Simple sabotage: basic rules to influence productive and safe behavior.

• Author: McKay, Brian
• Position: SAFETY FIRST - Column

I subscribe to an email list service called Atlas Obscura whose mission is to send me interesting diversions throughout the week-every week--along with a bit of suggestive advertising. Topics may include anything from the best haunted houses to visit in Michigan, interesting places to take your dog, or any of a long list of important items, places, or occurrences happening in the world without me. One of these diversions recently piqued my interest more so than the others. It was a small offering about a declassified piece of World War II nostalgia called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.

The Simple Sabotage Field Manual, dated 17 January 1944, was written under the guidance of and signed by none other than William "Wild Bill" Donovan himself. Wild Bill was America's first lead spy. He is known, according to Wikipedia, as the "Father of Central Intelligence" and during World War II ran the Office of Strategic Services, better known as the OSS. The job of the OSS was to coordinate the espionage activities between US Armed Forces and other allied powers, execute missions, and generally wreak havoc on axis powers. This manual was part of that havoc planning.

Intent is to Teach

The intent of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual is to teach a low level of "simple sabotage" to personnel across a broad range of activities, including personnel working "behind the lines." Simple sabotage refers to acts or omitted activities that don't require any "formal" sabotage activities such as the use of explosives or any other complex, multi-discipline operations.

Simple sabotage is based on "universal opportunities to make faulty decisions, to adopt a non-cooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit" according to the manual. Simple sabotage acts are those that may not even be realized at first glance but will strategically lessen the overall effectiveness of opponents through decreases in efficiency, bottlenecks, worn out equipment, or incorrect field orders.

These acts can be committed by the common man or the "citizen saboteur" with little preparation or tools, just the right havoc wreaking attitude which may, after all, be the "human element" in the overall act of sabotage "responsible for accidents, delays, and general obstruction under normal conditions." My radar for "things that I can steal and use in safety management" pinged after reading that last passage in the manual. The "human element" responsible for accidents and delays? General obstruction and normal conditions? These are the bread and...