Gone With The Wind

I find this story fascinating. It seems that there are probably quite a few people who found Hurricane Katrina to be a considerable blessing; it allowed them the chance to disappear and change their identities permanently, escaping whatever burdens made their life troublesome.

First of all, I had no idea that there were still 6,600 people still officially classified as "missing" as a result of hurricane Katrina. Has no one thought to alert Greata Van Susteren? I'm sure that out of over 6,000 people there's at least one or two pretty blond girls. Second, the article I linked to almost exclusively plays up the idea that criminal types (every kind from sex offenders to garden-variety problem drunks) will use the disaster as an opportunity to restart their lives free from their criminal pasts. I'm sure a lot of that is going on, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot of these people are just living out a fantasy that a lot of people indulge in from time to time: Escape. Escape your creditors, escape a bad relationship, escape from anyone who holds a grudge against you or knows a secret from your past, escape obligations that, justifiably or not, you find overly burdensome. Start over again with a completely clean slate. I'll bet there are a lot of normal people out there who simply saw an opportunity to disappear and took it.

Something tells me that in the end it isn't going to be that easy. In this modern age of satellite imagery, DNA testing and every bit of information about every person on earth being stored in a computer, the idea of being able to disappear permanently is at best a lot more work than one might expect, and at worst is completely impossible if someone out there is determined enough to find you. Still, I'd suggest that a person doesn't need to be a criminal to find it an appealing concept to just fade into the background and start over somewhere a little warmer and sunnier, where you can create the identity for yourself that you always wished you'd had.