Fortifying Your Home

[Valliam13]

So I don't have a ton of land and I live in a populated area. What are some ideas you all have for fortifying your home or property? I heard a video about a metal front door with a metal door frame. I'd love to find a way to fortify my house a little better should SHTF in my own neighborhood.

[WhiteBear620]

What are you looking to fortify your home from?
Depending on what you want to protect from and what means you have available to protect yourself gives you some options.
Try upgrading for dead bolts and switching the screws to 3 inch long ones.
Add some alarms to your doors and windows, this may not scare the people breaking in but it lets you know that something is happening. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0003...rds=door+alarm
Hurricane shutters over Windows also work to make the window harder to get through.
I only have the alarms right now because we live in an apartment and will hopefully be moving soon.
For true SHTF, consider having sandbags and placing them around the house on the outside (inside can cause a mess of dirt), maybe even line the entire outside walls with them, sandbags are probably the best thing to stop bullets and regular walls suck at this.

[Cwi555]

There are many concerns with fortifying a home in a residential neighborhood. Most of which are insurmountable imo.

If you must stay there, then hiding in plan sight is going to be important. Visibly noticeable defenses are going to be a red flag, as is cooking smells, smoke, generator sounds, lights in windows, washed vehicles, immaculate lawns, and a hundred other things that would not normally get attention. Take a drive and note the houses that appear abandoned. That is what your place needs to look like.

If it's an extended time, appearing well feed and in condition will be a red flag as well. If everyone else in the neighborhood is lining up at the cheese line looking ragged, you'd better be right there with them looking just as ragged.

Nothing you can put in a standard home will prevent you from being burned out. If you show your face looking no worse for the wear, someone 'will' rat you out for an extra portion of cheese. Never underestimate the motivation and or twisting of ethics hunger can elicit.

Even today, there are people being targeted in rougher neighborhoods for standing out, or appearing as if they are better off than their neighbors. I've witnessed that here, S. America, Phillipines, and in the Caucasus area of eastern Europe.

Whatever you do, make sure to keep it to yourself, and that it's not outwardly noticable. Your best defense is never to have garnered enough attention to need a defense to begin with.

My opinion for what its worth.

[WhiteBear620]

There are many concerns with fortifying a home in a residential neighborhood. Most of which are insurmountable imo.

If you must stay there, then hiding in plan sight is going to be important. Visibly noticeable defenses are going to be a red flag, as is cooking smells, smoke, generator sounds, lights in windows, washed vehicles, immaculate lawns, and a hundred other things that would not normally get attention. Take a drive and note the houses that appear abandoned. That is what your place needs to look like.

If it's an extended time, appearing well feed and in condition will be a red flag as well. If everyone else in the neighborhood is lining up at the cheese line looking ragged, you'd better be right there with them looking just as ragged.

Nothing you can put in a standard home will prevent you from being burned out. If you show your face looking no worse for the wear, someone 'will' rat you out for an extra portion of cheese. Never underestimate the motivation and or twisting of ethics hunger can elicit.

Even today, there are people being targeted in rougher neighborhoods for standing out, or appearing as if they are better off than their neighbors. I've witnessed that here, S. America, Phillipines, and in the Caucasus area of eastern Europe.

Whatever you do, make sure to keep it to yourself, and that it's not outwardly noticable. Your best defense is never to have garnered enough attention to need a defense to begin with.

My opinion for what its worth.

Cwi makes good points as usual. I always forget about being burned out, mostly because it terrifies me I don't have a counter for it besides a strong perimeter and that means having neighbors that are up to speed.

[Cwi555]

There are ways to make a home exceptionally fire resistant. None of which are cheap, nor can they be accomplished on the sly.
However, it's a catch22 for that. After the first couple of molotovs, it's going to be readily apparent there is more to the house than the eye reveals. That alone would make your place an even larger target. We've employed some of those means here, but the immediate confusion from the place not going up in a puff of smoke is all the time that actually buys. In effect, it's only a counter measure against being surprised.

After that it's time to employ other plans.

A few thoughts on fortifications. Internal safe rooms can be built without prying eyes. Getting them built without triggering someone's spacial relations isn't easy. For example, you block off a 10x10 room, it's going to be obvious in the average home even if you have the entrance well concealed. Going into the attic isn't wise, which leaves down as your best option I.E. digging. If that route is taken, a plan to get rid of the dirt that doesn't involve carrying truckloads out of your garage would have to be thought out.

Studying the underground railroad here, the methods for getting the Jews out of Nazi Germany, and any other clandestine personnel/equipment hides will pay dividends. Old school medieval techniques are still good today against the average thug.

Short of being burned out, the assumption must be made that hostiles will gain access to your home. That doesn't need SHTF to be prudent, even affluent homes away from known trouble zones are being hit by smash and grab thugs.

In all that, layered defenses need to be developed. Engineered layers, surveillance layers, take down layers, etc. None of which can be obvious to the naked eye or Google maps more importantly. Good luck getting an accurate read on my place through GM even if you can figure out where it's actually at.

A note on research, the public library generally doesn't leave meta data to be mined behind. If you do research online, for every key point you research be mindful to leave at least a 3:1 ratio of false trails. If it's data you need, print it, don't go back and look at it repeatedly. You can never hide your electronic tracks completely, but you sure can obscure them to the point of falling outside 2.5 std deviations statistically.

You will get out of it what you put into it.

[Valliam13]

Good points. I would love to fortify against thieves and the like mostly. Looters I figure would be the first "issue" should SHTF (not like there isn't an issue with them in general now in the world but I live in a safe enough neighborhood).

I don't think we can dig down as this is Florida and we don't have much under there except water so to build underground would mean keeping out the water. I am all for security cameras and the like but should it ever be an EMP those would be worthless. Our house is built CBS block so we're better than the wood framed houses IMO but the sandbags make sense and there are people around here who sell or give away fill.

My biggest fear is fire as well so I would like to know more about how to "fire resist" my house a little better in addition on how to keep thieves out.

[KyDave59]

Cwi has some good points. One problem is that the most common building material is wood, and wood is flammable. One could build one's house out of concrete (either poured/cast concrete or filled concrete blocks), although that requires designing it that way from the start.

Roofing shingles are quite flammable, as are the wood trusses and seathing used to hold them. One could, of course, use steel trusses and metal roof.

Insulating such a building can be tricky, though. Styrofoam is exceptionally flammable, and, in some ways, resembles Napalm. Fiberglass mostly isn't flammable.

But, of course, all of this makes the house stand out. I suppose one could apply bricks to the outside of the house, although there's not much one could do to hide the metal roof. Then, again, some houses are going with metal roofs now, so they're not all that uncommon.

As for saferooms, I've never been a big fan of those. They're expensive to construct, and, if the thugs decide to burn the place down, you end up trapped in an oven like room. Going down will help a little, especially if there's enough thermal insulation on the top. But, you still run the risk of being trapped. Asphyxiation and flooding are also concerns. And, you also run the risk of destabilizing the foundation, which would not be good. How much do you want to bet that you'll hit rock, or water, before you're far enough down to do any good? (Don't do like one old guy around here who tried digging a basement, and, when he hit rock, decided to blast!).

If I were going to go down, I think I'd invest in some big concrete culverts, and create an escape tunnel, which led to an outbuilding. Still, hiding such construction would be difficult (Septic system installation/maintenance?).

As for research, while public libraries may not collect/maintain that information, other agencies will. Google is notorious for recording that information, as is Yahoo, and most other search engines. The government TLAs (Three Letter Agencies, e.g., NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.) will also be watching. The trick is to not do anything to connect the research with you. Don't use the same session/computer to search out illegal/questionable stuff and then turn around and check your e-mail. Don't do anything that could connect your search session to you, via your AA.net, Facebook, e-mail, etc. If you have to save something, either print it out, or stash it on removable media (floppy disk, if any systems still support those, or a USB flash drive, etc.).

Dave

[KyDave59]

Oh, yeah, I should probably add that metal roofs, while being quite a bit more expensive than shingles, will last a LOT longer, and usually withstand wind better (if properly installed). And, no, I don't have a metal roof. Yet. :*)

Dave

[redman2006]

When you think about homes today, they are poorly built. Even a great set of doors and hurricane shutters leave you extremely vulnerable to some joker with a dewalt Sawzall. All he has to cut is some plastic siding, a little osb, and some sheetrock. That means cutting a door through your wall in what, 5 minutes?

[Cwi555]

My biggest fear is fire as well so I would like to know more about how to "fire resist" my house a little better in addition on how to keep thieves out.

http://noburn.com/

http://newatlas.com/hips-fire-proof-coating/12090/

http://www.gaf.com/roofing/residential/products/roof_deck_protection/versashield_ul_fire_barrierhttps://www.classicmetalroofingsystems.com/about-metal-roofing/fire-resistance/

http://www.windowsandsiding.net/siding/faq/what-type-of-siding-is-fireproof/

[angeryamerican]

Here's a company that makes products to fortify a door. Just remember though, as others have said, you become a stationary target and the bad guys may just decide to burn you out.

https://doordevil.com/door-frame/

[redman2006]

Metal roof, block home and steel or aluminum siding will help fireproof.

[Valliam13]

Our house was built in the early 80's. It's CBS block. Fortunately for us, the roof was a year old when we bought it. Unfortunately for us, they decided to go with a shingle roof. I would have preferred metal but we weren't in the process of buying the house when they were putting on the roof.

I know you were saying not to check emails when you've been online researching questionable stuff. I'm not the only one who uses my computer. I know my husband yesterday was looking at those underground "bunkers" that they come out and build for you over time. There are some cool concepts out there but it's way expensive. If we were to do a 3:1 on false leads when searching online, what types of stuff should we be searching for? I thought maybe look at some video games or upcoming movies or something like that.

[Cwi555]

An example;
Search terms bunker, bunker rates, coal bunkers, cold war bunkers. Out of that, what am I researching?

Our house was built in the early 80's. It's CBS block. Fortunately for us, the roof was a year old when we bought it. Unfortunately for us, they decided to go with a shingle roof. I would have preferred metal but we weren't in the process of buying the house when they were putting on the roof.

I know you were saying not to check emails when you've been online researching questionable stuff. I'm not the only one who uses my computer. I know my husband yesterday was looking at those underground "bunkers" that they come out and build for you over time. There are some cool concepts out there but it's way expensive. If we were to do a 3:1 on false leads when searching online, what types of stuff should we be searching for? I thought maybe look at some video games or upcoming movies or something like that.

[Cwi555]

Don't forget the fire resistant felts and insulation. Resistant yes, proof no.

Metal roof, block home and steel or aluminum siding will help fireproof.