Deny Predictability

Becoming a Hard Target · Lesson 5 of 10

Watch the field rule first. The written version is right below it.

Routine Is a Targeting Package

In 1989, a German banker was killed on his way to work. Armored car, lead car, follow car: none of it mattered, because he took the same route at the same time every day. The armor didn't fail. The pattern did.

Attacks that are planned (stalking, kidnapping, organized theft) start with homework: days, sometimes weeks, of watching to learn one thing, your pattern. Where you'll be, and when. Which means the counter is yours to run: on the trips you repeat, vary the route and vary the time. Half the measure doesn't work; a new street at the same minute is still a pattern. Change both and the homework gets expensive. The watcher has to stay out longer, and expose themselves more, to learn you.

Vary the Route

Vary the Time

Post After, Not During

The cheapest version costs nothing: stop broadcasting your location in real time. Post the trip after you're home. A live feed of where you are is surveillance someone else no longer has to do.

The Anchors

Some places you can't vary: home, work, school. That's exactly where a watcher sits. So on those legs, trade variation for observation: same person, same car, twice? You know the rule from Lesson 3. Log it: what, when, where.

Keep it proportionate. Most crime is impulsive and involves no surveillance at all; this lesson isn't a reason to live in fear. But the attacks that are planned all start the same way: by learning you. Stay hard to learn.

Knowledge Check

Where does variation actually matter?

You drive to the same gym every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 p.m., same roads each way. Applying this lesson, what changes?

Lesson Complete

Next: the same selection math, applied to the place you sleep.