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Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

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Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#101

Post by Cthulhu_ »

zoltar wrote: post #39

[1,000 lumen flashlight] ...they are incredibly effective at temporarily blinding a would-be attacker, giving you a chance to escape. Is this dude for real?

I mean it's better than nothing IF you are in a situation like that. Most countries don't allow any kind of self-defense gear like weapons or mace, especially not when going on an airplane. This is something robbers will know, plus you will stand out as a visitor - stand out as an international traveler (so not poor), unfamiliar with the surroundings, and likely without any kind of self defense.

Mind you, if you do get robbed, it's probably best to give up the goods anyway instead of try and fight. Make sure your passport is safe (keep it somewhere else than your wallet / phone / valuables) and you should be all right.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#102

Post by Cthulhu_ »

durnygbur wrote: post #96

The funniest and most obnoxious situation is seeing in perfectly safe country self-obsessed Americans, behaving as if they are some secret agents, extraordinary targets, vulnerable treasure, and as they look at everyone with suspicious disgust. Additional tip - wear black suit and Oakley sunglasses, in every circumstances.

You say that but from an outsider's perspective, crime, drug abuse and gun violence is very prevalent over there.

As are Oakley sunglasses and people with a badass complex for that matter, lmao.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#103

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gregw2 wrote: post #52
gregw2 wrote: post #43

I was robbed at gunpoint at a hotel once and in the aftermath have my own tactical "lessons learned" on the topic of hotel safety tips... which I am happy to share with you fellow HN travelers: * Don't check into (cheap) hotels at 2am, criminals prowl at night looking for easy targets. * If you do, be on extra alert for idling or lurking cars with headlights on at hotels in early morning hours, it is indeed a greater…

Not a safety tip, but also (to me) one more interesting lesson from the experience (which happened in my early 20s): * Trauma is a real thing. Your body can react to deadly threats afterwards in ways you cannot control. The next day after being held up, I literally could not enter a new room without my head moving/turning to scan entrances/exits for threats. I tried to stop my head moving repeatedly and could not! I…

I mean, you literally got robbed, but in my experience you can get a trauma response / anxiety from even smaller things. My friend had a kind-of-bully (we were 18+ at the time iirc) and met him in the street at new year's, the bully was a bit drunk and headbutted my friend. Nothing happened to me personally, it was just a bump on the head and the guy scampered when my friend's dad and friends came over, but I couldn't stop thinking about it to date (nearly twenty years later), imagining all kinds of alternative scenarios and all that. People underestimate serious confrontations.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#104

Post by teddyh »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #30
jamisteven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010 I was working at a large hotel / convention center in Nashville, at about 8pm we were preparing for a massive event where a company had bought out one of the venues, the entire hotel was booked solid. In the days prior to this, we had torrential downpours and heavy rain but this was normal, until it wasnt. Out of nowhere we get reports that the underground tunnels in the hotel used for employees to get around…

How often does this happen? Once in a life time? This is the kind of stuff that makes you go nutty. Of course you _can_ try to prepare for everything and anything, but does it actually make sense to worry about being in a flash flood like that? I doubt it.

Always have a backup plan:

https://crzysdrs.net/dv/victim/356-as-a-former-sysadmin-i-al...

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#105

Post by [deleted] »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #30
jamisteven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010 I was working at a large hotel / convention center in Nashville, at about 8pm we were preparing for a massive event where a company had bought out one of the venues, the entire hotel was booked solid. In the days prior to this, we had torrential downpours and heavy rain but this was normal, until it wasnt. Out of nowhere we get reports that the underground tunnels in the hotel used for employees to get around…

How often does this happen? Once in a life time? This is the kind of stuff that makes you go nutty. Of course you _can_ try to prepare for everything and anything, but does it actually make sense to worry about being in a flash flood like that? I doubt it.

[deleted]

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#106

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lbj wrote: post #32

I would have liked to see the good options when not using the hotel safe.

Keep your most valuables on you; else, hide them. Still no guarantee for a determined burglar, but they will be on edge and if it's not an easy snatch (e.g. by going straight for the hotel safe, which they probably will have done before) they won't want to hang out.

It's why the "do not disturb" and putting on the TV thing also works, it makes on-edge burglars doubt whether someone's there. And doubt is enough to discourage opportunists.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#107

Post by nsb1 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #36
Shank wrote: post #7

Rather than a doorstop, I usually prefer a super grip lock [0] -- an extremely corny as-seen-on-TV product that you can lash around a door knob that uses simple physics to make the door impossible to open with the key on the other side. Naomi Wu mentioned this and Deviant Ollam has too. The basic premise is that it's less destructive than most "security door stops" and hotels tend to get angry if you destroy their ca…

Seems like it requires an extremely particular design of door handles that I’ve never actually seen in a hotel.

It looks to me like this device is preventing the deadbolt knob from turning, not the doorknob. It's only using the door knob shaft for support.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#108

Post by ghaff »

midoridensha wrote: post #66
jraby3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn’t mention where you should keep your valuables. It’s easy to say where not to, but then offer a suggestion for a safe place to store stuff like a passport or cash.

>It’s easy to say where not to, but then offer a suggestion for a safe place to store stuff like a passport or cash. Simple: you keep those things on your person whenever you're away from your hotel room. Use a "traveler's wallet" which hides under your clothes. You should never be without your passport in a foreign country; it's generally illegal and it's the only way to properly identify you.

In general, carrying things around with you are more likely to get lost or stolen in some manner than if they're just left in your room. There are probably exceptions but if I'm somewhere like Western Europe, I'm not carrying my passport around with me.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#109

Post by biztos »

dageshi wrote: post #92
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lockpicking lawyer reviewed a number of these, a lot of the ones from Amazon are actually pretty bad and don't resist a simple knife. Mind you, if that's the case, at least you have some evidence that you were robbed. When it comes to passports, it's probably best to keep them on you. I have a pouch that goes around my neck (and I put it under my shirt), probably the safest place to keep it hidden and on your per…

I have done that in the past. I just reached a point where honestly I felt like the hassle of using a hidden pocket all the time just wasn't worth it. I generally have a nice hard case wheeled suitcase for my luggage, I bike cable that to something immovable and inside I tether the pacsafe to one of the rails where the suitcase handle runs. It's enough peace of mind for me. 99% of casual theft isn't going to try and…

I hadn’t heard of PacSafe before, so — if your suitcase is cabled to the furniture and your PacSafe is in the suitcase, wouldn’t a thief who has already opened your suitcase (probably in-place) just take the PacSafe with them to open later?

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#110

Post by t_mann »

The only useful advice in there is to know the escape routes from your room, the rest sounds like it would have a net negative effect for the average person.

Choosing your hotel room based on maneuverability in the event of an attack is not only completely pointless if you don't know how to maneuver in the event of an attack, but more importantly, for the average person, running those sorts of scenarios in your head sounds like it will take away more from your mental health than whatever benefits you may get in terms of 10-to-the-minus-x percentage points gains in survival probability.

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