What Can You Deduce About Those Using Active Night Vision?

When you purchase night vision, you typically can use either an active or a passive setting. Active night vision sends out an infrared light that the human eye cannot see but that the night vision can. What this IR light does is help to make it so that night vision can show you the world around you.

Imagine you’re walking through the basement of a warehouse with zero windows or skylights, the power is out, and it’s midnight. There will be zero light coming into that basement. This is problematic for night vision because it needs at least some level of light so that it can amplify it and show you the world around you.

This is where active night vision comes in. Active night vision sends out that IR light and makes it so that the wearer can see everything around him without anybody else without night vision seeing him.

When we’re outside, however, there’s a huge difference.

There will pretty much always be sufficient ambient light outside – no matter the cloud cover – that active night vision will not be necessary. Instead, you’ll be able to rely on passive night vision. Passive night vision sends out no IR light beam, instead just using all of the ambient light around it. This is good.

Remember, night vision can see IR light.

This means that if you are outside at night using active night vision, anybody else out there with night vision will see a Christmas tree in the distance. That Christmas tree is you. Why? Because night vision can see IR light. You make yourself a massive target using active night vision amongst other night vision wearers.

Knowing this helps us to better understand some of the workings of a grid-down, WROL world.

Do you remember that article we had on the things you can deduce from people simply by observing the type of radio transmission they are sending out? You can do something of the same with how they use night vision.

Let’s say there’s been a series of attacks against the American power grid.

Sounds like fantasy, huh? (Or not.)

All across the nation, significant portions of the grid are damaged and down and you’ve no way of knowing when they’ll be back up and running as the lack of electricity makes it so that none of the local TV stations, FM radio stations, cell towers, or the internet is working in your area. All of your news you pick up from word of mouth (which is mostly rumor) and shortwave radio.

You’re living in this world, and the violence has kicked up to an unprecedented level. People are scared and hungry, and everybody is taking advantage of the opportunity. Evil people are swooping in to do whatever they want, cops have no means of knowing where the bad guys are and no gas for their vehicles, nobody has the means to contact outside help, and those with only three days’ of food in their home or in need of particular medications are now long out of what they need and are resorting to violence to take what they need.

You need to protect your family, so you’re regularly standing watch at night to make sure they’re safe. You’re also using night vision.

It’s while you’re doing this that you see a huge beam of IR light off in the distance. Maybe several beams of IR light. You can’t see anything with your naked eye, so you know it’s IR light.

What can you deduce from this?

For starters, just one beam of IR light means that you have somebody in your area who is equipped with night vision. And if they’re equipped with night vision, what else might they be equipped with? It’s probably safe to assume that this person has some form of battle rifle, plate carrier, and who knows what else.

Seeing multiple beams of IR light means that you have a group of people wearing night vision moving through your area. Again, if there is a group of people with this type of technology, they are likely very well equipped. If you’ve also never noticed this amount of IR light before in your area, it’s safe to assume that you have a group of people not from the area who are moving through your area at night. Why would that be the case? Probably because they don’t have the best of intentions.

You’ll also be able to deduce that if they are using active night vision outside at night, they’re either clueless or rather brash in their assumptions of their power. You have somebody who perhaps stole those night vision sets, not knowing what the different settings on their gear mean, just knowing that they can see better with the IR beam on.

They may not even care if they’re spotted.

The other assumption we can make is that they may know that there’s a chance they could be spotted, but they really don’t care or don’t deem it to be a threat.

They’ve already taken out five houses the past five days with active night vision and have yet to find anybody who had night vision that was used against them. Night vision is rare compared to AR-15s in American households, after all. They’ve weighed the risks and believe that it’s just better for them to see better, as the chance somebody will be able to see them is minimal. And even if somebody does see them, they still think that they have the power to put an end to them quickly. If that’s the mindset, you have a group of people who have no qualms about resorting to extreme violence.

In short, if you see active night vision at night in your area, you know somebody well equipped is in the area, they don’t know much about night vision, and they may have a group of people with them that makes them feel invincible.

There’s stuff you can deduce from people just from the way they use their gear.

But, of course, it takes having your own night vision in the first place to even be able to do any of this.

If you’re currently looking for some (which I highly recommend purchasing before China invades Taiwan and makes it so that there is a severe chip shortage in the United States), Ready Made Resources, one of The Organic Prepper’s advertisers, has some in stock and offers financing to help with the sticker shock. I purchased night vision from another company almost a year ago, and month after month, they told me that my purchase was on backorder. They eventually canceled my order after about ten months of stringing me along. I got mine from Ready Made Resources in two days.

Night vision is a complete game changer. I highly recommend getting some to help you better protect your loved ones in a world gone haywire.

What do you think? What can you learn about others using your night vision equipment? Tell us in the comment section below.

About Aden

Aden Tate is a regular contributor to TheOrganicPrepper.com and TheFrugalite.com. Aden runs a micro-farm where he raises dairy goats, a pig, honeybees, meat chickens, laying chickens, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. Aden has four published books, What School Should Have Taught You, The Faithful Prepper,  An Arm and a Leg, The Prepper’s Guide to Post-Disaster Communications, and Zombie Choices. You can find his podcast The Last American on Preppers’ Broadcasting Network.