There’s a Spanish movie about a guy who goes into the mountains to commit suicide but in the end chickens. Instead of going back home he stays in the mountains and lives by gathering what he can find and stealing food. He takes vegetables from the fields, steals some eggs, chickens, stuff like that. He than finds abandoned house, cleans it a bit and starts growing some food. It’s based on a true story and I’m pretty sure you could still do it. There’s a lot of abandoned houses where I live, the winders are mild. I will try to find that movie, they don’t say a single word in it so it’s not an issue it’s Spanish.

If you want better quality of life you would have to go to some developing country and do physical work for cash. Even better than that would require fake documents which gets risky, especially in foreign country.

It’s tricky and of course context dependent. It’d be much easier if there was no apparent motive (massive debt, impending arrest, history of fraud etc). I’ve often thought a holiday to a developing country with porous borders would be your best bet. If you are in a western nation it’s quite difficult to disappear within your own borders, and it is hard to survive without an identity. Even then, most western nations will send someone/s to investigate your disappearance or pursue the matter via Interpol etc. Add to this your appearance is likely to raise attention if you are obviously not a local (in my case I am a white AF guy with tattoos who would not melt into the background in India). Further, no matter the money you have you ultimately want some type of identity and passport in case your current situation gets hot. In my scenario I would travel to country A using my legitimate credentials, then disappear (drowning is a good one, cheers Harold). I’d then leg it to the neighbouring country (country B) where I’d attempt to get a new identity using forgeries I’d already organised from another country different to my home. Once I can establish my identity in country B (residency over months/years etc) I’d then move to my final destination and keep my head down.

There’s plenty of stories of those who try to restart and get caught (Nick Rossi, John Darwin). Common thread is they don’t completely break from their previous life, or they move somewhere too obvious. Another key point is having to deal with some real sketchy people to make all of this happen properly. You’d essentially need to be smuggled across borders and acquire forged documents.

I’d be keen to hear others back-of-napkin plans.

I have a friend who works at the morgue. He drives the hearse, picks up bodies that don’t need autopsies, prepares the bodies, hosts the funurals, a lot of it. He knows the guys who operate the crematorium and dig the graves well. He can make a body disappear. He also finds plenty of John Does, unidentified bodies. Mostly ones that float up to the shore, severely decayed. He’s told me if I needed, I’d just have to lay low for a few weeks and he’d have a body in my casket.

I remember reading ages ago that the best way to get a US citizenship was to swim ashore naked and pretend to have amnesia. I guess some iteration of this should work in most countries that are not landlocked or have big rivers.