A thermal barrier between a warm body and an infrared camera will preclude the IR camera from detecting the warm body. It can only detect heat.

Long ago, many tribes used the wicker shield. Wicker has some wonderful characteristics.

For daylight visual detection, one can apply a sticky substance on the outside surface, put it face down in the dirt, and you now blend in with the ground as well as possible, as the ground itself is your outer camouflage.

Today, we find wicker in cheap door mats, sometimes made of small diameter bamboo, but they are all effective at blocking a warm body if the hatching is crossed and doubled.

A bit of stand off distance by applying some sort of handle, and you have a thermal blocker. You determine the size and shape.

It's cheap, it's easy, it's light, and even in the daytime, will provide a very effective cover.

You can roll it up and take it anywhere, and deployment only takes seconds.

[edit on 8-7-2009 by dooper]

Ppl plant pot next to cedar trees because the thermal levels are very close.

As long as you scatter it and don't plant in rows it works fairly well
from what I have heard, and I do not do this or partake of it as I want
to keep my inactive security clearance. I just read a LOT.

If you take this scenario and use it for yours you can come up with something.

During the world wars bunkers were good for stopping bullets, and like other
mention in Vietnam the tunnels gave the VC a huge advantage at times.

Another aspect is they will likely be going after the ppl rioting and freaking out
when oil hits $300 a barrel because we printed so much money we
inflated our currency.

When the global derivatives that sank greece, icleand, ireland, and others
come home to roost in the US, that will also have a major impact.

Learn all you can to be self sufficient, out of sight is out of mind.

Do not swat the hornets, blend in with the wilderness and have
multiple underground hiding places.

Just consider how long saddam was able to hide in his spider hole.

Good Luck to all the good ppl !!!

I have been looking into the subject for weeks, and found only a few references/myths about the use of survival thermal Mylar blankets. It seems that their use will distract an image on both IR and TI by reflecting ambient heat and light off the body and back to the cameras, BUT I have never heard of any real testing of it, only people seemly speculating.

The idea is that you can cover yourself in a pinch with a survival blanket like harry potter and vanish for a bit until your body heat starts show up on the outline, but if viewed from above you would appear black as space because you would be reflecting space back into the camera. I would guess that if you made sure to crumple the blanket up a bit this would minimize the blackness, but again this is all just speculation. I don't have a IR or TI camera to play with.

But that is my question, HAS ANYBODY ACTUALLY EVER TESTED THE SURVIVAL BLANKET SCENARIO?

Besides that option, the wool blanket and/or conifer branches seem like the most practical methods for people on the move, but I would really like to get this survival blanket question settled.