Quite so, Lee Lapin, but I suppose that an element of law and politics would inevitably creep in because I had to take them into account, and thus my actions were directly affected by the legal side of the situation.
Part of strategics is inevitably affected by law, and will therefore differ depending on location.
I will post these two links to demonstrate the effects that the media and the law had on my mindset throughout the experience so that people can get an idea of the things that were running through my head while it was happening:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6956044.ece
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sh...itchenKnifeAtTeenagers&lpos=searchresults
Maybe it would be interesting for someone to start a thread in a more appropriate part of the forums to discuss the contents of the articles, but I'm just going to leave it at that for now.
And now I will try to offer some lessons that I learned in case anyone might find them useful when developing their own strategy:
We've all imagined what it would be like to experience a home invasion, or attempted home invasion. I (and I'm sure a lot of other people who have had similar experiences will agree with me) found that the reality is very different.
The physiological effects were nothing like I expected. I'm normally a pretty confident guy who doesn't take s*** from people, and I wouldn't have expected my body to react how it did, or at least not to the extent that it did.
I've mentioned above that my voice wouldn't do what I wanted it to, and I'll add to that that I was shaking like a leaf and my legs turned to rubber.
I had serious tunnel vision, and also experienced difficulty thinking clearly.
The gravity of the situation, coupled with the threat of serious physical injury to both myself and my ex scared the living c*** out of both of us. The added responsibility of having someone other than myself to protect and knowing full well that I didn't have the means to do so made it a lot worse.
Don't assume that there will be a brief exchange of words, a bit of gunfire and then tea and scones. Don't be surprised of there is a conversation.
I ended up having a pretty protracted conversation with my intruders through the door they were attempting to kick in.
They were threatening us, but they also tried reasoning with me, as did I with them.
The conversation part was the most surreal aspect of the whole thing. They were PEOPLE. It's so easy to neglect that side of things when you're planning for scenarios, intruder/s are a dark shadowy figure in the imagination, but in real life, they are people with faces and voices. They will say things that you don't expect and what they say may surprise you and even make you change your plan.
It's easy to think 'I'd just shoot them', but what if your intruder started crying or pleading with you? What if you lit them up and discovered they were a young teenager?
Where people are involved, the situation is inherently unpredictable.
You have it all planned out, get the family to a safe place, and use the cellphone that is part of your planned equipment to call the police. What if the police don't show up?
That's what happened to me, or at least they showed up so late that they might as well have not bothered. I lived literally a stone's throw from a police station, yet they took a very long time to respond, so long that it was all over by the time they arrived. They didn't even come up to my apartment.
I had every reason to think they would be there inside five minutes.
Consider this when formulating your plan. How long can you hold your position of safety for?
It might not be the police not turning up, what if your cellphone doesn't work for some reason? I know I've inexplicably not had a signal on several occasions.
Cellphones can crash and require a restart. Could you do that in the dark, under threat, with your hands shaking uncontrollably?
What if you drop the phone and the battery falls off? You get the idea.
What if the person or persons that happen to be in your home are not trained family members, but visitors? What if you or someone you must protect happens to be sick at the time?
What if you happen to have just got back from a bar and are slightly worse for wear alcohol wise?
And then comes the legal aspects. Right or wrong, the law does affect what you can/should do. I had plenty of stuff lying around that I could have used to bludgeon my attackers to death, but how much force is too much in your particular jurisdiction?
Can you really judge how hard you're hitting someone while you're pumped up on adrenalin?
I had the responsibility to protect my ex, but I had to balance that with not going to prison for murder or manslaughter.
I had to make that decision while I was under all the stress of a home invasion. These decisions are too subtle to make at a time when you have lost the mental equivalent of fine motor skill and gained tunnel vision, yet because of the unpredictable nature of such a situation, how do you really plan ahead?
I hope this has given some food for though, even though that may be all it's good for.