Home defense / Keeping Perspective on Things

[ojiu0u4]

Hi,

I just wanted to take a temperature check / make sure I am not loosing the plot. When people talk about their home defenses... Am I going down the tinfoil path when I catch myself starring at the Amazon page and thinking about ordering a couple of hundred empty sand bags to barricade the front door (and then vaguely wondering what the hell I am going to fill them with from my patioed over garden. Or getting some steel bars for the down stairs windows of my (rented) house that I can power drill to the wall on apocalypse day or lengths of wood I can use to brace the door with and then find myself tapping on internal walls to figure out which are brick and which are plasterboard. I think about zones of fire and falling back to higher floors in the house when the mob breach the portal and then wonder about emergency ladders / ambsailing out of velux windows in the roof. Is this one step short of the white coats, and "normal" home defense is limited to the various gardening equipment we might have in the house. I wonder about blacking out the windows on the top floors so no light can escape if I have to hole up if the electric dies so I can go grey / dark to make the house look unoccupied.

What do you think, is it time for me to eat a dried frog pill (its a Terry Pratchett thing) or take a cold shower, or is this thinking about how to fortify your house the sort of thing others of you are doing...?

TIA

[mongrel]

Lets be honest, in a normal domestic home such as we all live in, defence as a you mentioned is in the land of tin foil hats! From my prospective the only real defence is invisibility.

Have nothing outside visible that marks you as a target and if you have lights when no one else does, blackout curtains
Hide your supplies so if someone does come calling nothing can be grabbed in clear sight.
But it is a hard question to answer and to be honest and personal one I will leave hanging, you never know hows viewing this site

Mongrel

[jansman]

Home defence. ( I spell with a C 'cos I am English-sorry I am pedantic like that ) Good locks all round, windows and doors. Approach lights in those vulnerable corners. Timers on the house lights. Even a burglar alarm. A dummy box can make the difference. Lock your outside gates. Get a fire blanket and extinguisher(cheap as chips on Amazon ).
Try starting from there. And stay calm.

[preparedsurrey]

If you are in a rental place it's difficult unless you landlord agree's with any changes you want to make. Its sensible to have decent locks all round, if you are really concerned get some of the steel shutters you can bolt over the doors/ windows like you would use on an unoccupied property.

[dannytsg]

The main thing about home defence is not to make your property appealing or an easy target. 9 out of 10 burglars will go for a property that is easy to get in and out of quickly. In order to prevent this you want to ensure you have adequate security, good locks, alarm and CCTV. You could also use natural defences as deterrents such as brambles near garden fences to make access hard.

In terms of internal home defence the only thing I would suggest is to formulate a plan should someone enter your home whilst you are in. We have 3 stair gates strategically placed dividing the home and creating barriers. We shut them all at night as we know they are there but should anyone break in it will cause them problems as a first line of internal defence. My plan is to also hold the high ground in such a scenario and be up stairs and to try and keep any intruders downstairs making it difficult for them to get to us.

Home defence can be done in the UK but it's more about deterrent first defence second.

[Plymtom]

Thanks for the spelling Jansman I thought I was losing it with the little red line under it when I had it right

We've touched upon this, well stomped and debated it to death many times, but this time I think I'll say how about talking to your local crime prevention officer about security in the here and now, chances are you could be lacking in normal times.. walk before you run so to speak, I'd also do a bit of a risk assessment as to the chances of your home being where rioters may pass through, or anything attractive to looters nearby.. invisibility as Mongrel said, security as Jansman said, after all when it comes to fortification there are few which didn't fail under attack by a determined and capable foe.

[Deeps]

Short of a Doctor Evil hollowed out volcano secret lair you have to accept that if the angry villagers with pitchforks and torches want into your gaff then they're going to get in. As has been said, if you're the only one casting any light in the street you'll be a target but I suppose if your neighbours notice you have blackout curtains then you'll be a target too, if food and water are in short supply then rational thinking and the normal niceties will be out the window. Even if you have firearms, unless your wife and/or kids are equally willing as yourself to shoot your friends and neighbours then you can't stay up 24/7 so you'll be up against it. This is assuming a worst case type scenario of course. If you know that there's a problem with the water supply for a day you could probably win some friends by sharing water if you have a stash but that may compromise you come the next shortage. I think most of us will have to box a wee bit clever if it ever comes to a SHTF situation.

[Arzosah]

A tale from the 1960s ... my nan and grandad lived in a council house with a railway at the bottom of the garden, and a bridge carrying a main road and a canal about 200 yards away. My grandad had a baseball bat with him at night, because when prisoners escaped from the local prison, their garden was on the route they were often taking. And he insisted on installing the hooks for a little portable escape ladder in case of fire, as the kitchen was right by the front door and the bottom of the stairs, its the likeliest place for a fire and it would've blocked all access to the outside.

I don't have a baseball bat! But I do make sure there's nothing flammable between the bottom of the stairs and the front door.

As others are saying, there's plenty to do before you get the tin foil hats out.

[Waterbaby]

I've always loved Michael Caine's house in the film 'Children of Men'.....
I'm seriously considering a pair of geese as I'm out of town

[featherstick]

I've always loved Michael Caine's house in the film 'Children of Men'.....
I'm seriously considering a pair of geese as I'm out of town

Geese are great guards. I have a treasured memory of watching our two geese see off my geography teacher when he came calling one day.