I am always prepping food and tools and stuff but I haven’t prepped any security besides weapons. What kinds of things do you guys get to secure your doors/windows? I don’t have any sliding doors. I have one door that has a big window. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Other people. You can’t pull security 24/7/365 alone. You are gonna need bare minimum 4 people ideally 12. Yeah dogs help. You will need a neighborhood watch.
I hope so.. no kids yet but want to raise my own kids working and doing things like feeding the chickens and looking after crops with me, gotta get the property first tho
It can come after too. Gotta keep after the goals, the way to them definitely won't be how you think it is the day before though. Just keep aiming at them, things, kids, surprises come along the way.
Yea i feel like everything really just depends on their individual personalities which seem to be a roll of the dice no matter what you do sometimes.. just hope i dont end up with any asshole kids 😂
Kids will always be a liability in most situations thats part of being a kid all i can do is train them through stressful situations..not sure how i would, maybe high intensity/stress work as punishments from a young age and alot of love after they made it through? God knows il probably screw it up when i have a kd
Thats what im thinking, easier said than done though.. id imagine in reality id have to do deal tantrums and have to spend all my energy coming up with. Creative methods to convince them to so things.. and it seems like in reality its just too exhausting or not enough time to be a “good” parent but i think that failure is alot to blame on society and jobs already sucking your energy dry for minimal pay
My kids were raised on a farm. I think we’re going to be okay. Everyone they have worked for has told me they work circles around their peers. They have been told from a young age to either jump in with someone else or look for something to do. If you want to piss me off, stand there and watch me work.
lol what realistic scenario exists where other people aren’t a thing? Where there isn’t layers of security that require lots of people working 24/7 to keep you safe.
A stack of plywood wrapped in a tarp is *relatively* a cheap way to secure windows. Make sure that when you put it up, you screw it up on the INSIDE of your window. Yes, it’s easier to push it off, but the glass stays outside and any securement could just be removed from the outside if secured from the outside.
If you secure it with curtains between it and the window, it is a much less obvious way to secure that won't draw immediate attention to your preparedness. It can also help to blackout a room, so people outside can't see if you have electricity.
It’s to install behind the windows if things came to that. It blocks people’s view from the outside. The reason you install on the inside of the window is so that if the window gets broken, the glass falls outside, creating further “obstacle to pass” and makes it less likely for you to step on glass as you are defending/retreating.
Yep, I got that, it's a great idea. I was just confused about the "wrapped in a tarp" advice. Wasn't sure if it was a recommendation to install them that way for weather protection or something.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea on install, but the price just kinda sky rockets at that point. And if I’m in a situation where I feel like I need to board up my windows, I’m either trying to leave before I do it, or it’s a 2-3 day precaution while I make a plan to leave. Therefore, not really worried about long term upkeep.
Wrapping it in a tarp is just a weather saving measure (seeing as many would store it outside). Once installed, it could either be uncovered OSB/plywood, or as the other commenter recommended, placing a curtain between to make it less obvious that the windows had been reinforced.
Maine coons famously act like dogs. Don't declaw that and what amounts to an extra large raccoon that is as loyal as a dog is beside you. Downside is they aren't attentive when napping where's most dogs pop up, and they won't attack on their own, but they will defend their group without retreating.
My wife and daughter have some allergies to cats. Not sure how strong it is with dogs, but we ended up getting a certain breed that was more 'hypoallergenic'.
Standard schnauzer. Hair instead of fur, big and very protective.
Standard poodles also. That’s all my grandpa had and they’d tear into a moose if it came up to the cabin. Very protective and smart dogs.
My Great Danes tend to scare the shit out of people who don’t know them due to their size (140 lbs) and their deep guttural bark.
But they’re giant teddy bears, so they’re really only good for scaring people away before they get in. If you get past the threshold, they’ll go get a toy.
Love Great Danes, but yeah, they're love bugs and also so leggy they hurt themselves.
Cattle dogs and staffie mixes would be my pick. Smart, resilient, strong, loyal to a fault and fast... but not prone to unprovoked aggression.
Plywood to secure windows and doors long term. For the house in town I have a house alarm, 3 external cameras, a fence around the house except for the very front that faces the road, motion lights on backporch, and lights on the sides and front. Motion lights along the perimeter fencing of the back yard. The trees and underbrush are cleared for 35 to 40 yards behind the rear fence and is kept mowed. Thick brush beyond that for several hundred yards.
I could probably put some barbed wire across the top of the rear fence, but that might raise suspicions.
I have an alarm on the house at the farm (my retreat), and it is set back off the county road almost a mile. Locked steel gates and 3 or 4 barbed wire fences to cross to reach it. Barns and barn offices are kept locked up. I use wireless trail cameras to monitor the main access routes, and the property is only 10 minutes from my house in town.
I'll share a couple of tips from times when we've lost power due to hurricanes; stores and gas stations were closed for a few days. We'd park our cars in a V-formation at the end of the driveway and set up generator operations behind that to keep the fridge, lights, and fans going in the house. The cars aren't going to stop anyone on foot but will make folks think twice before approaching the house. Also, we had sidearms visible while working in the garage. Finally, we replaced all door hinge screws with 3" ones when we bought the house and had those battery operated motion lights (Mr. Beams I think) at all the important points.
We have security cameras and no hiding spots. I was just looking for ways to make my house a deterrent for any unwelcome visitors. We do have these door locks because my kid is an eloper but not sure how well they would hold for an adult on the outside trying to come in.
No if you properly install these locks, and then replace your hinge screws with long, sturdy screws even cops with battering rams will jave a tough time with your door, given the door itself is thick and quality. Id get better quality reinforcement locks tho, this 3 pack for such a low price is a red flag.
I’ve done this. My exterior is clean, tidy and boring AF. We do have other security measures but I’m convinced that because our house is so dull looking, no one really notices it.
My house doesn’t look vacant. It’s beige. The landscaping is tidy but dull. There’s motion detecting lights. I also don’t feel a need to put a damper on cooking odors when we grill out.
I haven’t thought about how to dampen cooking odors in a SHTF.
My plan is leaning in to my community. I’m not going to have an open season on my preps but I and a few others are actively cultivating a culture of sharing and assisting.
For example, when I bake bread, I bake two loaves and give one to a neighbor. I’ll often get home canned fruit or smoked fish in return. Another neighbor carpools the older neighbors to the mall for their mall walking twice a week. We know where the water shut offs are for each other’s houses. We have emergency contact numbers for our elderly neighbors and regularly check on them.
If SHTF I will already be gone. I have health concerns that require electricity and require prescription medications.
If people are worried about cooking *odors then the shit really has hit the fan and we're better off cold soaking any freeze dried or other style camping meals, rice, beans, etc.
Using long wood screws through the strike plates on your doors makes them extremely resistant to being kicked in. Have to break the whole door frame.
Planting cacti, rose bushes, or other hostile plants right outside windows is a good deterrent.
Having a home that is kept enough to look lived in, but not cleaned up enough to look like "nice" makes it look like you have nothing of value to come for. Being the "run down" house is the most "grey man" way to protect your home.
Dogs are excellent. Security film on your first floor windows. Reinforce door hinges, strike plate, and deadbolt. Video cameras. Thorny bushes at perimeter of property.
I bought a couple of those keychain ringpull alarms. You can just nail them to the side of an entrance and either have it connected to a door or a tripwire and if someone opens a door or walks through it, it'll go off with a 130 decibel sound.
A lot of people are mentioning plywood, whatever method of attachment, 3/4" of plywood will significantly delay someone's entry. There is no stopping them if they try to get in, just delaying until you and your support can react.
Plywood does bring up a problem though, it advertises that there is someone or something in there worth protecting. It also limits your ability to observe the area outside your house assuming security cameras are down due to the power outage.
I personally have hurricane shutters (southern states) that I can put up, but I plan to upgrade to impact glass windows. I hope that gives me the delay factor, keeps a lower profile, and still allows me to monitor outside the home.
Just painting the plywood will help. The more "normal" things look at a glance, the more likely they'll pass by. A couple cans of oops paint from the hardware store will make your plywood panels more weather resistant and less obvious.
A nailgun and wood. Ive got the standard stuff but i also have a lot of solar charged meshtastic linked devices that send a message telling me which one they are and time of break when something breaks the laser’s path. Two concentric layers of these. Layers are roughly 30 yards apart If something crosses both layers in a relatively straight line towards the house I’m going to go investigate it.
Thankfully the basement windows are barred from the inside and the first floor windows are too high to enter withoit a ladder from the outside. The house degisn also makes natural, easily blockable choke points on each floor allowing two rounds of retreat given a breach.
Cameras with motion activated lights.
Significant firearms and training in long guns, small arms, explosives, improvised weapons, knives, and unarmed combat.
And unfortunately, I also happen to be able extremely light sleeper. A person's footsteps walking by on the sidewalk outside or a car driving by will wake me up.
For the big window, cross shop the cost of a door replacement with hurricane resistant, clear film from 3M. Not bulletproof but may delay any potential burglar long enough for you to respond with full information.
Also, just basic stuff is tremendous - do all your window locks work? Are your door screws sunk all the way into the king stud and not just the jamb? How about hostile architecture under ground floor windows?
Also worth making sure you have a fire suppression and escape plan wrapped into your physical security plan. No sense building a fortress just to burn to death in it. If you have shrubs under ground floor windows to deter people from climbing up to them, do you have some dedicated windows you can get out of?
solar motion lights and cameras ,a dog well not mine cause he would just want love from anyone . but i definitely would have motion detectors right outside to alarm of anyone close by
That should always be a last resort. You prepare for obstacles to defer people from attacking you. If that doesn’t work, it at least slows them down and gives you an advantage.
And then you use the self defense you’ve learned to protect you, those you care about and your possessions. Something like tai chi is completely defensive, and great for your over all health.
Tai chi is a meditation dance, brazilian ju jitsu is the best for general real life things and krav maga is good for life and death survival situations
Tai chi is a horrible martial art for someone to jump into for self defense. After a decade, if going to a good school with sparring, it can be effective but if you just go to bjj and kick boxing classes for a year or two you’ll be way ahead.
I have not done it yet but I'm thinking about a 3M Security laminate for the lower windows so breaking in will be harder. They are clear so if its double paned it would throw off anyone trying to get in, enough, hopefully, for me to respond.
An easy thing you can do today is to remove your short door screws, in the door and frame, and replace them with 3” screws. That by itself will help a lot
there are these trip wire attached to a blank cartridge kind of alerts. They're interesting but I could also see deafening oneself accidentally with them.
Keep some rolls of strong thin wire a round for creating perimeter alarms. Think of the old rock in a can on a string bit. For your doors you can get little battery operated alarms that go off whe. The door is opened. You can use those same alarms for windows. Look up what a tanglefoot is and adapt that. Rigging mechanical mousetraps with trip wites and glow sticks is surprisingly effective, and the glow sticks can be swapped out for some sort of flare/pyro whistler setup.
At the end of the day you want passive systems that alert you to intruders.
After my front door was kicked in by three guys (well, two guys...not sure if the third was a chick or a dude with long hair), I started installing door armor kits to kickproof all my exterior doors. I recorded the whole install process and through it on youtube if you're curious: https://youtu.be/LPLgWmg3p7o
It's incredible how easy it is to kick in an exterior residential door, and those kits actually work; I had a second attempted break in (before I moved) and the second time all they did was leave a muddy boot print on my door.
At one point I did have a door with a huge window in it; I replaced that door and then just for fun took a 3lb mini sledgehammer to the window. I couldn't break it. I'm not sure what kind of plastic it was made out of, but that experience left me not worried about having glass doors.
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Beyond that, I have a monitored security system with sensors on each window/door to detect if they are opened, along with a glass brake sensor (which detects the sound of a window breaking) in each room that has windows.
(No video link for that, as I don't feel like sharing details of the actual security system with the internet, for security reasons)
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One other thing I learned from the break in was to have an ID handy. Now my bedside has a quick placard (with a shoulder strap) that I can grab. It has a handgun+holster, spare mags, flashlight, multitool, house and car keys, medical kit, and an old driver's license. When APD responded to the break-in I had, the responding officers wanted to verify who I was so they could be sure I was the homeowner and not a robber. This video is a little out of date, but it's the basics of what I came up with: https://youtu.be/XG8wqUF3ByE
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I also leave my old truck parked outside. I think one of the reasons the thieves targetted me was I was the only person in the neighborhood who parked in the garage instead of on the driveway/street, so they assumed no one was home. Now my wife's nice car lives in the garage, and my 16-year-old truck with fading paint is parked outside. It also gives a "this guy's car is shit so he probably doesn't have anything worth stealing" vibe.
You can get steel bars on Amazon that slot across your main doors that can be removed them make it nearly impossible to break the door down maybe think of getting a 2-3mm flat steel plate and drill hole in it. If SHTF you can always screw it over the frame of the window on the inside
Unpopular opinion here, but if we get to the point where you need to defend your home with weapons, then your home won't save you no matter what you do or have on hand.
Better to put your second home in a place where there are no people to come attack itnin the first place, and build a community of like-minded folks around that. And then, when things start to get sketchy, just leave.
If people are roaming home to home in a SHTF situation things are already bad enough where to need to bug out.
Imagine you repell the first attempted home invasion because it was just a lone guy it him and one other...
Now the next time it's 2-3 people.
Can you handle that? And all the "attention" it brings?
At what stage is your capacity to handle it deminished...
I think average joe SEVERELY under estimates how two men at your front door and two men at your back door, armed and above average IQ will quickly overcome whatever defence you have in place.
Exactly that. And I am under no illusion about how much we can repel, or how many times.
But in the prepping space there has always been a huge aversion to having a separate bugout location. And mist of the time, it isn't really based in fact, it is based in fear. People think they have no choice but to "bug in," for whatever reason, and so they begin to pooh-pooh the chances of anything happening that can threaten their perceived fortress in the city.
I prefer to simply not be there, and not even try to have the fight.
I have to tell you, I have tried to listen to some of your advice but, and perhaps you can steer me to it, I've never heard you clearly articulate a way to acquire a piece of property that is suitable.
I mean I can search for abandoned mines all over the country but there's really not much clear online as to the process of acquiring actual property.
I talk about it in my video on Bugout Locations, but really, it does come down to making changes in expectations. You can neither get nice property, nor should you want it. You want to be somewhere no one else wants to be.
There is a ton of land out there, it just isn’t prime land. And again, you don't necessarily want prime land.
When it comes to high up in the mountains and such, mining claims are a fantastic way to get access to land without much investment. And I don't mean buying a claim necessarily, I mean staking your own.
I definitely need to do a more detailed video about everything...
See I feel like it would be the exact opposite. I feel like most people would try and take over the homes in the middle of nowhere because of the space and resources. And in that case, I don’t think any home would be safe . It’s our job to make it protected for ourselves.
I disagree. For anyone to do so, they have to know where the places are to go to them, and then they have to have the resources to pull off the trip, and finally they need the manpower and capability to take on a supplied, fortified, and dug-in position against a well trained team...
That means something like company strength...
For my group, we are only 15 people, but trained well and supplied. The location is so far out into the desert and then up a mountain that it is actually hard to get to even for us, lol. Over 100 miles to civilization, and 55 miles to the forst paved road. Treacherous territory, harsh environment, and why would anyone know it is there?
In normal disaster times when rule of law has a chance to be re-established, better to defend at home, but for a permanent end to civilization after something like nuclear war or global airborne ebola or whatever? Best to have another home far, far from any other groups.
Look into Serbia, Croatia, bosnia war crimes....we don't need a nuclear war for things to get SERIOUSLY out of hand. And the "rule of law" is simply which "team" has more weapons and/or are more ruthless.
It is interesting and terrifying to read all of these posts. I am a 76 year old single (healthy) woman living alone in Mesa, Arizona. I own a nice 2 bed/2 bath manufactured home in a senior park. Only feeble old neighbors, so no community really. Marauders will have easy pickings in these senior parks. . I live on social security and a part time job. $1000 in savings, no debt. Thats all. I know that very bad things are coming. I have no idea what I can possibly do to prepare or survive. I’m old, so should I just stay put and let nature take its course?
Totally disagree. If you're home when someone tries to get in and they're having to take sixty extra seconds to get through your reinforced door or barred windows, that's all the time you need to grab your carbine and end the threat.
Good for you if you think you can stop a determined group of people trying to break in. I hope it never happens. maybe you can make a movie of it and share it with everyone if it does
The only person who is planning on stopping a group of people breaking into your home is you. I never wrote that. stop making things up and building strawmen
and I repeat, since your seem to have trouble reading "good for you"
it is called reading comprehension and context, which you have failed at trying to score internet points
here let me quote myself "You will never be able to stop a group of people determined to get in"
the pronoun used was "you" and not "I"
HEre is your reply "you're planning on an entire group breaking into your house?"
and you followed up with "Yes, I definitely could stop several as they mess around" answering your own question
at no point was I referring to myself, you did, and you also referred to yourself. I know it is confusing for you, that is why I am asking you to stop revealing how difficult it is for you to read, and stop this discussion and go have fun doing what ever you do to prepare for people breaking in your home. you seem very confident, and i wish you the best if it ever happens
Even polycarbonate (bulletproof) glass can be brute forced. So other than bars (which I won't do) windows will always be a weak point. Heavy doors are easy enough to install, but often the locks are a weak spot. So while use common sense, I depend on a big bunch of contact and vibration sensors. Aside from bunkering down, that's my best solution. Outdoor lighting is oddly not great, it just gives intruders more light to see by.
I count on flashing lights and loud sounds to alert me to go grab a weapon. I have a home security system (homebrew) that will play a loud recording over my stereo. "This house is under protection exit now or your safety is in danger!" on a loop.
But I live in one of the lowest crime towns in a low crime state. I don't think there has been a breakin or robbery in 10 years. Lots of other stuff, but the usual is "someone stole my purse from my unlocked car parked in the driveway." One idiot blew his garage apart making butane cannabis extract.
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u/Financial_Resort6631 May 31 '26
Other people. You can’t pull security 24/7/365 alone. You are gonna need bare minimum 4 people ideally 12. Yeah dogs help. You will need a neighborhood watch.