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Ed Brannigan · twenty-five years on patrol

Off the List

Three books on keeping a house from getting picked — 186 numbered checks, in the order I would do them.

  • 73 checks on what gets left on a house that is being tested, and the sixty-second walk that finds it the same day
  • 69 checks for everywhere away from your own front door — the lot, the forecourt, the road, the hotel
  • 44 checks for the days nobody is standing in it — collection only, not sold anywhere else

$98

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Ed Brannigan
He already knows he can get in. What he's deciding is whether anybody will notice. Ed Brannigan · twenty-five years on patrol
The three volumes of Off the List — The Marks, While You're Away, and The Everyday Awareness Handbook
From the Ed Brannigan channel · edbrannigan.com

The part almost everyone has backwards

You are not being attacked. You are being learned.

You picture somebody at your door working on the lock. What actually happens is that he decided about your house days ago, from the sidewalk, in under a minute, without touching anything.

By the time he comes back he already knows how he is getting in. What he is still deciding is whether anybody in that house is going to notice him doing it — and that is a question he can answer cheaply, days in advance, by leaving something small behind and coming back to see whether it moved.

Criminologists at UNC Charlotte surveyed incarcerated burglars about how they chose houses and what put them off. 422 people answered. What came back was not hardware. It was other people being nearby, no easy way out, and visible signs that somebody had bothered.

It is one study, in a few states, of people who were caught, and it is not the last word on anything. It also lines up with what I watched happen for twenty-five years.

Read something first

The Two Checks

Two things you can go and do tonight, free, in about a minute each, that are invisible until you look for them. Neither is a secret. Both are written down in places most people never have reason to read.

One is your mail — a free postal service that shows you the day's incoming letters, where the account attaches to the address and somebody has to claim it. The other is your phone — a scan for unwanted Bluetooth trackers that both Apple and Google now put in the same menu, under the same name, and that almost nobody knows is there.

No email address. No form. It is a PDF and it opens.

Read the free sample →

Diagram: the two places things get wedged in a door, and the angle of view that reveals them
Figure 1 from Volume I — where things get put, and where to put your eye

Before you spend anything

The order matters more than the amount

I have never had much time for the fear approach. Fear makes people buy things and change nothing.

Every one of the 186 checks in these three books is free. Not "inexpensive" — free. They are things you do with your own hands, on your own property, in about a minute, tonight.

That is not a gimmick, it is the finding. What deters people is not what you installed. It is whether the house looks like somebody is paying attention to it — and a camera on a house with two weeks of leaflets in the door does not say this house has a camera. It says this house has a sticker. He will believe the leaflets.

Do the free things first. Then, if you still want to spend money, you will know what to spend it on, because you will have found out what your own house actually looks like from the sidewalk.

Three ways in

What you get

Standalone Volume I — The Marks

The Marks

Volume I · 73 checks

$49$27

One-time · instant download

  • What gets left on a house that is being tested, and what each thing is testing
  • Paper in the seam, the step, thread and tape, marks on the property line
  • Telling a real mark from a coincidence — nine checks, because most pebbles are pebbles
  • The exact words for the non-emergency call
  • The sixty-second evening walk
Get Volume I
Everything All three volumes of Off the List

Off the List

All three volumes · 186 checks

$98

One-time · instant download

  • Volume I — The Marks. 73 checks
  • Volume II — The Everyday Awareness Handbook. 69 checks
  • Volume III — While You're Away. 44 checks, and it is not sold anywhere else
  • The Evening Walk Card and The Neighbor Card
  • The Away Card, to fill in before a trip
  • The Current Steps Sheet — dated, and re-issued free when anything on it moves
Get the collection

Volume III has no listing, no price and no checkout anywhere. The only way to it is here.

Standalone Volume II — The Everyday Awareness Handbook

Everyday Awareness

Volume II · 69 checks

$49$27

One-time · instant download

  • Everywhere away from your own front door
  • The forecourt, the lot, and the walk between the car and the building
  • The drive home, and the four turns that answer the question
  • The tail that is not a car — the tracker scan both phones already have
  • Hotels, rooms you do not own, and people rather than places
Get Volume II
Ed Brannigan
Ed BranniganTwenty-five years on patrol

Who wrote this

Ed Brannigan

Twenty-five years on patrol. Most of it night shift. A good part of it standing in somebody's driveway at two in the morning, taking a report about something that had already happened.

None of this came out of a training manual. It came from showing up after the fact, over and over, and noticing that the same small things kept turning up in the same order — and from wishing somebody had told those people sooner.

So I wrote it down. That is the whole story of this book.

What I will not print: anything about what you may do to a person on your property, what you may record, or where the lines sit on trespass. Those answers are different in every state and different again outside this country, and a book that guessed at them would get somebody hurt or arrested. Those questions go to a local attorney, to your county, or to your own non-emergency line. Not to me.

186numbered checks
3volumes
99pages
25years on patrol
$0cost of every check

What is actually in them

Volume by volume

Volume I — The Marks

Volume I · 73 checks · 9 modules

The Marks

What gets left on a house that is being tested, what each thing is testing, and the walk that finds it the same day it was placed.

  • How a house gets chosen, and by what
  • Paper and objects in the door seam
  • The step: pebbles, the mat, the planter
  • Thread, tape, and the angled light
  • Marks on the gate, meter, mailbox and curb
  • Tests that are not objects at all
  • Telling a mark from a coincidence
  • What to do when you find one — in order
  • The sixty-second circuit
Volume II — The Everyday Awareness Handbook

Volume II · 69 checks · 8 modules

The Everyday Awareness Handbook

Parking lots, the road, travel, and the places in between. Everything that happens away from your own front door.

  • The three questions asked from a distance
  • The forecourt, pump by pump
  • The lot, and the walk to the door
  • The drive home, and never your own driveway
  • The tracker scan both phones already have
  • Routine, and the pattern that can be read
  • Hotels and rooms you do not own
  • People, not places
Volume III — While You're Away

Volume III · 44 checks · 6 modules · in the collection only

While You're Away

Three separate viewers told me the same thing under a video: that everything I had said assumed a house that is empty on a weekday, and that theirs is not. They were right. This volume is the correction.

  • Why an occupied house still gets picked
  • The work-from-home inversion
  • The mail, and the preview somebody else can claim
  • Absence, planned: the one person with a key
  • The trail you leave before you go
  • Long absence, and the loudest mark on the list
  • Coming back — and the one genuinely dangerous decision

Why one page has a date on it

The books cannot go stale

There are no prices in the three volumes. No phone numbers. No menu paths.

A book that carries those goes quietly wrong on your hard drive a year after you bought it, and you never find out. So everything perishable was pulled out and put on one sheet with a date on its face — the tracker scan paths for both phones, the postal routes, the reporting numbers.

When a phone company moves a menu, that sheet gets re-issued and you get the new one. That is what the free updates are, and it is the only thing they are. It is also the only reason there is a mailing list.

If it is not for you

Sixty days. No questions. Keep the printables.

Read the whole thing, do the walk for a month, and if it has not been worth it, write to me and I will refund you. You do not have to explain and I will not ask.

Refunds here are handled by hand, which means this is a promise about my own behavior rather than a setting in a shop. I would rather say that plainly than dress it up as a policy.

One more thing

Do the walk tonight

Out the front door, down the side, through the back, in through the back door. Sixty seconds. You will find nothing, which is the point rather than a disappointment.

The house that gets skipped is the one where somebody walked the property eighteen hours ago, touched the gate, and looked at the step — so that anything left there does not sit for two days answering a question about you.

Get the collection — $47

Or read the free sample first. If you want it, it's there.

The honest answers

Questions

Will this stop somebody breaking into my house?
No, and I would not trust anybody who told you otherwise. Locks fail and glass breaks. What these do is make your house a worse choice than the next one, which is the only thing that has ever actually worked. The whole thing is a comparison, not an absolute.
Is any of this going to make me anxious?
It shouldn't, and there is a whole module built to stop it. Volume I, Module 7 is nine checks on telling a real mark from a coincidence: what wind does, what animals do, what your mail carrier does, what children do. One pebble is a pebble. A book that teaches you to see threats everywhere has made you worse off, not safer, and I say so in it.
What is in Volume III, and why can't I buy it?
It is about the house on the days nobody is standing in it — travel, hospital stays, long absences, the mail, and coming home to something wrong. It exists because three viewers pointed out that everything else I had said assumed an empty weekday house. It is in the collection and nowhere else. That is what makes the collection a different product rather than a discount, and it is why the saving above is only seven dollars.
Does this tell me what to do if somebody is actually there?
No, and that is deliberate. There is nothing in any of the three volumes about weapons, techniques, thresholds, or what you would be entitled to do. Those answers are different in every state and different again outside this country. What is in here happens earlier than all of that — before anything has begun, which is the only stretch where small free actions still change the outcome.
I live in an apartment. I rent. Is this for me?
Partly, and I would rather be straight about it. The door, the seam, the mail, the trackers, the parking lot, the drive home, the hotel, the absence — all of that applies. The gate, the fence line, the alley side and the lawn do not. Volume II applies to you almost completely.
I'm not in the United States.
The behavior is the same everywhere; the phone numbers and postal services are not. The books deliberately name the category rather than the rule — "your non-emergency line", not a number — and the dated sheet carries the US-specific routes. If you are outside the US, the two checks that are most US-shaped are the postal ones. Everything else transfers.
Are there reviews?
Not yet. This channel is a few weeks old and there is no honest way to show you social proof that does not exist. That is what the free sample is for — read it, and decide from the writing rather than from a number I could have made up.
What format is it, and can I print it?
PDF, US Letter, set at 12.5pt because most of the people reading this are over fifty-five and the usual size is too small. It prints properly. The three printables are designed to be printed, folded, written on, and in one case handed to a neighbor.