I remember seeing a post, I think on undeadly.org, which went through having the bootloader on password-encrypted usb drive, that also contains a keyfile for the main disk. It said something like "I also wanted the laptop to appear broken, and the disk full of random data, if the usb drive wasn't present - rather than stopping at a password prompt"
There's something similar in the comments here from @mcbride https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20131112031806 But now an hour or so of searching fails to turn it up. Could anyone share some clues on how to go about this? tia, tom