Two posts among many... from threads that were specifically linked for the OP in the thread in question, I might add.
You'll likely have to go to the posts via the links at the top (I'll bold them) to get the links to work if you want to see them, as the board software usually truncates links and when they are copied and pasted in truncated form, they won't work.
lpl
============================
http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=4726071&postcount=20
surfinguru,
IMHO you have identified your vulnerabilities accurately, and that is the major task on the way to overcoming them.
Working to harden all your home's potential entry points is critical. Adding extra lighting, especially motion controlled lighting, is a great idea. Plantings that discourage access to windows might be a worthwhile consideration. A home security system- either DIY or professionally installed- is another consideration as well. I use a DIY system from
http://www.x10.com/homepage.htm that will simultaneously sound an alarm and auto-dial up to four telephone numbers to deliver a pre-recorded message if triggered, and am satisfied that it does a reasonably good job.
Even if the end of your house where the sliding glass door is has a fence around it, IMHO you need an extra 'layer' of security at that end of the house. Maybe locking steel burglar bars over the slider, and a key to same in a place where your child has easy access in the event of an emergency where evacuation is necessary would do it. Maybe a tall privacy fence, I don't know. But I'd consider something like that as a primary early step in hardening the perimeter of the house.
As you indicate, you don't have a lot of interior room, so trading interior space for time isn't much of an option in your case. What you need to to is make sure that you are aware any time anyone comes into an area where they shouldn't be. You can do this with video equipment, and you can do it (cheaper) with audio devices. We use the system shown at
http://www.buy.com/prod/reporter-rwa.../90125222.html (now known as The Chamberlain), with three exra sensors, to monitor the area inside the fence around the house. A second system, with three extra sensors, monitors the area around our property (we have two layers of fencing around the house- a perimeter fence around the property and a fence around the house itself). Extra sensors- the system will handle up to four, total- are listed at
http://www.buy.com/prod/Reporter_PIR.../90125215.html .
We've found the system quite reliable, though it can alert to birds, insects right in front of the sensor eye, wind-blown vegetation in the sunshine, deer etc. Sensors have a detection range of about 30 feet and a wireless transmission range to the receiver of about 300 yards, depending on intervening obstacles. Each sensor transmits a different number of beeps, so you can tell which sensor is going off.
I am of the "use enough dog" school of home defense. You might well not want Brazilian Mastiffs like ours, but a family dog- if you can manage it- would IMHO be a first rate idea. And likely superior to any electronics, as well- not to mention being a lot more companionable. Having a dog in the house is a good way to get advance warning of anyone snooping where they shouldn't, and one more way to trade space for time- by extending your protected space outside the house itself.
IMHO, Job One in any potential home defense scenaro is to get every person in the household secure and under cover. in your case it sounds as if it would be better to set up your safe area in your son's room, and have the adults move to him and then stay there.
Your safe area should provide, at minimum:
1) Cover. Furniture, beds/mattresses, bookshelves, whatever you want to arrange, however you want to arrange it, that will let youu, your wife and son 'fort up' while protected from incoming fire from any direction. A 'frendly wall' (no doors or windows) should be behind you.
2) Control, or Field(s) of fire. While behind cover, you should be able to maintain control of every access to the room you are in with the firearm you have.
3) Communications. You need both a landline and a cell phone in your safe area. The cell phone need not have a current subscription, any working cell phone that can reach a tower can dial 9-1-1.
I had suggested several resources to you earlier with information that will help you formulate a good plan for defending your home. To reiterate, I suggest you take the NRA Personal Protection In The Home class. See
http://www.nrahq.org/education/train...ictraining.asp for a locator that will let you know if anyone is teaching the class near you.
Failing that, the class is available on DVD at
http://materials.nrahq.org/go/produc...tid=ES 26840 , and the textbook is at
http://www.nrastore.com/nra/Product....uctid=PB+01781 . In addition, I like Louis Awerbuck's Safe At Home video also- it's available at
http://www.paladin-press.com/product/129/73 .
Developing a good home defense plan (along with effective plans for other emergencies), hardening your home's perimeter, gaining control of the space immediately around your home- all should help you secure your family against unpleasant surprises.
Best wishes,
lpl/nc
============================
http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=5430325&postcount=10
earl,
The FIRST thing anyone needs to cover a home defense situation IMHO is a plan. Granted, it's an old military axiom that 'no plan suvives contact with the enemy intact,' but still that's no excuse for not having a home defense plan. Well, actually, more than one- more than a decade hanging around Special Forces soldiers taught me that you have a Plan A, a Plan B, and an 'OS' Plan at minimum for anything critical. Naturally you should have plans and preparations in place to cover any reasonable family emergency- fire drills, since fire in the home is a more likely emergency, or evacuation plans in case of bad weather if you're in a hurricane zone, etc.
It's my sincere opinion that the best place for kids when anything goes down that might require active defense is in a safe place with the armed parent between them and the threat. If that means having to move through part of the house to either gather or secure the little people, so be it. If that means the secure room is one of the kid's bedrooms and not the parent's, so be it. Plans and preparations are the name of the game. Plans require rehersal and practice.
Naturally, security starts as far away from the saferoom as you can push back the boundaries. The more warning you have that anyone is coming, and the more barriers there are for them to overcome, the more discouragements you can put in place (fences, motion activated lights, alarms, dogs, good solid doors, good locks, etc) between them and your loved ones, the more time you will have to put your plans in operation- AND the less likely you are to ever have to use your home defense plans.
Back when I used to work for Uncle Sam, the S-2 guys had an acronym they used- IPB, which stood for Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. See
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ioac/ipb.htm for some detail on the subject. Now this will certainly be more material than you will want to try to embrace in your home defense plan, and some of it simply won't apply- but it will give you some insight into some of the things you need to be looking at as you survey your home and grounds from the standpoint of the bad guys as you formulate your plans.
Or for a slightly different take on this, see Marc MacYoung's site at
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/pyramid.html . Consider the pyramid approach he outlines there- it's worth while also.
You mention training- and you no doubt know that training is something I particularly encourage, when it's relevant. I'd suggest you look at
http://www.nrahq.org/education/train...ictraining.asp and see if you can find an instructor near you who is teaching the NRA's Personal Protection In The Home class. If not, the class is available on video from the NRA's Bookstore at
http://materials.nrahq.org/go/produc...tid=ES 26840 , and the textbook at
http://www.nrastore.com/nra/Product....uctid=PB+01781 . Those are good starting points in your plans and preparations.
Any structure is a maze of what are known as 'fatal funnels'- narrow areas where anyone transiting is forced to go by structural features- such as hallways, doorways, stairways etc. Your house is no different. Your home defense plan needs to be set up to maximize your advantages in this regard, and minimize your disadvantages as a defender.
It's also possible to prepare these fatal funnels in advance to contain any misses or overpenetration from your weapon. Heavy furniture, bookshelves loaded full, decorative brick or stone interior walls, filing cabinets and all manner of things can serve this purpose. The same things can also serve to help you prepare genuine cover for your loved ones in their saferoom.
You will want to use lighting in the home to your advantage. Back in the day the motto of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, then known as Task Force 160 [
http://www.globalspecialoperations.com/soar.html ], was "Death waits in the dark." That is pretty much a description of what you will want to achieve. Your safe room and your position as defender should be in the dark, while the approaches to it should be lighted. You can use night lights, interior motion activated lights, remote control lighting (X-10 system, etc) that plug into existing outlets and use your home's existing wiring to accomplish this. There are night lights that have a power failure mode if you want to be prepared for those cases when intruders pull the power in preparation to making entry into the home, or you can have commercial type area power failure lighting installed.
You'll want to have reliable telephone communication from your safe room as well. With luck your spouse wll be there to call the cavalry while your cover the approach to the saferoom. In order for that to happen you'll want both landline and cell phone capability in place. It's been known that intruders ripped out phone lines before making entry, or simply take a downstairs phone extension off the hook to disable the landline. Having a cell phone helps make sure your ability to call for help won't be compromised.
Those are some things you will want to think about in planning and preparing your home defense plan. Not everything, of course, but some things at least. Hope it helps,
lpl
