#Sabotaging vault 101 how to

A non-cooperative attitude may involve nothing more than creating an unpleasant situation among one’s fellow workers, engaging in bickerings, or displaying surliness and stupidity.Į. Making a faulty decision may be simply a matter of placing tools in one spot instead of another. It is based on universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a noncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit. A second type of simple sabotage requires no destructive tools whatsoever and produces physical damage, if any, by highly indirect means. The targets of his sabotage are usually objects to which he has normal and inconspicuous access in everyday life.ĭ. His arsenal is the kitchen shelf, the trash pile, his own usual kit of tools and supplies. Where destruction is involved, the weapons of the citizen-saboteur are salt, nails, candles, pebbles, thread, or any other materials he might normally be expected to possess as a householder or as a worker in his particular occupation. Simple sabotage does not require specially prepared tools or equipment it is executed by an ordinary citizen who may or may not act individually and without the necessity for active connection with an organized group and it is carried out in such a way as to involve a minimum danger of injury, detection, and reprisal.Ĭ. This paper is primarily concerned with the latter type. Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform. The purpose of this paper is to characterize simple sabotage, to outline its possible effects, and to present suggestions for inciting and executing it.ī.

(Numbering/formatting was changed in places by the necessity of the condensing process.) The entire booklet can be found here.įight the power, and don’t forget to leave home without a bag of moths.Ī. Below we’ve re-published a condensed version of the booklet, collecting the tips that are the most interesting, and which still remain relevant today.

#Sabotaging vault 101 how to

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual thus cannot only be used as a handbook on guerrilla resistance, should you find yourself living under a tyrannical occupying government, but also a guide on how to “reverse engineer” success in peacetime pursuits - how to recognize and address would-be saboteurs in the cubicle next door (or in the mirror).Įither way, it’s a fascinating read. When you read tips to employees like “refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration,'” and “Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can,” as well as instructions to managers to “Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done,” one realizes the ways in which, in the present day, employees sabotage their companies, managers sabotage their teams, and workers sabotage their own success - not for any purposeful mission, but simply out of laziness, carelessness, and a lack of motivation and morale.įurther, the general injunction to “Act stupid,” uncomfortably invokes the fact that modern citizens may be sabotaging the strength of a country they actually support. Though the suggestions presented in the Simple Sabotage Field Manual were designed to soften the underbelly of the enemy by gumming up the works of factories, offices, and infrastructure, what’s hilariously surprising is how many of them, especially regarding white collar work, continue to be inadvertently ( we think?) practiced today. Donovan, with the aim of surreptitiously distributing its information by way of leaflets, radio broadcasts, or the direct teaching of European citizens who U.S. The booklet was declassified by the director of the O.S.S., William J. agents not only how to recruit potential saboteurs from among those who were antagonistic towards their occupiers and sympathetic to the Allied cause, but listed specific tactics average citizens in various lines of work could employ to destabilize their government and help hasten its demise. The Simple Sabotage Field Manual taught O.S.S. should always consist of acts whose results will be detrimental to the materials and manpower of the enemy.” The Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), a precursor to the modern C.I.A., created an initially classified booklet laying out the art of “simple sabotage” - which, “more than malicious mischief. government thus began a strategy to undermine Axis-aligned governments not only from without, but also from within. The weaker that enemy targets could be made, the easier and faster the military’s job would be in wresting Europe back from its occupying forces. In 1944, the Allied troops were gaining ground on the battlefields of WWII, but still faced opposition from the Axis powers.