How to Become a Spy
Spying is one of the most exciting jobs in the world. Learn how to become a spy.
Make no mistake about it. For you to become a top spy, you must have certain characteristics, and learn many skills and abilities.
This page lists what it takes to be a spy. Use it as your personal training curriculum!
There are certain character trades that are common amongst all spies. These aren't skills you can acquire, you must possess these characteristics if you want to be a top nodge spy.
- Guts!
Spying is not for the feeble minded. You put yourself in unknown, and possibly dangerous, situations, with only your skills and wits to keep you out of harms way. If you want to know how to become a spy, ask yourself: do I have what it takes to be a spy? - Intelligence
There's a good reason why they've called spying "intelligence". You need to learn many skills and abilities, and fast! Each new operation calls for different skills, cover and legend, and you must be able to learn and internalize them in days. - Creativity
Spies find themselves facing all kinds of problems, each one calling for a fitting solution. Unfortunately, most of the time you cannot fall back on some super-duper gadget, issued by "Q", but you must make do with whatever you have at your disposal.
Spy Disguises
A big part of becoming a spy is learning all the secrets that are used to keep things under wraps. A spy has to be able to pass information and do their job without being noticed or caught in the act. While there are a few things that they do to accomplish this, nothing is quite as important as a spy's disguise.
Introduction to Codes and Ciphers
Codes and ciphers are all about keeping secrets. By nature, being a spy has to be a secret. If people know that the spy is looking for information, they won't tell their own secrets. If they get caught with secret information, spies wouldn't be able to do their job or their life could be in danger.
- The Ceasar Cipher - This cipher (aka. shift cipher) is a substitution cipher, where letters are replaced by a letter with a fixed shift in the alphabet.
- Pigpen Cipher - The pigpen cipher (aka. masonic cipher) is a very simple substitution cipher, that goes back all the way to the 18th century.
Vigenere Cipher - The Vigenère cipher (which is actually French and sounds a bit like visionair) is a very old way of coding that's designed to mask character frequency (checking character frequency in a piece of coded text is one of the most well-known ways of breaking code).
A good memory is a spy's most used weapon. In fact, even if your not really a spy, but say, a student, or a manager, or an adolescent, a good memory can help you in life. A good memory can be a life saver when studying for an exam or when you're grilled during a sales presentation.
Watch Spy Movies
Watching spies is always good to learn more about spying. So, choose a flick of your liking, grab a bagof your favorite popcorn, and dig in!
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