Prepper's Home Defense: Security Strategies to Protect Your Family by Any Means Necessary

By Jim Cobb and Jerry Ahern

Deter, delay, defend—a guide to building and maintaining security when civilization breaks down.

Does your disaster preparation plan include security measures? When civilization fails and the desperate masses begin looting, they will come for your food, water, and life-sustaining supplies. This book shows you how to implement a complete plan for operational security and physical defense, including:


• Perimeter Security Systems and Traps


• House Fortifications and Safe Rooms


• Secured and Hidden Storage


• Firearms and Defensive Combat Techniques


• Gathering Intelligence and Forming Alliances

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781612431437

Jim Cobb

Jim Cobb is a popular and prolific author in the disaster-readiness field. His other books include Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide. Jim has written several hundred articles for dozens of publications, including RECOIL OFFGRID, American Survival Guide, Boy’s Life, and Field & Stream. He is also the editor in chief of Backwoods Survival Guide magazine. Jim lives in the upper Midwest with his beautiful wife and their assorted critters.

Book preview

SECTION I

SECURITY PLANNING

CHAPTER 1

Basic Security Concepts

There are several basic concepts common to all security plans, whether for a single-family home, a multi-acre retreat, or even an office building. One of the most fundamental aspects of security planning is the knowledge that no plan will ever be absolutely perfect. Given enough time and motivation, an aggressor will always be able to defeat any security plan. No lock is ever totally pickproof. No gate is ever really impregnable. Thus, the focus of an effective plan is to increase the amount of time and motivation necessary to defeat the plan.

Another key element to keep in mind is the motivation of your enemy. A sufficiently motivated attacker will voluntarily suffer even severe losses to his group, believing the efforts will be rewarded. Desperation is a powerful motivator. In a world without rule of law, as we saw in situations such as post-Katrina New Orleans, there will no doubt be large numbers of survivors seeking a meal, a bottle of clean water, and a safe place to rest. In even a short period of time, they will become desperate to acquire the basic needs of life. Your security plans should focus on dissuading these people from believing they can easily obtain these necessities from you.

In this chapter we’ll look at a few of the fundamental principles you should keep in mind when designing your home security plan.

Deter, Delay, and Defend

The longer it takes for an attacker to get through your defensive measures, the more time you have to detect them and to implement additional security protocols. Conversely, the longer an attacker is able to operate undetected, the higher his chances of success. It is critical to be able to locate and take action against aggressors as soon as possible.

The amount of time it takes for an attacker to defeat both passive and active elements of your security plan is directly related to the number of those elements as well as their complexity. For example, climbing over a 5-foot chain link fence takes only a few seconds for most people. But if that fence were instead 7 feet tall and topped with barbed wire, the amount of time it took to get over it would increase substantially. Anything you can do to increase the amount of time it will take an attacker to overcome or circumvent a defensive measure gives you more opportunity to take direct action against them.

Elevate Their Risk, Elevate Your Survival

Even if at a subconscious level, people make decisions on a risk versus reward basis. While the presence of a high fence topped with barbed wire would indicate to most people that there is something valuable inside, the presence of additional security measures may serve to cause potential aggressors to seek more vulnerable targets of opportunity.

When I was a young child, my father explained to me how best to deal with bullies. He said that if the bully felt he might be able to win the fight but would suffer moderate or severe injury in doing so, he would move on to someone else. The same principle applies here. If you give an aggressor reason to believe he will suffer a great loss just to gain entry, he will likely decide that the risk is too great for an unknown reward.

Control the Situation

Security, at the core, is all about control. If you were putting together a security plan for a large office building, for example, you would primarily be concerned with controlling access to the building itself, as well as to various departments within the organization. Today, this is usually accomplished through the use of electronic surveillance devices such as closed-circuit television. Often there will also be a badge key or even biometric devices used to unlock entrances to secured areas.

Similarly, for your retreat security plan you want to prevent unauthorized access to your home and ensure that items such as medical supplies and firearms are secured against both intruders and unauthorized members of your team. Of course, you probably won’t be using biometric locks but instead relying upon more old-fashioned, yet tried-and-true measures such as hardened doors and windows.

In addition to access control, you also want to work toward maintaining control of an intruder’s movements should they penetrate any level of your defenses. You want to successfully predict and control their actions every step of the way and counteract every option they may have. There is a fair amount of psychology involved with this. Fortunately, human beings are a fairly predictable lot. For example, given the choice between two paths, they will almost always choose the one that appears easier to travel.

Try this one the next time you are out for a drive with someone. When you get to a fork in the road, ask them to choose a direction. All other things being equal, most often people will choose the direction of their dominant hand. How is this useful in defense planning? Roughly 10 percent of the world’s population is left-handed. So, as you lay out your plans for funneling your opponents to specific parts of your area of control, you know that the vast majority of people will choose to turn to their right if given a seemingly open choice.

LAYERED DEFENSE

One of the best ways to approach a security plan is to think in terms of layers. An attacker should have to somehow penetrate multiple layers or levels of security devices and protocols before reaching their final objective.

Take a piece of paper and draw an X in the center. Draw three circles around the X, each circle getting slightly larger. The outermost circle represents the area surrounding your home. This area is where you’ll be patrolling and where you’ll have in place fencing, barricades, and other fortifications, as well as your Early Warning Systems. The second circle is the walls, windows, and doors of your home. As we’ll discuss, these will be fortified against entry. The innermost circle is your personal defensive measures, such as melee weapons and hand-to-hand combat skills. Between each of these distinct layers will be area denial devices and other surprises.

Proactive, Reactive, and Flexible

A good security plan is both proactive and reactive. Your barricades are a proactive element. You’ve put them up ahead of any attacks in hopes of dissuading at least some potential aggressors. However, the way you handle someone who climbs over the barricade is reactive; you have a protocol in place that defines not only who responds to such an incident but also how the response should be carried out. No security plan is strictly proactive or reactive. Both elements need to be present for the plan to be successful.

It is also important that a degree of flexibility be built in to the overall security plan. An old military axiom states that no battle plan survives the first enemy encounter. What this means is that all the planning in the world could go right out the window if the enemy does not behave as expected. Therefore, a certain degree of improvisation will be necessary. You and your family need to understand that even if you’ve practiced a certain contingency a thousand times, when the time comes to do it for real, things aren’t likely to go exactly as planned.

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Situational awareness—being vigilant about observing your surroundings—applies at both the individual and the group levels. When you are patrolling your area, you need to be aware of everything around you. Pay attention to sights, smells, and sounds. Take note of visible changes, such as vehicles that have been moved or previously unbroken windows that are now shattered. These sorts of changes may be indicative of new people being in the area and scouting for supplies. If they find your group, they will probably become very interested in what you may have to offer them.

Your group members need to be extremely observant about the area immediately surrounding your location. By maintaining lookouts and patrols as the situation permits, you’ll be in a much better position to proactively curtail possible threats. With that said though, a key element of situational awareness is to strive for threat avoidance whenever possible. You and your team should not go out looking for battle. Remember, every physical conflict carries with it the risk of injury, no matter how outnumbered or outgunned your opponent may appear to be. I’m not saying you shouldn’t stand your ground if attacked. The idea of threat avoidance is to steer clear of conflicts until and unless you have no other