A stranger can find out you live alone in about a minute. Stop handing it to him.

Here is how it happens.

A man in a vest with a clipboard is on your porch. He is friendly. He says he is checking meters on the block. He asks if now is a good time. He asks if the homeowner is around. He asks what time you usually get home.

You answer, because he is polite and so are you. It takes forty-five seconds. And in forty-five seconds he has your adult count, your schedule, and the one fact every burglar wants: nobody else is coming.

You did nothing wrong. Courtesy is what he was counting on. Nobody has to pick a lock to learn you live alone. Most of the time the house tells him, and sometimes you do.

The good news is that every one of those signals is cheap to fix. This book shows you which ones, in what order, and what to say.

What is inside

• The 30-minute plan for tonight. The four fixes that matter most, in order: the screws in your door frame, the lights, the mail, and what you say to a stranger. Under $40 if you own nothing.
• Door scripts you can say out loud. The questions strangers use, why each one is asked, and the polite answer that gives away nothing. Plus the phone version, and a card for your kitchen cabinet.
• What your house says when you are not talking. 22 signals that say "one person lives here," each with a fix that costs almost nothing.
• A walk around the property, room by room. Street, driveway, yard, porch, doors, locks, windows, garage, and each room inside.
• 17 places a burglar will not look. Furniture, walls, everyday objects, and the decoy trick that works on a rushed thief. Most need no tools.
• A chapter for women, widows, and aging parents. Fifteen habits that read "she lives alone," what to do after a loss, how to check on a parent from a distance, and the phone scams to hang up on.
• The car. The roadside kit, the two cards, and the one item that can save a life.
• When the power goes out. A warm room, safe heat, water, the carbon monoxide rules, and why staying home beats a bugout bag.
• Printable checklists for every chapter, one per page, so you can use a pen.

A taste of the door scripts

Same warmth, half the detail. The book explains the reason behind every line, so you are not memorizing a script. You are learning to see the question.

Who this is for

What it is not

It is not a fear book. Most people who live alone never have a problem. It does not teach anyone to defeat a lock and it does not tell you to confront anyone. Every method works by making your house a poor choice, quietly. It is general home-safety information, not legal advice.

Why listen to Wade

Wade Merrill did his time in the Marine Corps and learned to read ground the way a stranger reads it: where you would come in, where you would stand, what you would look at first. On his YouTube channel he turns that into plain habits for ordinary houses, and names where every number comes from.

Every statistic in the book is sourced in an appendix. Where there is no number, the book says so instead of making one up.

Wade Merrill is a fictional character. No real person is depicted or impersonated.