With the increasing emergencies involving natural disasters and outside-influencing groups (hackers and terrorists) attacking our infrastructure and ways of life, there is a growing need to be able to properly prepare and defend your personally accrued resources and home. It is becoming increasingly dicey in major cities with rates of burglary, robbery, and homicides increasing for various conditional and circumstantial reasons—resources being one of them.
Entailed below are some key points on how to best fortify your home along with points of consideration to how best safeguard your resources, valuables, and self/ family:
- Fortify your doors/ home entries with kick plates and long, case-hardened screws, and additional locks or bars. The door frame should also be fortified with long screws that can be drilled into the strong studs edging the framing internally/ in the walls.
- Windows are a big point of contention. Plywood is useful, but burns and doesn’t stop bullets—it can also provide an indicator (especially in major cities) that you are trying to“hide something” and keep people out, which will not deter some rioters and criminal opportunists (i.e. gangs and burglars). Keep your shades closed, and alternatively putting a piece of plexiglass on the inside of the window frame can provide some additional protection without providing a blatant indicator.
- Prepare an internal room in your home for a defensible position. Obviously state
laws apply to how you can protect your home (i.e. Castle Doctrine), but there are ways that you can fortify an internal room to lock and hide in as a last resort. They also do sell ballistic drywall, so if you decide to do some remodeling, wouldn’t be a bad idea to use this material on such a room.
- Additionally, home Security Systems are a wise option if you can afford it, they can be an invaluable resource when it comes to the bottom line. There is also other cheaper items you can get, like personal audible alarms. They are loud and can provide a good security element.
- Maintain safe storage and additional security of your resources. Keep gas cans stored properly on the ground or in a specified storage locker in your garage or shed—there are also locking gas cans that are very difficult to get into as an additional layer of security for your resources. Keep your garage and shed locked whenever you aren’t in there, even living out in the countryside you aren’t free of risk regarding theft and intruders.
- Secure your valuables in your home. Safes do not cost that much nowadays for a decent one, it is always wise to have one for your valuables and important documents—this also applies to ammunition and firearms, gun safes are great for keeping your valuables in alongside your valuable tools necessary to defend yourself, they are heavy and cannot easily be broken into if at all. You can also stage multiple smaller safes around the home (including the internal defensible room) to quickly access arms and disperse where your items are to increase protection from outside adversaries.
About the author: Derek (aka “The Metalhead Mercenary”) is a US Army Infantry Veteran andseasoned Private Security Contractor and Executive Protection Specialist with a combined 21 years of experience. He still currently works in the industry. Gutter Fighting Secrets, 2021.