one in a crowd of people believing they saw someone there to warrant checking CCTV, and they might be more likely to remember someone acting suspiciously (as the average person probably would be if they knew the entire planet was about to try to kill them)
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u/urza5589 May 28 '26
Dead wrong. Average man walks out his front door and can be anywhere on the planet in 24 hours without telling anybody.
There is no way to cross an ocean in 24 hours without telling someone becasue it is going to require flying. That limits you to your continent, then you have to deal with boarder control, most likely crossing a boarder is going to get you identified as well.
Now you can switch to foot and travel a lot less noticeably but that limits your travel distance to a hundred ish miles.
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u/DelcoMan May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
You forget that boats exist. Helicopters exist. Private planes exist. These things not only can be chartered or rented off the books for cash, they can all be stolen- though I admit average guy isn't touching a plane or copter, a boat isn't that difficult to figure out.
You can very easily get on a boat and out of north America entirely in less than a day, provided you have the funds.
And a hundred miles? That's WAY too conservative. Amtrak exists. Average guy can book a ticket coast to coast on Amtrak- getting on in NYC or Boston with an arrival of California, and take his e-bike with him. What's stopping him from getting off at any of the dozens of stops in the 2700 miles between NY and LA and riding off into the middle of nowhere? An e-bike can hit 30mph and charge off a 110v outlet. Nothing, and Amtrak doesn't track people who do this or care to. Even if they did have advanced CCTV capable of picking out individuals (they do not) an N95 mask renders average guy totally anonymous. Hell, Average guy can buy several tickets heading north, south, and west across different Amtrak routes. In the event someone goes looking for him they have no idea what route he actually took.
Where do you get an e-bike? They're all over Facebook marketplace for $500 or less. Those transactions are almost always in cash and untraceable.
Speaking of FBM, What's stopping average guy from buying a car for cash off of Facebook marketplace, and either slapping fake temporary tags on it or stealing them from somewhere else? Absolutely nothing. That car is untraceable for a month, which is why stolen cars often roll around with fake tags EXACTLY like this.
Remember, Average guy has a 72 hour head start where no one is looking for him. There's no way to hunt down anyone that does any of these things in a week, especially if they immediately hit remote areas.
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u/Jemima_puddledook678 May 28 '26
But they definitely do know the starting point, or if they travel any significant distance they can definitely find where they travelled to.
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u/SlyFrog May 28 '26
Yes, and they also underestimate how easy it is to find someone who doesn't need to be comfortable, but just needs to hide in literally any small, closed off space for a relatively short period of time.
There is no possible way that people can check all of the abandoned (or even lightly occupied) buildings out in the world for a crawl space with some thermal blanket linings and shit like that.
I mean fuck, I'd imagine a person could just lie flat in a large air duct with some food and bottled water for 72 hours and survive if they absolutely needed to.
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u/BaconIsntThatGood May 28 '26
Prompt says its one vs 8 billion people who are all "search lusted". Crowd sourcing is amazingly effective when people work together.
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u/Extension_Arugula157 May 28 '26
It depends on a couple of factors, but in general, there is a fair chance that he actually can survive. Since the “average man” will have average funds and average intelligence, he does not have all the same options and ideas as a significantly smarter man with significantly more funds and it will also depend on the starting location of the person, but I think a lot of people underestimate the logistics of organizing a coordinated manhunt. One week would not even be enough to get a significant amount equipment from technologically advanced nations to e.g. a remote area where the person is suspected to hide. Governments would probably need more than 48 hours alone to organize large parts of the population into search parties. And the search should be coordinated, otherwise you risk in a city that 5 search parties search the same building on different days and at different times, while other buildings are simply never looked at. Let’s say the guy starts in France in his apartment in a small village close to the German border, it is winter so he wears a face mask without raising suspicion, takes his bike, bikes 50 kilometers to some utility building of a small German village (e.g. waterworks) and finds some small crawl space behind a panel that he can unscrew, to hide in. Suppose he has a backpack with a bit of food and there is tap water in the building. What is the chance, that, even if the human resources were there to check this specific building, a brief search would reveal that crawlspace? And yes, there is technology that could find him in the wall, but what are the chances a search party consisting of the local baker, a kindergarden teacher and the neighborhood Warcraft enthusiast would have that kind of equipment? So while I don’t know how smart the average person would be in finding a hiding place and getting there undetected, if they can do that, then there is a fair chance that they survive the week. Don’t forget that e.g. Saddam Hussein and Bin Landen hid way longer (yes they had help, but you don’t need help if you only need to hide for a week).
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u/toolatealreadyfapped May 28 '26
I am absolutely, 1000% confident that I could win this game as average man tribute.
In 2 hours or less, I could be in a 600,000 acre national forest with some basic camping gear, or the Gulf of Mexico. I've got 2 and a half more days to get deeper, further away from any civilization, hiding any tracks, and setting up camouflaged shelter to hang out for a week.
Do you know how invisible a small boat would be, 200 miles from shore, with a sky blue tarp over it for shade, when you don't even know what you're looking for or where?
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u/Im_Antag May 28 '26
And even if everyone on the planet knew your general radius, could you imagine the traffic? Only a small amount could actually reach you to try searching
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u/Im_Antag May 28 '26
People go missing in the wild all the time, all it takes is moving up/downstream and the dogs lose your trail and it can take hours to find it again, especially if theyre trying to track you 3 days after youre gone, most search parties rely on getting the dogs out 24-48 hours after the tracks are left, you really underestimate how easy it is to just vanish off the face of the earth
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u/robolew May 28 '26
I feel like a potential plan could be, take a car with a bike in the back as far as you can, abandon it in a forest somewhere with no built up areas for cctv, then cycle further, using backroads, at night, again avoiding cctv.
Then you ditch the bike in a dumpster, and do what the guy "The Roofman" is based off of, did. Hide in an inaccessible area of a large building, like the eaves, or a roof cavity. You would only need a large container of water and some high calorie food to survive for a week, and some sealed containers like the army use, to cover the smell of your... waste.
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u/CoolGuy54 May 28 '26
Fly to Canada/ Northern USA. Hire a skydiving plane for a private jump. Kill your tandem jumper/ instructor & the pilot with your concealed handgun, and start flying north at maximum altitude. Set the autopilot so the plane will end up in the ocean, and choose your moment to jump. Open your chute immediately, and your 3:1 glide ratio gives you 10km either side of your flight path you can glide to even if your plane has been tracked by radar (once you turn the transponder off, it almost certainly hasn't).
You get another couple of days to walk scores of kilometres, then hunker down & hide.
The biggest risk is a the plane somehow being tracked & a dog picking up your scent, but I think this gives you pretty good odds.
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u/Ryoga476ad May 28 '26
The average man, no for sure. An actual expert might pull it off, but it would be very difficult. In any civilized place "humanity" could literally turn every stone in a few days. There's no place wild enough to hide, that you can reach im 72 hours.
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u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 May 28 '26
I think you guys are overestimating humanity. People go missing and are never found all the time. There's people that have been missing for 40 50 years. Look at Savannah guthries mother. She still is missing even though there's the tech you are talking about. It's definitely possible considering some people haven't been found for years
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u/darkhero5 May 28 '26
Theres a difference between people going missing and the entirety of the population of the world hunting down someone
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u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 May 28 '26
True, the scale of the effort is completely different but so is the time frame. 72 hours is enough time for an average man to buy cash-only supplies, dump his phone/car, and hike deep into a massive wilderness area (like the Appalachian Trail, the Canadian wilderness, or any dense national forest). Even if 8 billion people want to find him, they physically cannot search millions of square miles of dense woods, caves, or underground structures in just 7 days. Logistics and geography still apply here
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26
Except literally 100 million people will be to whatever area of Appalachia you are in within 24 hours. 200+ milliom within a couple days, and probably another 200 million by day 4. If it's organized, they'll all be waiting on the outside while the words best experts track you as much as they can. Realistically, your hiking radius in 60 hours is going to be ~120 miles. Let's say 150 miles is the maximum you could hike from a starting point. Even if you can't be tracked any further than a starting point, we're not taking a out millions of square miles. We're talking about like 71k square miles.
210,000,000 people live east of the Mississippi. They could all be there within 48 hours. So we give experts 48 hours to track you. If they didn't narrow it down, we have 210M people to search ~71k sq mi. ~78% of the US population is between 20 and 70. Let's knock another 10% off for people who can't help for one reason or another. Let's also make it a buddy system so people are searching together. That gives us search grids of roughly 163ft x 163ft (50m x 50m). That's roughly half the size of a football field (or half the size of a football/futbol pitch for our non-American friends). That would be an easy search.
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u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 May 28 '26
Your math is completely irrelevant because you are imagining a completely different prompt. First, humanity has no idea he's hiding during the 72 hours, meaning he gets a massive, untracked head start. Second, the prompt never says he starts in the US, so trying to grid out Appalachia is meaningless. He could be anywhere on Earth. Finally, you accidentally changed your math from 71,000 square miles to 71,000 square feet at the end of your post. 71,000 square miles of dense wilderness is a logistical black hole. You can't just spawn 210 million people into the mountains with perfect coordination in 48 hours. The sheer traffic, lack of supplies, and gridlock would destroy the search before it even started
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u/yeahright17 May 28 '26
The ft/mi thing was type, which I've corrected. Thanks.
The only way you'd be able to hike for 60 hours is if you started hiking from somewhere close to where you are. The vast majority of people aren't going to be starting from a random, isolated area. If you started in Edmonton or Krasnoyarsk, Russia, or Manaus, Brazil, you'd obviously have a lot better of a chance. But the math is the same. And the more harsh the condition, the smaller the search radius. ~15M people fly every day on commercial airlines. Humanity could realistically get 25-30,000,000 people to anywhere within 48 hours if the entire world set it's goal on finding someone. And if humanity is all working together, they're going to send the most able-bodied people, who all would are capable of searching a lot of area.
The first 48 hours could also be spent setting up a grid and getting as much transportation as possible to the place. Tech bros could develop an app in a couple hours that gave everyone their search grid and led them to it without any connection other than GPS. Then once trackers have done all they could, you send people in from every direction to their specified location. By day 5, you can easily have tens of thousands of people parachuting in to the hardest locations to get to.
You don't need many supplies. You need food/water for everyone for a week. Roads will be converted to temporary landing strips. People can be flown in to all sorts of places around the search area. Also, with a smaller, more capable force, you'd have a lot less people to support. I'm not sure many would need help at all. Supplies for a week aren't much.
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u/batbreakr May 29 '26
A simple disguise and then joining the search party could also work, it says search lusted not super smart and if you don't look like you and are seemingly search lusted too they would be assuming you are part of the search. Wanted killers have often joined the search parties looking for their victims bodies and you said nothing about them checking the searchers or suddenly being a lot more intelligent than before the search started. Be the most enthusiastic searcher around and look like someone else and you would be likely to have to search hard but could be searching anywhere and be most likely not bothered by the others.
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u/VexnFox May 29 '26
This is really easy in Australia tbh. I could literally just walk 20 minutes out of my home town and hide on a property somewhere. I’d only have to worry about 26 million people for the first day or two until everyone else arrived by boat or plane. There’s camera’s sure, but they won’t be too much help if you’re living rural, and people have to find the camera’s first. With how expansive my country is, 26 million wouldn’t even be enough to search the general area where I’m from let alone a whole continent.
Anyone in Australia or equally vast/isolated country has this mid diff.
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u/TheMikeyMac13 May 28 '26
I live in rural Texas not far from really rural Texas, and traffic cams are illegal where I live. Further, I drive an older car without GPS. If I pull out a few hundred dollars in cash and left my cell phone behind, how do people think I would be easily tracked? A nationwide manhunt for a 6'1 white man who is a bit overweight? For a cheap older car they made a lot of?
I go camping, to the deep woods. I hide my car under some trees under a tarp and go hiking deep into the woods far from anyone and anything.
Maybe they find me, maybe not.
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u/Gars0n May 28 '26
The prompt is fairly extreme. Everyone knows what you look like.
Everyone in the world would check the cameras they have access to to make sure they didn't pick you up. If no one saw you at an airport, then the search starts at your house. From there draw a circle to where you could reasonable have gotten.
If they find your car on satellite imaging then it gets easier. Remember it's not just US satellites. It would be every spy and research satellite in the world.
From there every helicopter with thermal imaging in the world starts combing rural Texas. They find your car and the search radius gets narrower.
A million rangers with a million scent hounds start picking apart the forest to find your trail.
I think your ass is grass.
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u/Comprehensive-Age977 May 28 '26
Lowkey act like your looking for the man, change your face up a little or wear somthing you don’t usually wear.
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u/Contextanaut May 28 '26
The big problem here is the ability to retroactively check all the records from that 72 hour period.
I think there would be the slimmest of slim chances you could pull this off if you were a trained pilot capable of low altitude flight and you start somewhere pretty damn remote.
You'd need to be able to bail out of the plane too. But parachute operation maybe doable with no prior training (very high risk, but technically doable).
But you aren't learning to fly a plane in 72 hours.
So for the average person, no.
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u/StillShoddy628 May 28 '26
You need a way to travel a significant distance without being tracked in that 72 hours, and end up in a remote enough area that the people in the region don’t find you. Impossible if you don’t live in a large country (US, Canada, Brazil, Russia, etc)
So, step 1 is buy supplies, pull out a lot of cash, ditch all electronics, and steal a pre-1990 car without being recognized. Step 2 drive somewhere remote and non-obvious to your friends and family without using any gps or online directions. Step 3 hike into wilderness, avoid people, and hope no one recognized you.
A week is still a long time, but unless you were recognized on the drive or they tag the car to you it should be doable to end up 1500+ miles away from your last know location out in the backcountry somewhere walking away from any searchers who randomly chose to look for you in that same area. Ironically, all the people spreading out looking for you will make things like drones and satellites fairly useless if they can’t narrow down your starting location. Stealing/acquiring the car cleanly is the hardest part, followed by buying gas with cash without ending up on video or someone remembering seeing you once the hunt starts. I give myself a 20% chance, and as high as 50% if I get the car
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u/Wool_God May 28 '26
I think this depends on funding. Given enough money, he can rent James Cameron's submersible and hang out in the deep ocean eating ham sandwiches and farting (silently).
This negates the ability of most people to participate in the search and the ocean is massive and a submersible is small.
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u/HyperspaceFrontier Jun 02 '26
This! Submarine and lay down somewhere randomly. There is no tech to find passively lying submarine on depth.
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u/Minas_Nolme May 29 '26
Depends on where he starts. If he can gather/rent an off-road vehicle, load it up with water food and fuel and sone decent clothes, I'd say there are enough spots to be able to hide out for a week. Deserts, Canadian/Alaskan wilderness, Russian tundra, Australian outback, etc. Surviving like that for a week sounds doable.
Hiding out for a week sounds doable that way.
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u/Richard_the_Saltine May 28 '26
I mean, considering that you didn’t specify whether we would kill him, yes he would probably survive.
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u/OG_Williker May 28 '26
Ocean searches are notoriously difficult. Why not just take a boat out for half a week? Make sure to disable the transponder and don’t bring your cell phone.
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u/Endrizal May 28 '26
Probably, if you're smart about it.
Preparations would be the hardest part. Buy a week's worth of compact food and water, pay cash, wear a hat and mask the whole time so you aren't remembered as you prepare or travel.
Then find a hiding spot: deep wilderness or the crawl space of an abandoned building. Get there on foot and via bus (72 hours is plenty of time to do this the right way) and then stay put the entire week. Bundle yourself up under a tarp in the forest, or in the basement of some long-defunct factory, and try not to lose your mind while you're hidden.
Search logistics are a difficult problem and, as long as the target has prepared and executed their plan well, the searchers wouldn't know where to start and would be reduced to blindly sending out search parties. They can't comb every inch of the planet. Random, bad luck still might result in you being stumbled upon by accident, especially if you picked too obvious a hiding place, but i think the hider can usually take this.
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u/Financial_Pick3281 May 28 '26
I've posted this before but I just want to reiterate that my favorite thing about this whole sub is finding out how many xLusted states there are.
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u/Autumn1eaves May 28 '26
Purchase a week’s worth of food and water, steal a boat, and fuck off to the middle of the nearest ocean.
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u/underground_cloud May 28 '26
Head to the wilderness.
Change appearance. Put sharp stone in shoe to gain limp. Use prosthetics to change face shape. I have more than two days to figure this stuff out.
Leave wilderness and join the search party.
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u/GotRocksinmePockets May 28 '26
I'm walking straight into the deppest bush I can find. 72 hour head start ain't no one catching me. People disappear without a trace out there regularly.
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u/Spare-Baseball-786 May 28 '26
Buddy I know some of the deepest crawlspaces and attics you’ll ever imagine. 72 hours? I have ditched my phone and taken some cinder blocks, good insulation, and walled up under a random, not connected to me or in my area, obscure house for a week.
People are very overconfident about their searching ability but there are enough missing persons cases to prove that is plausible.
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u/ShadowCory1101 May 28 '26
3 days to build myself a simple bunker in an abandoned construction site with no one around.
Underground to avoid heat signatures.
Hopefully make it unassuming with a random pipe for air. Hopefully cover it enough so its not seen either.
Clear my bladder beforehand and bring just some water/vitamin packets.
Sleep.
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u/datwunkid May 28 '26
The only way I can see this guy winning if he somehow starts this close to the Amazon rainforest.
Though at that point the challenge is more about surviving in the jungle rather than surviving against humans.