The drone guide starts off with explaining what a drone is and its sole purpose. The guide reads "As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them. This survival guide is an attempt to familiarise ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment."
Instructions in the second section tell people how to hide from drones, such as taking cover in shadows of buildings or trees. The manual also warns of not using flashlights or spot lights as drones can easily find these during missions when the entire region is pitch dark. Avoiding good weather is also recommended as these unmanned units cannot work during high winds or rainstorms. If a person decides to use a cellphone or device with GPS capabilities, this may give up their location making the drone's job less difficult.
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Photo: (c) dronesurvivalguide.org
In the last section, the short but informative guide goes into how to hack a drone. Three different ways are listed as to how a drone can reach confusion— interception, interference, and GPS spoofing. All methods are suggested as a way of detracting a drone from a targeted region.
For the most part, the use of the term drones forces people to realize that nations that own unmanned drones perceived as innocent in fact participate in invisible assassinations on foreign soil. Pater said that accepting more blandly descriptive terms like UAV diminishes this impact. "When the public has adopted a name like that, it's impossible to change it to something 'less scary,'" Pater mentioned, "That's why I use the word. My Afghan translator said that even in Afghanistan they also use the English word 'drone'. The whole point of military acronyms is to make dangerous technologies sound less scary."
Even though one of the items on the poster is considered a hobby-like item for the time being, the creator of the guide claims that it was done because of future possibilities. "A Parrot AR Drone, which is sold on Amazon and electronic stores everywhere for an affordable price, could easily be outfitted with weapons, spyware, or whatever else people can think of. Because there is so little oversight, I think most people should be more aware of those than the large UAVs that the military uses."
Though, the guide is not deemed to be a specifically functional "the fact that people are not sure whether it's an artistic project or something else is interesting for me, especially because I notice people find it scary that it is translated in an Arabic language" according to Pater. So far, the poster has been translated into a multitude of languages including but not limited to Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Turkish, and Spanish.
Free copies of the poster are available for download but the reflective ones are sold online. The creator claims that he is speaking with groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan so the guide can be used for education and activism.
Voice of Russia, Theverge.com, Dronesurvivalguide.org