How I Rob Banks

Chapter 19It's Dangerous to Go Alone. Take This!

In the 1980s, Nintendo was the gaming console taking the world by storm. The Legend of Zelda was a smash hit, with the player taking control of the hero, Link, in hopes of rescuing the princess, Zelda. In the opening parts of the game, an elderly man offers Link his first weapon and utters the famous phrase, “It's dangerous to go alone. Take this!” In my world, the best weapon you have is not a sword but knowledge, and reconnaissance is the most vital part of any assessment. Without knowledge, you will almost certainly fail.

There are many ways to map out a target building. You can do a lot of intelligence gathering before you even turn up on site. Most people will be aware of street view via Google. Some may even know about other resources, such as Bing maps with a similar system. Comparing sites like that can help work out layouts. You can extrapolate a lot of information about how a building is constructed if you understand what needs to be done to make a building shaped the way it is. You can work out entrance points, easily spot fire escapes, and in some cases see through the windows. You can do an incredible amount of work just by looking at street-view images.

But there are other resources. Consider sites like OpenStreetMap and Open Infrastructure Map. I have used these to discover where electricity is provided from and where it enters buildings, once finding my way into a site through a small cabin mapped on OpenStreetMap ...